Naipaul's nefarious ways caused wife's death

Press Trust of India
Friday, March 21, 2008 (London)
Nobel laureate Sir V S Naipaul tormented his first wife for nearly four decades, regularly visited brothels in London and kept a mistress for almost 24 years before suddenly leaving her to marry a Pakistani scribe, according to his biography.The 75-year-old novelist, born to Indian parents in Trinidad and has been living in Britain since winning a place in Oxford, has admitted in his biography that he frequently humiliated his first wife Patricia and even refused to gift her a wedding ring.Naipaul often abandoned her to go travelling with Mrs Gooding, the married Anglo-Argentine with whom he fell in love in 1972, and would often tell his wife how he was missing his mistress but then say that he needed Lady Patricia to help him with his books, it has been revealed.''I was liberated. She was destroyed. It was inevitable,'' the Nobel laureate said.The book, penned by Patrick French who was given free access to all of Naipaul's papers, claims that the novelist started visiting prostitutes when the couple were living in London three years after they married.''In the summer of 1958, turning imagination into reality, Naipaul started to have sex with prostitutes. He would find their telephone numbers in local newspapers and visit them in the afternoon in secret while Pat was at work as a school teacher,'' The Daily Telegraph reported on Friday, quoting the biography.Naipaul, according to the book, has admitted that his mental cruelty towards his wife, who was suffering from cancer, may have killed her. ''She suffered. It could be said that I killed her. It could be said. I feel a little bit that way,'' he said. Naipual also recollected his visit to a hospital to see Patricia on deathbed where he showed ''little compassion'' towards her.''I was deep in writing India: A Million Mutinies Now. There was that dreadful drive and I was enraged at the hospital because it was such a messy place and then I had to go back in the afternoon to pick up Pat, and we got lost.''Eventually I found her. She was in a wheelchair, obviously terribly stressed, very unhappy and obviously in pain and waiting in solitude and I had been very angry all of the day. When I saw her, I became so ashamed. It was very upsetting.'' The biographer has substantiated Naipaul's admission by quoting Patricia's entries in her diary. However, after Patricia's death, Naipaul ended his affair with his mistress Margaret to marry Nadira, a divorced Pakistani journalist, two months later.''I feel that in all of this Margaret was very badly treated. But you know there is nothing I can do. I stayed with Margaret until she became middle-aged, almost an old lady,'' the British newspaper cited Naipaul's admission.

Though a master writer, it appears that Naipaul was not at peace with himself. But then this achievement (of being at peace with oneself) is given to few. Naipaul is a brave man to reveal matters that could damn his image as a person.