Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge my debt to four ladies, all beautiful in their own ways, to whom I turned for advice: Sharda Kaushik, Mrinal Pande, Usha Albuquerque and Sheela Reddy—Sheela, especially, for going over the manuscript.
I also acknowledge my debt to Naina Dayal for her assistance, and to Ravi Singh who edited my text and gave shape to a shapeless mass of events narrated in the novel.
THE BEGINNING
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First published in Viking by Penguin Books India 1999
Published in Penguin Books 2009
This rejacketed edition published 2016
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Copyright © Khushwant Singh 1999
Cover illustration by Shruti Mahajan
Cover design by Ahlawat Gunjan
Cover composed by Chetan Kishore
All rights reserved
This digital edition published in 2016.
e-ISBN: 978-8-184-75326-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.