I GOT BETTER. Dr Pai ordered three months in Bangalore, so Little Mother, Sukumari, Stidhara, and I, with the cook and Baliga, all went up to Bangalore. I hired a house in upper Basavangudi and with cauldron and drying bamboo we estab- lished ourselves. Living in the intimacy of my own family- where every gesture, idiosyncrasy, or mole-mark was traced back to some cousin, aunt, or grandfather; where there were such subtle understandings of half-said things, of acts that were respected or condemned according to the degree of stature, age or sex of one another-gave a feeling of a complex oneness, from which one could never get out save by death, and even after that one would get into it again in the next life, and so on till the wheel of existence were ended. 'Father scratched his leg just there, at the arch of his foot, with the second finger, just like you,' Sukumari remarked one evening. 'Look, Rama, look! Little Mother said; 'Sridhara has a mole under his right arm, just where you have.... One night, when Little Mother was telling me a story, I went to sleep saying, 'Yes, yes, Hum- Húm,' and everybody laughed, for I was snoring. Just like his grandmother,' said Aunt Sata, who had joined us.
Later, when the rains had started, we visited our lands in the Malnad with Aunt Sata and walked by the Himavathy again. Little Mother had not been to Hariharapura for six or seven years. The peasants were trying to play false with us, complained Aunt Sata; 'I am only a helpless widow, and I cannot look after my own twenty-five acres of wet-land. For what with the hay and the false measures, the pick-axe broken and the manure washed away, Lord, it is beyond a woman's ken to control these black-blanket peasants, especially in these evil mountain-lands. I tell you, forget your seventy-six acres of wet-lands, spread over Kanchenahalli and Siddapura, Hobli, and Himaganga, Kan- thapura and those dry-lands in Seethapura Taluka; forget your coffee and cardamoms. And as for your bright Sundarayya, he knows when to write charming letters to you saying, "The Himavathy has run into the land at Sivganga corner, divine sir, and she's washed away canal-bund and all; during these floods she ate away fifteen man-lengths of land." Or, "The manure this year was bad, and Whitey, Pushpa, Madhuri, Käla, Nandi, and Sankri have died of the new cattle-dysentry," while actually he's sent them to Balapura Saturday fair for sale. Remember what he did to your father during the war? He sold your cattle to those Europeans-and for butchery, you understand. He who'll sell cows for butchery will sell you one day,' continued Aunt Sata. *Ah, you do not know the people hereabouts, and you do not know the peasants either. For every yea and nay, for every sneeze or scratch, they'll tell you such a huge Ramayana; and if you question them too much or say this or that: "The weeds have grown here", "The cattle look lean", or "When will you give us the Spring-rice? It's already three months due and the rains are here", you never know when their scythes will be at the touch of your neck, never, never. Remember Posthouse Venkatan- ayana,' concluded Aunt Sata, and became ominously silent.
But as soon as they saw me-they were in the middle of the rice planting, water up to their knees and rice shoots in hand- Linge Gowda stopped his plough and came rushing towards us, blanket and folded hands and all. "The Learned-one has come! The Learned-one! The Krishnappa family has come! And the women came rushing too; they looked at me and said, 'Oh, he looks just like he looked when young, lovely as the son of a King,' and they knocked their knuckles against their temples (that no evil eye should fall on my princely face!).
'Well, when you have drunk the Himavathy waters you can't ever look different,' remarked Sakamme, fat, long-eared, deaf as a hen; she put her finger on her lip and proclaimed. 'He looks just like his grandfather, when he started building that rice-mill there, that never did function.' The Linge Gowda said, 'Hé, Rangi, is this the way to receive elders and big people? Go and get some milk, you she-buffalo!'
Meanwhile the villagers all came-Ramayya, Sundarappa, Bod- hayya, Cart-Wheel Sivaramanna, Timma, Putta, Kitta, Nanjanna, boatman Kalappat-they came with their silver bangles, their whips and black-blankets, and fell at my feet. The milk arrived and the bananas, and as we sat under the Buxom- mango we were near my Aruni-field-the blue Himavathy flowing below me, with the fair-carts wading through. the waters and the smell of rotten mango and cow-dung coming to us. I wondered at the gentleness, the fertility and greenness of the earth that had shapen me.
