By Rahul Singh

(The writer is a former Editor of Reader’s Digest)

I first met Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul in the mid-1960s, when he made his initial trip to India, resulting in his “An Area of Darkness.” He was still in his twenties. The book offended a lot of Indians for its rather unflattering portrayal of the land of his forefathers. His observation, during a train journey, of people squatting near the railway tracks, mug or lota of water in hand, baring their bottoms, while doing their morning business, upset many.The trouble is that it was true then – and is still true today, half a century later. Naipaul had this knack of uncovering uncomfortable truths in his writings. And it came essentially from him being an outsider. Only an outsider, with keen perception and profound insights, could reveal what Naipaul did.His target was mainly Third World societies, which he disparagingly labelled as being “half-formed”. He became a lightning rod for criticism by those he hurt. But he did not care. He laughed at his critics. But even they grudgingly admired his exquisite prose and his mastery over the English language. He once revealed to me that after he had started working on a book, he only wrote 200 to 300 words a day, choosing every word with utmost care and reworking passage after passage. One of his editors confessed that she rarely changed anything in the manuscript he submitted to her, so carefully and precisely thought out was every word.He led a complex private life. When he first came to India he was married to an English lady, Pat. On a subsequent visit he had acquired an Argentinian mistress, Margaret, who broke up her marriage for him. In return, he gifted her an apartment in Buenos Aires . He then met Nadira, a Pakistani Muslim, and dumped Margaret, who was devastated. In between, he admitted he frequented prostitutes.His book on Islam, “Among the Believers” infuriated much of the Islamic world. Though he was on the short list of the Nobel Prize for several years, opposition to his candidature by prominent Muslim leaders apparently stalled his getting the award. But the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Centre, changed the public mood, and soon afterwards, he got the coveted prize. The Hindutva brigade rejoiced when he lent support to the destruction of the Babri Masjid , calling it a “re-ordering of history”.But it is difficult to put a label on Naipaul. Anti Islam? But he married a Muslim. He simply wrote what he saw. And if those insights hurt, too bad! As Shakespeare put it, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night, the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man.” That was Vidia Naipaul, true to himself.