But it is only in books that the past can glow, and Kalidas faded as soon as I felt the waters of the Sipra round my ankle. I thought not of Sakuntala's ornaments, but of my own, now spread on the splashboard, and I wondered whether they would dry before we reached the railway station. One confusion enveloped Ujjain and all things. Why differentiate? I asked the driver what kind of trees those were, and he answered “Trees”; what was the name of that bird, and he said “Bird”; and the plain, interminable, murmured, “Old buildings are buildings, ruins are ruins.”
[1914]
2. ADVANCE, INDIA!
The house of the rationalistic family (Mohammedans) lay close below that of my friends (English). We could see its red walls and corrugated iron roof through the deodars, and its mass cut into the middle distances though without disturbing the line of the snows. It was a large house, but they were not, I believe, prominent in their community, and only flashed into notoriety on the occasion of this marriage, which was the first of its kind that the province had seen. We did not know them, but had received an invitation, together with the rest of the station, and as the sun was declining we clambered down and joined the crowd in their garden.
A public wedding! It would actually take place here. In the center of the lawn was a dais on which stood a sofa, an armchair, and a table, edged with torn fringe, and round this dais a couple of hundred guests were grouped. The richer sat on chairs, the poorer on a long carpet against the wall. They were of various religions and races—Mohammedans, Hindus, Sikhs, Eurasians, English—and of various social standings, though mainly subordinate Government clerks; and they had come from various motives, friendship, curiosity, hostility—the ceremony nearly ended in a tumult, but we did not know this until the next day. The snows were seventy miles off in front, the house behind; the less rationalistic part of the family remained in purdah there and watched the marriage through the blinds. Such was the setting.
After long delay the personages mounted. The Moulvi took the armchair—a handsome, elderly man robed in black velvet and gold. He was joined by the bridegroom, who looked selfpossessed, and by the unveiled bride. They sat side by side on the sofa, while guests murmured: “This is totally contrary to the Islamic law,” and a child placed vasefuls of congested flowers. Then the bridegroom's brother arrived, and had a long conversation with the Moulvi. They grew more and more excited— gesticulated, struck their breasts, whispered and sighed at one another vehemently. There was some difficulty, but what it was no one could say. At last an agreement was reached, for the brother turned to the audience and announced in English that the marriage ceremony would begin with verses from the Koran. These were read, and “the next item,” said the brother, “is a poem upon Conscience. An eminent poet will recite on Conscience in Urdu, but his words will be translated.” The poet and his interpreter then joined the group on the dais, and spoke alternately, but not very clearly, for the poet himself knew English, and would correct the interpreter, and snatch at the manuscript. Arid verities rose into the evening air, the more depressing for the rags of Orientalism that clothed them. Conscience was this and that, and whatsoever the simile, there was no escaping her. “The sun illumines the world with light. Blessed be the sun and moon and stars, without which our eyes, that seem like stars, could not see. But there is another light, that of conscience—” and then conscience became a garden where the bulbul of eloquence ever sang and the dews of oratory dropped, and those who ignored her would “roll among thorns.” When she had had her fling the pair were made man and wife. Guests murmured, “Moulvi is omitting such-and-such an exhortation: most improper.” Turning to the company, and more particularly to those upon the carpet, he said that it was not important how one was married, but how one behaved after marriage. This was his main point, and while he was making it we were handed refreshments, and the ceremony was more or less over.
It was depressing, almost heartrending, and opened the problem of India's future. How could this jumble end? Before the Moulvi finished a gramophone began, and before that was silent a memorable act took place. The sun was setting, and the orthodox withdrew from us to perform their evening prayer. They gathered on the terrace behind, to the number of twenty, and prostrated themselves toward Mecca. Here was dignity and unity; here was a great tradition untainted by private judgment; they had not retained so much and rejected so much; they had accepted Islam unquestioningly, and the reward of such an acceptance is beauty. There was once a wedding in England where a talented lady, advanced, but not too advanced, rewrote her daughter's marriage service. Bad there, the effect was worse in India, where the opportunities for disaster are larger. Crash into the devotions of the orthodox birred the gramophone—
I'd sooner be busy with my little Lizzie, and by a diabolic chance reached the end of its song as they ended the prayer. They rejoined us without self-consciousness, but the sun and the snows were theirs, not ours; they had obeyed; we had entered the unlovely chaos that lies between obedience and freedom—and that seems, alas! the immediate future of India. Guests discussed in nagging tones whether the rationalistic family had gone too far or might not have gone further. The bride might, at all events, have been veiled; she might, at all events, have worn English clothes. Eurasian children flew twittering through the twilight like bats, cups clinked, the gramophone was restarted, this time with an Indian record, and during the opening notes of a nautch we fled.