We went home, and after my bath, meditation, and meal, I went up the loft to see what had become of the manuscripts. Grandfather had such a lot of palm-leaf manuscripts that had come generation on generation down to us. And once in a while when he found a child lighting the evening lamps one after the other with one of those palm leaves, how Grandfather gave him a nice marriage ceremony! And you burst your lamentation the louder, that Aunt Sata or Grandmother Rangamma might take you on her waist, and went to bed with a nice song and many a restful pat. Night would come. And Grandfather Ramanna, who got angry so quickly and forgot equally quickly, would say, coming back from the morning river with his wet clothes and wet vessels in hand, 'Give that orphan his breakfast, Sata. You know he's just like his father. He will never ask.' Some of the manuscripts were still there. I wiped them gently and tried to read here and there. Some were on medicine, some on Vedanta (mostly commentaries, on the Upanishads by Gaudapada and Sankara, the Rigveda Samhita, or the Ramayana) and others on sundry things, such as a strange book on Lizard wisdom, which interpreted the clucking of house-lizards on the wall (unlike most of the others, this was in Kannada): one cluck meant bad, two meant success, and four and five meant different things during different parts of the day. There were also Sanscrit manuscripts on house-building, describing with extra- ordinary precision what to build for a merchant and what to build for a Brahmin householder. There was a sixteenth-century book on music, and a small palm-leaf manuscript on snuffs, which read, 'On the eighteen ways of autumn trituration of snuff, for maladies, delights, cosmetic, and erotic purposes; with the eleven ways of perfuming it, in the Northern, Southern, South-Eastern and Malabar Ways, and with multiple fashions of making it a means for attaining peace and prosperity. Written by the Great-jewel of medical and other sciences, Linga Sastry.' I also took out the copper-plate inscription, carefully tied in cotton cloth, and with many auspicious marks of kunkum, tur- meric and flower-spots on it. How proud I was to read it again! I brought it in front of the still turning sanctuary lights, and read it out to Little Mother. 'Be it prosperous. Adored be He of the Three-Eyes, with Ganges in his Hair, etc., etc.... "This day, in the year 1615 of the Victorious increasing Salivahana era, the year named Sri Mukha, on the 12th of the bright fortnight of Pushya, when King Virabhadra the Great, he who hath killed his enemies with weapons of the very Pandavas, valorous, young, splendid as the new sun of the northern-turning Equinox, of the Race of the Yadavas, King of the sacred lands south of the ever blue Krishna and north of the Cauvery, master of the eighteen sciences, learned, inexorable, kind, protector of the family Gods, He in his infinite Ocean of kindness whose foam is like the new moon; to the Venerable Three-Veda-knowing, bright, auspicious, like the very Himalayas in learning, as if the Goddess of learning sat in his throat, who beams wisdom like the sun beams light, Vishweswara Ramakrishna Bhatta; to him hath His Gracious Majesty, this village of Hastinapura given, at the auspicious time of Makara-Sankramana, with presentation of a coin and pouring of water; that acquiring the eight rights of full possession belonging to this village, namely, present profit, future profit, hidden treasure, underground stores, springs, minerals, actualities, and possibilities, yea, his offspring and descendants, as long as the sun and moon endure, that he fulfil the four duties of the Brahmin, keep learning aflame like the face of Brahma, that the said learned Brahmin and his sons and grandson, in undivided property, and for generations to come, keep from every foe and Turk; and may the Himavathy flow with noble abundance, for when the sacrificial fire be, plenty and righteousness also be. With horses, elephants, and chariots, did the great King, roaring like a Lion in speech, whose very shadow frightens the demons in the underworld, He, His Majesty Virabhadra, made holy 1 A.D. 1693. ablutions in the waters, the gentle, the soft, the fruitful Hima- vathy, daughter of the Srigiri Mountains, that rise like the very Himalayas on the Western Sea....
Sridhara listened to it all as if he understood ever word, and when Aunt Sata poured ghee to sanctuary lamps, how Sridhara fell before the gods. The lizards knowingly clucked, and the cows came to ask for rice-water. The temple elephant gave a shout somewhere: I was back in Hariharapura.
In the afternoon Alur Sri Kantha Sastri came and took me down to the river. Grave she looked, Mother Himavathy, but what a rich vesture of gracious peacock-blue she wore. We wash- ed, and since I could not bathe I wandered about thinking of where Grandfather Ramanna had taught me this or that, of Amara, Nirukta, the Isa and Kena Upanishads. Sri Kantha Sasuri came to remind me where Grandfather had been cremated: Mother Himavathy had just waited for the fire to die down and then she had risen suddenly and washed away his sacred ashes. Timma and Ranga brought us vegetables, and the cook gave us a magnificient meal that evening.
I gave priest Ranganatha three hundred rupees for the repairs of the Kenchamma temple. And here's a sari for the goddess,' said Little Mother, producing a small worship-sari from her box. I was happy to see the cattle when they came home; Gauri was still alive, and so strong for her age- she was eleven years old. 'She gave this calf but a year ago,' protested Nanja, 'and she still gives us three measures. Läli and Sethu had died of foot-and- mouth disease the year before.
