On the cover of The Exile, noted Sikh historian, author of many acclaimed books and the official history of the Sikhs, Khushwant Singh writes: 'In (The Exile) Navtej Sarna presents a gripping tragedy: a sordid tale of intrigue, treachery and cold-blooded murders that greeted the end of the Sikh kingdom, and of the exile to England of its last maharaja, Duleep Singh. A dextrous mix of fact and fiction by a master storyteller that holds the reader spellbound to the last page.'
So how much of The Exile is fact and how much is fiction?
"That's the judgement the writer and the critics have to make after reading the book," says Sarna in response to a question from an avid reader during the book reading.
"There is a temptation to romanticise, there is a temptation to sentimentalise," when somebody ventures out to write about the agony and the sadness in the life of the last Sikh Maharaja, notes the author.
"But I think anybody who does that exposes himself to the danger of severe criticism," he adds.
The author said he has tried to be very careful and stick to available historical facts and where he wanted to extend the mood using fictional devices or created a comment he tried his best to keep it "within the realm of the probable".
"If you read the man's letters you understand what he must have gone through and felt; so you know you are not really out of sync so much with his thoughts except they haven't been written down. So you are not going into wild imagination," he asserts.
Image: Author Navtej Sarna at his animated best.
Also read: The parallel lives of Shashi Tharoor
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