Next morning a friend (Sikh) came to breakfast, and told us that some of the guests had meant to protest against the innovations, and that the Moulvi had insisted in justifying himself to them; that was why he had argued on the dais and spoken afterwards. There was now great trouble among the Mohammedans in the station, and many said there had been no marriage at all. Our friend was followed by the bridegroom's brother, who thanked us for coming, said there had been no trouble in the community, and showed us the marriage lines. He said—“Some old-fashioned gentlemen did not understand at first—the idea was new. Then we explained, and they understood at once. The lady is advanced, very advanced….” It appeared that she had advanced further than her husband, and the brother seemed thankful all was over without a scandal. “It was difficult,” he cried. “We Moslems are not as advanced as the Hindus, and up here it is not like Bombay side, where such marriages are commoner. But we have done what we ought, and are consequently content.” High sentiments fell from his lips, conscience shone and flowered and sang and banged, yet somehow he became a more dignified person. It hadn't at all events been an easy thing for two bourgeois families to jerk out of their rut, and it is actions like theirs, rather than the thoughts of a philosopher or the examples of kings, that advance a society. India had started— one had that feeling while this rather servile little clerk was speaking. For good or evil she had left the changeless snows and was descending into a valley whose farther side is still invisible.
“Please write about this” were his parting words. “Please publish some account of it in English newspaper. It is a great step forward against superstition, and we want all to know.”
[1914]
ALLEN GINSBERG
(1926–97)
Allen Ginsberg, born in New Jersey to a mentally unstable mother, studied at Columbia University, New York, where he met the other leaders—Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady—of what came to be known later as the “Beat Generation.” While still at Columbia, Ginsberg began experimenting with psychedelic drugs and writing visionary poetry. In the midst of the unprecedented prosperity of postwar America, he spoke of spiritual exhaustion and anomie. In the early 1950s, he traveled to the Yucatan valley in Mexico and experimented with more drugs there. In 1956, the year Ginsberg's mother died in a mental hospital, the publishing house City Lights in San Francisco published his great poem, Howl, and found itself accused of peddling obscenity by the police. Ginsberg's sense of alienation from the mainstream of American life, which took him to Buddhism in his later life, and established him, by the time he died in 1
997, in the distinguished tradition of American dissenters, was what set him on his journeys. In 1962, Ginsberg traveled with his lover Peter Orlovsky to South America, Europe, Morocco, and India. It was a difficult time for India, then involved in a disastrous war with China. But Ginsberg was deep in his own world, as is evident in these excerpts from the journals he kept in Benares, where the city, itself phantasmagoric with its burning ghats and widows and pilgrims, seemed to match Ginsberg's longing for self-forgetting and oblivion.
from INDIAN JOURNALS
17 Dec '62
Long walk this morn to Manikarnika ghat—sat inside red stone porch with Saddhus & smoked ganja pipe & inquired about guru of good looking saddhu from Nimtallah—reminiscent red haired Naga saddhu knew him. Cow laid its head on my lap to be scratched. American tourists floating by in rowboats.
Dream: I meet Buddy Isenberg & Burroughs—turns out Isenberg is a nice girl—we sit at cafe table & talk, I apologize for writing so late. Nice dinky soft mannish looking girl. My demeanor is excessively self assured, is demeanor. Strange I should dream twice of girls in one day. “At my age” I said to Peter.
This morning while my back was turned from the table I heard a great thump—turned around to see a monkey jump on the table loaded with oranges & bananas, snatch one banana & leap out to the balcony, disappearing thru the lavatory win-dow—next sitting on high branch of adjoining tree peeling the banana & staring at me thru the big leaves.
Incense in the room tonite, bought straw mats to cover half the slate-black tile floor.
What Vanity? What possible divine
blessing on all this Politics.
What invocation beyond Millions
of Votes for 1960 Hopes
What rat Curse or Dove vow slipt from my hands
to help this multitude
Smirking at the ballot box, deceived,
sensible, rich, full of onions,
voting for W. C. Williams with one
Foot in the grave and an eye
in a daisy out the window
18 Dec '62—
Sitting on rock at Harischandra Ghat—down below a sand slope at the water's edge blackened with ashes, a high pile of firewood ablaze and a man's head bent back blackened nose & mouth unburnt, black fuzzy hair, the rest of the chest belly outlined along down thighs at top of the pyre, feet sticking out the other end—now turned toes down—cry of geese & rabble of white longnecked good goose swan boids pecking in the water's edge a few feet from fire.
Nearby scows filled with sand from the other side of the river, laborers carrying baskets of grey sand up the brick stairway from the river—“Oh—the head's going to fall off—” The pile darkening, white ash floating up—a few watchers squatted on bricks facing the pyre—Pole man comes & tucks a foot into fire—then circles around & pushes length of pole against the black head (lain back with open black throat & adam's apple silhouetted against the small flames against the green river) til the body's balanced on the center of the collapsing charred logs. Donkeys led along the sand path, children running with kites, a black baby with no pants & pigtails, balancing a stick of bam-boo—A saddhu in orange robes sitting up on a stone porch on the embankment under turrets of an old small castle—rather Venetian the scene—Rectangular-sailed boats going down stream—the air above the pyre curling in the heat, like a transparent water veil between my eyes & the greenfields & trees along the horizon on the other side of the Ganges—and the embankments, red temples spires, toy mosques, trees and squat white shrines walling in the bend of the river upstream to the long red train bridge at Raj Ghat an inch high.