When dusk fell the village elders came to invite us for the even- ing worship. How very splendid the Goddess looked, round, with her green eyes, and the serpent-belt that Grandfather, so they said, had given her after my birth. And when we went home after the circumambulations Mango-tope Siddanna came to dis- cuss some boundary questions: the corner-house people had en- croached on our elephant-fruit field, and they were not people to listen to kind words. For just a question they'll throw you into the Himavathy, but we know how to deal with their grand- fathers,' said Siddanna. Little Mother knew all the details about the lands, though she had been here but once; Uncle Seetharamu had given her detailed instructions.
Everybody asked about Saroja's marriage. 'What a wonderful family-a san in London, and a daughter in Delhi,' said bailiff Subbayya. 'Now that the youngest has drunk of Mother Hima- vathy's green waters, this child, too, will come back to us, for initiation and marriage,' proclaimed Pattadur Patel Siddaling- ayya. In the night, as I lay thinking on my lands-this long stretch of Himavathy valley that had given us rice and sugar- cane year after year, and the hills beyond that had fed us on coffee and jackfruit, cardamom, and honey, for decades, for hun- dreds of years-it seemed to me that they were a presence, a more continuous, inexorable presence than Little Mother, Sukumari, Sridhara or me.
We went back to Bangalore happy and refreshed after Hari- harapura.
Saroja came to join us the week after. Her husband had been sent on a mission to London, and she was going to spend a few months with us. Never in my life have I been happier than during those six weeks in Bangalore. We took walks in the Lal Bagh, we went to hear music at the City Hall, we visited rela- tions Little Mother knew every one of them, and like Father she loved visiting all of them, morning, noonday, afternoon and dusk-fall and we played country-chess at home and laughed all the time. Saroja came to understand Little Mother better, and often as I entered they changed their talk, as if they did. not wish to worry me. 'Brother, you get better first-and the rest is my affair,' Saroja pleaded. Sukumari was happy too, for here she could go about with boys without people talking scandal.
'In Bangalore,' remarked Little Mother, 'it is not as in Muslim Hyderabad. Here girls can go about with boys and nobody thinks anything of it. After all it's Brahmin-land,' declared Little Mother, forgetting that the benign Congress régime had abolished caste distinctions.
The air in the evening of Bangalore is cool, and in Basavan- gudi how enchanting the dusk hours, with the bells of the Bull temple ringing, rich and long. We often walked up there when my breathing was not too hard-and let the evening fall on us across the rocks and the momentous hollows of the hills. Lights would suddenly shine out everywhere, and while the bats settled on the trees Little Mother and Saroja would go into the temple and bring back prasadam. Then with the smell of camphor mingling with the smell of champaks, we would go home, our nostrils rich, and our breath sacred. Sambho-Sankara, Sambho- Sankara,' repeated Little Mother, as though we were in Benares again.
Saroja had brought her cook from Delhi, for our own cook was no good at all. Appoo Nair made wonderful sambar and idlies. I was happy. The doctors began to be more optimistic. They said it was my vegetarian habits that must have caused all this trouble.
'In Rome do as Romans do, is a good adage,' said Dr Bhimsen Rao to me. It's because Grandfather wouldn't allow your father to die like the great Ramanujan¹ that your own father was never allowed to go to Cambridge. But times have changed and you have gone to Europe. You must eat meat and drink wine,' he advised. 'If not why marry a European wife?'
What was there for me to say? I laughed and said, 'I am a European Brahmin,' and he seemed satisfied with my answer. Since that day he always introduced me to the nurses and X-ray assistants as this European Brahmin, this French Vedantin.' It made everybody laugh. In India we always laugh, at every- thing, auspicious or indifferent. It must do our lungs a lot of good.
Noble is the game of life and pentathlic the works of civilization. Birth and death, sowing and reaping, the communication of joys and sufferings; the subtleties of statistics, the names of loves; diplomatic determinations, subterfuges, losses, conquests; the crowning of Queens, (death of Kings), the killing of dictators or of their fist-faced henchmen; all these follow one another, as if the magnificent line of ants at my feet in the Lal Bagh had any It is believed the great Indian mathematician Ramanujan, died in Cam- bridge of under-nourishment, being a vegetarian. knowledge of other things than that the sun shines in between two gusts of monsoon winds, and have no premonition of the trees that wave their tops in jubilant youth, that aeroplanes hover above the earth, bearing people back and forth, and from all the lands and from round the roundsome globe, or that the telegraph wires which pass by me, have carried the destiny of men for decades: 'Shamoo died?; 'Subbu, succeeded exams'; 'Lakshmana transferred to Dehra Dun, Military Depot,' and they will carry it for several decades more, unless more simple means dispense with wires and conglomerate absurdities, so that important news does not reach us on a bicycle, with a blue coat and khaki trousers, and brick-coloured envelopes do not contain the amalgam of destiny.
