The Company of Women (Singh novel)

The Company of Women is a novel by Indian author Khushwant Singh.

Plot introduction

Khushwant Singh, one of India's most well-known and widely read authors, commenced writing The Company of Women when he was eighty-three and finished at age eighty-five. The octogenarian writer has declared “as a man gets older, his sex instincts travel from his middle to his head.”

This Mohan Kumar as a student in the U.S., Mohan has "lost his virginity" at Princeton University to Jessica Brown, a beautiful black lady. Their relationship looked like a honeymoon without wedding. While still in the US, Ms Yasmeen, a Pakistani, revealed to Mohan Kumar the heady passion of a woman older than her male counterpart.

After Mohan gets back to India and settles in married life, his passion for women continues undiminished. He feels highly relieved after being divorced by his "nagging and ill-tempered" wife. But Mohan was an unfaithful husband. His sex escapades, before the divorce and post divorce were unusual and varied, including his repeated relations with his ever-obliging maid, Dhanno, with her practiced charm on the bed.

Another woman in Kumar's life was Tamilian Marry Joseph, described by the author as “a dark, plump woman in her thirties.” She worked as a nurse to Kumar's son. She has been described almost inviting Shakti Kumar tacitly with these words, “Saar, one life to live, not to waste it on a drunkard husband. You agree?” Kumar has agreed.

The book describes Kumar's rendezvous with madam Sarojini Bhardwaj, a Professor of English. And, when it came to sex, the lady professor proved that she was stronger than many men. Another lady appearing in the sex life of Kumar was Molly Gomes, who was “not only as an incarnation of sensual impulse, but also as a mistress of sexuality.” Likewise, Susanthika, "the small wonderful bird", from Sri Lanka was really active on bed.

Major themes

The basic theme of the book is the relationship between men and women, who has been depicted in countless works, in innumerable ways and styles, including literary texts and poetry, mediums like paintings, stone carvings, folksongs and folklores. This has been described in the book in the form of a series of events in the life of the lead character, Mohan Kumar. A series of sequences unfold in the book in the form of Mohan Kumar's association and rendezvous with a number of women.

In brief, The Company of Women celebrates the universal and the eternal story of man's relationship with woman: the relationship of love, sex, and passion. The book presents this relationship in a very unusual and original style, which is not only uninhibited and erotic, but also enormously enchanting and engrossing. However, the story also serves as a sort of modern-day morality tale, with Mohan Kumar committing suicide as he realizes he has AIDS, in effect, paying for his promiscuity. This book is translated into Kannada by Ravi Belagere