Through the kindness of the authorities telegrams from abroad were marked, 'Cable Indian Overseas Services,' so a cable generally meant a cable to me from Madeleine. The cable I received that morning after returning home, of which I had perhaps a premonition, from having sat looking at the telegraph wires so long, came therefore as no real surprise, especially as Little Mother had just said on seeing me, 'How well you look, Rama! What clarity and blood has come to your eyes.' It was just then, when Little Mother had hardly gone in, that the tele- graph peon handed the cable to me. I sat on the stone bench near the pomegranate bush and opened it, letting my cane fall beside me. The cable was from Tante Zoubie. It said that Madeleine had had to be taken to hospital suddenly for a caesarean to be performed. The boy died soon after. 'Madeleine well' it went on to say. 'Don't worry we will look after your wife. Get better soon. Charlot sends love... I could hear Saroja count the clothes inside the veranda-the washerman was there-three jubbas, four saris, ten handkerchiefs, four towels- and I put the telegram into my pocket: it was addressed to the ants.
In the bathroom, later, when I stepped on the wash-slab I laughed. I was neither in pain, nor was I relieved; I felt above both, like a child looking at a kite in the sky; I thought of Georges, and laughed at Leibnitz and the monad and all that. I saw the yellow and white of the kite and the snake-like tail that the wind swept curling, whirling on itself and leaping up back against the sun. The winds blew cool and fresh. I laughed as a child laughs, playing with the subtleties of the breeze. I was happy. The world is a happy place for anyone to live in: look at the ants in the Lal Bagh. Vassita found peace with the Lord.
I laughed hilariously the whole afternoon, playing country- chess, first with Little Mother, and then with Saroja when she woke from her siesta. In the evening I took them all to the cinema.
News from Savithri was scarce. When letters came they were brief and full of humility: This fat and foolish thing'-'I am un- worthy-so uneducated a creature as I,' and so on. It was just fear, I concluded, turned to nobler purposes.
Haemoglobules do perhaps have something to do with happi- ness, for my health improved steadily, so the doctors said. The monsoon abated, and the flavoursome Srávan winds began to blow. The earth was covered with wide yellow patches of rice. and sugar-cane, and the tanks were red with new waters. The cattle seemed lovely in their washed skins, and young betel leaves appeared at the market.
Sukumari had long ago been sent away, in the care of the cook, to Hyderabad, for colleges do not open according to our con- venience, do they? Saroja's husband wrote enthusiastic letters about Europe. It was his first trip abroad. 'My sacred wife,' he wrote, 'you bring me good luck. Since you entered my house. what a miracle it has all been: first I was transferred from the Refugee and Rehabilitation Ministry to the Financial Secretariat, and a month later I'm invited to go to Europe. Next time we will come here together. I long for you. I'll tell you everything when I come." Saroja showed it to me as a proof that happiness can be.
Just as the cattle know when the rains will burst and fall, and Gangi and Gauri rush homeward, their ears pressed against their necks, so did I know the nimbed future of things. Savithri had not written to us for a month, but I knew she was back in India. 'Some cloud must have told me,' I wrote to her: samtaptanam tuam asi carapam tal payoda priyāyāḥ samdeçam me hara dhanapatikrodhavglesitarya gantavya le vasatír alakā nama yakşeçvarānām bahyodyänasthitaharagiraçcandrikadhautaharma You are the solace of those who are burnt With anguish, O Giver of the rains! Take then a message to my beloved, Far distant through the wrath of Lord Dhanapathi. You will go to the city of Alaka, Abode of the Princes of the Yakshas; In the parkland around resides Shiva Himself, And the palaces are brightly lit with the Moon Which shines from the head of the great God.
She was in Delhi, she wrote, with her father. They had taken a house in Mani Bagh, and the Raja of Surajpur was going to flatter the new gods in the same way as he had managed the British. Formerly it was a question of tiger-shooting and drink- parties; now it was nautch-parties and no tigers, please. Savithri seemed tired and sick of the world. 'I may yet decide on the in- evitable,' she wrote. 'Do not be angry with me. I am but a frail creature-like in the poem by W. B. Yeats you used to read to me. Woman is of the earth earthy, and if only you knew what an earthy creature I am. Pratap visits us regularly. He treats me like one does a deer at the Zoo, offering me peanuts and green grass. I am not a gazelle, Rama, for I cannot leap beyond my nose. But, shall I tell you?-I love you, I love you. Protect me.'
The winds rose over the asoka trees as I read it a second time, at the Lal Bagh. On the other side of the lake five or six men were taking a bath. It was just before dusk; they must have come after some cremation. Beyond the crematorium was the mad- house; Dr Appaswamy, who was a friend of mine, once told me that some of the inmates were quite extraordinary in moments of lucidity there was oge, a professor of mathematics, who solved many problems there that he could not in his native town of Trichinopoly. Death, madness; Pratap, marriage; haemoglo- bules, telegraph wires above and stars beyond. Benares is every where you are, says a famous Vedantic text; Kapilavastu is the true home of mankind; each one of us has a Kanthaka at his door. Dare we leave the child by the mother, with his head under her curved hand, the light 'lingering like moonbeams' on her young seventeen-year-old face? Would angels shut the fissures in our being, that the world know not when we take the leap?
I became so tender, so understanding with Little Mother. She was the fifth of seven children, and her father, a court clerk, came home for ever angry, snuff in his palm, and maybe eight annas in his pocket: 'This is all, Sata, that wretched ryot gave for three hours of scribbling. Money does not grow on mango trees in the back-yard.' The children were scared by their father, especially the younger ones. He didn't want them: she had them. So the coco-nut branch and the bicycle-pump were Little Mother's real teachers. 'When you're married off I shall drink a seer of frothing warm milk, you widow!' he would shout, if the water was not hot in the bathroom, or the clothes not dry on the bamboo.
'Life to me, Rama, was like that municipal tap at the door, purring the whole night through. But at least, when women came in early in the morning, the tap heard someone sing, whereas I-I knew kicks and tears.... Little Mother had never gone back to her father's house again. "They are stranger to me than you are whom I have known but these five or six years. People talk of the heart: the heart of some is made of cow-dung or old butter-milk. Worms rise out of it. Ashappa! And Sridhara was being patted into sleep. Saroja woke later in the night and said, 'Little Mother, was I speaking in my dream?' 'No, my child, I've been recounting my Ramayana to Rama.
Sleep and dream of your new home and of your wonderful husband. He's such a nice man, Rama, isn't he?'
The doctors suggested that I could now go up to a hill-station, perhaps to Ooty or to Kodaikanal, 'Crisp dry air will do you a lot of good."
Come with me to Delhi, Brother, and then we'll go to Mus- soorie,' said Saroja. But I was bent on going to Kodaikanal. I did not know it, besides, it would be very dry. I could work there,
I was sure; I had to finish my thesis soon. I had to return to India. When Saroja and Little Mother had left-Saroja spending a few days in Hyderabad on her way north-I went back to those lovely Kodai Hills, rich with new verdure, ancient, alone and with a rocking, sea-like solitude. I walked up and down the Observatory Ridge like a goat, and the doctors were very pleased with the result. 'It is not always that heights are helpful,' said old Dr Ruppärt. He was a German, and had settled there forty years earlier, before the 1914-18 war. He was sure that in a few weeks I could return to Europe. 'Lucky man,' he said, 'to have a French wife and live in Provence, and to be writing a thesis on the Minnesingers and Parsifal. Frau Ruppart played-oh, how badly! that famous beginning of the Prelude. Strange, with the sound of servants speaking Tamil and the scent of thousand- petalled jasmines at the door, in that lucid moonlight to hear:
Then I remembered that the story of Mani was of Indian origin; so why not? But Dr Ruppärt was sure it came from the Central Asian steppes, and was an original Aryan myth. "Why, if you read Frazer, you'll find that perhaps it's not only an Aryan myth, but is to be found among the people of the Toboogan Islands too!'
I was very serene at Kodai. It seemed as though happiness was just there, over the lake; some lotus would rise from the depths, and Lakshmi arise with it, and the elephant would stand beside her in those taralata-range waters, a garland in its trunk.
Shuretambara dhard Devi nanalankara bhūshité. Jagasthithe Jaganmdtha Mahalakshmi namosthuth, O Devi robed in white, Shining with many and varied jewels; O bearer of the universe, mother of Creation, Great Goddess of Wealth, to thee I bow.
I repeated to myself. Sorrow was, of course, like a shadow behind one, yet one could look out at the silver of the lake and know that light dwells in between one's eyes. To be centred in oneself is to know joy.
Madeleine was full of concern and advice for me. 'Don't come back too soon,' she begged. 'I have grown so fat I will look like your Frau Ruppärt, round and very red. Tante Zoubie threatens to send me to India if you cough once in her presence. What a kind, clever-devilishly clever and charmingly inconsequent creature she is. For her joy is a biological need, as you would say. "If I do not laugh half an hour a day, I shall eat the head of Charlot away," she says, laughing. And when she has nothing to do she composes humorous verse, that is recited at table- towards gastronomical ends, she proclaims. They are not at all bad and have a touch of Prévert: "Un jour le buis me dit, petitfrère je te montrerai l'enfer, et puis tu verras l'oignon gros comme le poivre, car le Paradis est circonscrit." I shall now be a good Vassita.' Betters from Madeleine rested me. They seemed to contain a hidden wisdom, some touch of sorrow that was lit, as it were, with a great, round, impersonal love. She seemed to have touched a point of awareness where she could press herself unto existence as such and have perhaps the assuredness that this identity nobody could remove or corrupt. I felt ashamed of myself, and tried to grow more self-reliant, indrawn, and earnest.
Savithri wrote more often now. Her letters varied with her moods, now chirruping away like a bird about some tour in the Tarai where they had been guests of the Raja Sahib of Tehri- Garnwal, or about some sickening news of governmental intrigue.
That is the beauty of Savithri. She is whole and simple where- ever she is; for her there is only one world, one spot, one person even-and that is he who is before her. From her distant perch of the impersonal she offers him a spoon of sugar or a glass of whisky, as though her only concern were his joy. No one can be near her except perhaps me, I told myself-for she is every- where, and you had to be her to be by her.
Pratap could be her husband, if he so liked, but he stayed in the Audience Chamber and talked with her father. He could, if he so wished, go out on the terrace and see the changing of the guards at the palace for by now they had gone back to Surajpur-or hear the seventh-hour music play on the Main Gate. The Royal Elephant might just be coming in, with Mohammed Ali piercing its ears, 'Hettata-Het-ta...while Savithri would sit on a divan reading Bertrand Russell, or smoking a cigarette and throwing it away, trying to draw the evening into herself. She would go back into her silence and await there, for like some princess in the fables she would wed but he who could solve the riddle. The riddle was not in Sanscrit or in Hindi, it was in any plain language, and it said, 'I want It, It, It. Pray Prince, Pray learned-man, what is the It I seek? The garland is there and the elephant, with howdah and the Nine-Musics. Solve me the riddle, Prince and I'll wed thee.' She walked through life as though she were not looking at the world at all, but at the kunkum on her clear, bump forehead.
She wrote from Surajpur: "There was a young diplomat in Delhi who pursued me as though I were the queen of God. He was convinced I would bring lustre to his job and do good, in addition, to my country. Father himself was not averse to it, kind though he is to Pratap. A Delhi diplomat today is worth two Private Secretaries to an Indian Governor. I laughed at Father, at his childish selfishness, his enormous vanity, and his spacious goodness. Left to himself he would think of nothing less than the moon to marry me to. I keep him in good humour. I act the Cambridge lady, and that's a great success. You'll laugh if I tell you that at the Delhi Gymkhana my brother and I danced the boogie-woogie. You wouldn't know what that is, but this is just to tease you. I even won a prize.
'Rama, my love, as I write this to you, I lie by a lake in Northern Surajpur. Father and others are away having a picnic on the lake. I stayed back at this rest-lodge, excusing myself with a headache. I think I wanted to think of you. The maid has just brought me one of those ancient palace lamps, with castor- oil, cloth-wick, and opening like a flower with five petals. "It's not electricity for the memsahib," she apologized. They think that now I've been to Cambridge I can only see with electric light. They do not know, poor foolish women, that I can see more splendidly now than ever before, for I have a light on my forehead, a hood of some noble serpent, whose seven-headed pro- tection brings my breath down and establishes me in silence. "My daughter," said Father to me the other day, "There's a strange beauty about you now, as there was on the face of your mother when I first married her. She was seventeen and had never left the zenana. But, dear child, you seem so sad, as though you had gathered all the sorrow of dusk and had tied it at your sari-fringe. We are not of the servant-class that you should sorrow in life." That is Father all over-why, when there is the elephant, and cannon at our door, and his own big, protective self, why is there anything to sorrow for? True, his friends the British have gone, but that sorrow was of short duration. Father is a pragmatist. "We, the Rathors, dealt with the Moghuls first," he declared, and then came the Lord Sahib. Now we can deal with a Brahmin or a Banya with equal ease. They may be the cleverest of all the world, but they are our own. We know their tricks and they being new to the game we still have a chance." Scheming and building imaginary empires is for Father like playing chess in the evening or going on picnic always there is an ulterior motive. He will never do anything for anyone without being sure of a return-except perhaps for his daughter.
*Rama, the evening has now fallen. Will you stand with me as the arathi is being performed in the temple across the lake? I can see the torches being lit, I can hear the music sound, and then there is the vast ingurgitating silence of the weir-waters. If you stood by me there is a grave question I would ask of you: if I asked you, would you really marry me? Will you? Father may object and say you are just a professor. But Mother, whose values are more right, would say, "Oh, a Brahmin!" She would think your presence amidst us august, holy. But I am too poor, too wretched a creature. No woman who's a woman can choose her destiny. Men make her destiny. For a woman to choose is to betray her biology. Tell me, Rama, tell me truly and as before God, "Come", and I'll come. The night is so auspi- cious, and tomorrow is Gokulashthami, when Lord Krishna will be born. We shall fast, and we shall worship, and I shall think of you, My Lord.
'Did I tell you that in Surajpur the whole palace rings with the little bells on my toes. I said to Mother it was the gift of a South Indian Brahmin. Mother was so pleased. She said, "We don't make such lovely things any more here. Horv beautiful they'll be, when you marry, my child."
"When the Muslims came, Rama, shouting and leaping on horseback across the deserts, and vowing vengeance on the Rajput; when they encircled our fortresses, bribed Brahmin Ministers and tried to get in; when they cut off supplies of water and made us shout to the very skies with thirst; the men jumped on their horses and bid adieu to their wives, their daughters, the tilak of our blood on their foreheads; the gates were suddenly thrown open and the men charged the enemy, while the women read the Mahabharatha and leapt into the flames inside. No Hindu woman would wed a Turk. I feel besieged-the Turk is at the door. Help me to jump into the pyre, Lord My Master, of this life and of all the lives to come. Help me.'
'S.'
And beneath her name she had blackened the paper with the collyrium of her eyes, and stuck a kunkum mark from her fore- head. What sentimental people we Indians are!
Of course, there was a charger waiting for me. It would not take me to the Turks. It's name would be Kanthaka, and I would change my royal garments by the Ganges, admonish him to return and let the people of Kapilavastu know that he, Kanthaka, was a noble steed that had led Gautama the Sakyan to the banks of the Ganges, and thus started him on the pilgrimage from which there is no returning. There was no need to go to the banks of the Nirvanjana for the Bodhi tree; there were many by the lake in Kodai. They seemed so ancient, ocelous, and protective. But I was not ripe yet-I, the real betrayer. Savithri's letter, so true and limpid, luminous like the ancient castor-oil lamp with five petals she was writing by, needed the wisdom and the courage of evening. In between day and night is the space of dusk, that beat of an eyelash which is the light of Brahman. Jyothir meka Para- brahman,' Little Mother always chanted at home, as soon as the lights were lit. 'Light alone is the Supreme Brahman.'
You can marry when you are One. That is, you can marry when there is no one to marry another. The real marriage is like 00, not like 010. When the ego is dead is marriage true. Who would remove my ego? 'Lord, My Guru!' I cried in the rift of the night. And looking at the town of Kodai reflected in the lake, with what breath and earnestness I chanted Shankara:
'Vishwam in darpanadrishya mananagarii Like a city seen in a mirror is the universe, Seen within oneself but seemingly of Maya born, As in sleep;
Yet is it really in the inner Self Of Him who sees at the Point of Light Within Himself, unique, immutable- To Him incarnate as the holy Guru, To Sri Dakshinamurthi be my salutation.
I composed several letters to Savithri. What could I tell her? "To him,' says the Upanishads, 'who is earnest, to the Atman comes the Atman.' It was not land and rivers that separated us, it was Time itself. It was myself. When the becoming was stopped I would wed Savithri. If the becoming stopped would there be a wedding? Where would the pandal be, where Uncle Seetharamu and the elephant?
*All brides be Benares born, my love, my Lakshmi,' I wrote. I knew she would understand.
Dr Ruppárt was satisfied with my X-ray. 'You are an ideal patient. You are so obedient,' he remarked, patting me on the back.
You must be so easy to live with-an ideal husband,' Frau Ruppårt added, looking at her husband. *All husbands are ideal when they are not yours,' chuckled Dr Ruppårt in Saxon gaiety.
I visited Madurai, worshipping She-of-the-Fish-Eyes, beauti- ful, bejewelled, compassionate, and serene-I paid three rupees for a puja in the name of Savithri-then I went to Hyderabad. Little Mother was very happy to see me looking round and healthy again. "There's been no blood since Bangalore,' I told her. I visited the new Minister of Education-an old student of Father's and promised to finish my thesis in a year. I would come back.
Come back by the time Sukumari gets married,' remarked Little Mother.
'Oh, Little Mother,' cried Sukumari, 'you want to tie me to a quern-handle and get rid of me too. Let me study my medicine Oh, please, Brother?'
'For a Shiva's lip of the courtyard,' quoted Little Mother- another of her proverbs 'Shiva's head is the Kailas. And for a woman the sacred feet of her husband be paradise.' You cannot argue against a proverb.
I spent a week in Bombay. Not that there was anything im- portant to do. But I smelt something, as it were, among the stars. I wanted to be far from home-far from Madeleine, far from everyone. Captain Sham Sunder offered me hospitality. I had met him in London: 'When you come to Bombay, do not forget me,' he had said. His Colaba flat was just by the sea. He had two very clever children and his wife, Lakshmi, was a fine-look- ing woman somewhat round, but kind, sad, and entertaining. Captain Sham Sunder, I think, had other interests; he came home from his club late at night, and every day of the week it was so. Once he said to me, laughing, 'Since my return from Europe I prefer white skin to, brown.' What a very clever remark to make!
I took the children and his wife to visit the Gateway of India, or the Malabar Hill. Lakshmi had such a heavy sadness, like a sari she had wetted and pressed under her feet, and forgotten in A small white wild-flower, considered very sacred. the corner of the courtyard to rot. She was indeed not particu- larly clean in her habits, but she was a good Hindu wife. She despised man, however, and there was no reason why she should think any better of me.
'You like white skin perhaps, as my husband does,' she said. "That is why I married one,' I replied.
But she cooked nice meals for me and begged me to take her to cinemas. Once or twice she came near me, but I moved away, almost afraid of her physical importance. One felt she had the power to pluck the manhood out of anyone and throw it into the sea, murmuring maledictions after it. But I was tired of the struggle, the endless roads, hotels, aircraft, sisters, marriages, X-rays; besides, I had never really known an Indian woman. I was perhaps eaten by my haemoglobules as well, and did not wish my manhood to turn dehydrate. There was not going to be Savithri anyway. I slipped slowly and deliberately into Lakshmi's bed.
She was happy with me, I think. Her children were happy to see their mother happy with me. Nothing very much happened, in fact. She did not want me; she just wanted to feel that I was like all men. She made me speak of Savithri. I gladly did, for there was no one else I could speak to. She felt prouder after that. 'Men are worthless,' she remarked often. 'They are simpler than children. Any patch of flesh will do for them-the fairer the better.'
Rumour of Savithri's marriage reached my ears through people coming from the north: there was Captain Sham Sunder himself, to whom the news of my 'flame', as Lakshmi called her, was duly carried; and there were anyway so many people at the Cricket Club who came and went between Bombay and Delhi and always had something to say about the great gods up in the capital. So that when the news really came first in the papers- I was not surprised, and then there was a line from Savithri her- self. It ran: 'Surajpur Palace. This evening, at four forty-seven, I entered into the state of matrimony. I married Pratap at last. I shall be a good wife to him. Bless me.' In a day or two Lakshmi yielded to me. I thought to myself it was like eating a pickle. My days and nights would be spent in luxurious enjoyment. I put off my trip by another week. Cap- tain Sunder himself seemed happy-for he knew what it was all about! How splendid Lakshmi looked now! When once in a while I coughed, she was ever so tender to me, sitting by my side and fanning me, pressing my legs, my arms. She began to have some respect for me. She found me straightforward and simple, and not like those manly men-unclean, she said, so unclean- who were about the place. 'I would not touch them with my left foot, those fat, moustached fools, those friends of Sham's. They prefer fair skins. Let them.' She asked me questions on Hindu sacred texts, started reading the Mahabharatha and the Gita regularly. She wished to visit Europe with me. She dis- cussed the education of her children. Often lying by her I won- dered whether I was Rama, Saroja's loved brother, Little Mother's stepson?
Then one day I remembered the damsels with wide-opened mouths, lying naked and full in Kapilavastu. 'There were palaces of silver for Summer,' ran the story, 'and Palaces of sandal for Winter, and Palaces of gold when the Young Spring came. Musicians, too, there were and diverse. So that when the Raja Sudhodhana saw the Bodhisattva playing among them, he thought Gautama will be crowned my heir, the King. And never shall he leave the palace, nor know the cry of sickness, the sorrow of death, the totter of old age, the misery of want. The Palaces were well guarded, and not a girl of the Kingdom was there that could not accomplish the joy of youth."
I booked my seat on the plane, sumewhat secretly, for I had become a great coward. The night before I was to leave, I told Lakshmi. She made such a scene I thought the whole building would know.
"You eunuch,' she cried. 'You lecherous coward!' I thought she would beat me, but she was still very handsome. I took her in my arms and calmed her.
'Don't leave me. What will happen to me?' she sobbed. 'Come to me again,' she begged, and as I covered her she seemed lost in her sorrow and firm passion. 'I'll thank you always,' she cried, laying my small head on her swelling bosom, 'for you at least treated me with respect. I know you will always be there when I want you. And you know, if ever you need me, I will come and look after you. Sham would be happy if I could make you happy. He thinks you are a helpless fellow and a good friend.'
Strange to say, it was this Lakshmi who saw me off at Santa Cruz. My Indian pilgrimage was ended.