18 Dec and a torn burlap bag to cover the squat pantsdropd lavatory window that opens on the staircase of the house, so ascending passersby can see the diarrheic mud bubble down from the asshole of P. Orlovsky & Company, Inc.
This morning down to the burning ghats & sat with same group of sadhus in their eyrie in the sandy basement porch of a pilgrim's rest house—fire with a pot of boiling lentils, embers from the burning ghat down below at 10 AM—a trident and bamboo lance & brass water-pot begging stoup scattered around, one friendly Sadhu named “Shambhu Bharti Baba” with whom I've sat and smoked before—today seeing my difficulty handling the red clay pipe he made & accompanied me smoking a cigarette mixed with ganja—I also partook of two pipes tho I coughed & the cold snot bubbled out my nostril from the strain-wheeze—brought some bananas & green seed fruits to distribute, gifts—and camera so made photos—the Naga Sadhu (S b b) wanted his very confusingly, as he don't talk but makes finger gestures—he got to his feet, stripped off his g-string & pulled down his cock under between his legs—one yogic ball bumping out—like cunt—for a photo—I took a dozen, all the group smoking round the pot & ashes—one standing of the Naga sadhu with his pots & brass tridents etc. then high put on my shoes & walked back along the ghats home, & slept in dark closed room a half an hour—read Mayakovsky
elegy to Lenin—“and
child-like,
wept the grey-bearded old”
and Brooklyn Bridge poem—I didn't remember it was so lovely —“in the grisly mirage of evening
… the naked soul
of a building
will show
in a window's translucent light”
Jodrell Bank's deposit of heavenly radio waves
Shot some M, last nite, up on mattress reading The Statesman (Calcutta), Time, Mayakovsky, writing postcards, washing socks handkerchiefs undershirt, Peters cock, necking with him,
While below the balcony under the streetlight one milk shop clattered pails
in the darkness, the Desasumedh Ghat beggars kept thin fingers moving under dried burlap, counting beads Jai Ram Jai Citaram, & the woman on the opposite corner with
long wild hair crouched against a bidi shop steps rocking back & forth—I gave her 25 NP when I went out before dawn to buy milk & cigarettes—
now the square begins working—I feel like An American in Paris in 1920—The naiveté of neighborhoods awakening, radios turned on too loud to the Hindi news in the milk shop,
First lights turned on across the street, in the Cigarette and fried noodle peppers stall at the gate of the market,
three rickshaws circling to take off up street and look for cold dark business
Householders wrapped in shawls carrying brass waterpots trudging into the Ganges steps, passing & observing the beggar man in the mid-street shrouded in his own burlap shawl—he'd moved all night praying—
and carrying flowers to adorn the Lingams in the temples overlooking the starlit, planet-lit river—
arguments between Ram & Cita in Hindi voices tinnily rickochetting all the way up to my balcony from the radio—
Walkers coughing & trudging river street in Paterson too at this hour—
Him crouched under street lite on the corner counting a basketful of small potatos
Such a basket as I bought last night to contain my bananas & oranges, from white glued paperbags written in ledger sheets Hindi another day in a dark office—
Martial music to accompany the morning's broadcast, and the sound of a claxon with a throat inflammation in the background—
Peter lying dressed up in pants on mattress picking his red mustache, with long hollywood Christlike hair & Christ's small beard stubble—
I found out Octavio Paz is in Delhi the Ambassador of Mexico, arranging train rides for his tennis team—a headache—
Blake's photo on the wall, waiting waiting waiting—with his life mask eyes closed—thinking—or receiving radio messages from the cosmos source—
The rickshaw wallahs had slept all night crouched covered with their shawls on the red leather slope plastic of lowered rickshaws—
at night their bells rang in tune back & forth, speeding down the hill to Godolia from Chowk, up & down answering alarm clock tingalings in the dead streets—an iceman's tingaling, a knife sharpener's charged bellsound—
A huge black tree looming over my window obliterat
ing half the square, all nite lights shining thru its leaves from milk shop where a vat of white cow buffalo lact bubbles over a charcoal trench.
Coughs answering back & forth across the square, and the splash of the streetcorner waterpipe faucet, clearing the throat near dawn—
a big white cow with horns had walked slowly up the street alone, looking for something to do—cows all last night in repulsive play, chasing each other in the traffic to lick the red asshole pads they drop streams of urine thru on the puddled street—black bulls horning the girls in front of Sardau's Hindu Hotel, separated by silver giant wire trees, knobby with ceramic eyes—
Wet charcoal & first white smoke impregnating the air to the tops of the trees—the monkeys asleep—the weasles aware— few rare ants—cigarette ashes cleaned from the trays in paper bag on the porch with banana & orange peels (the cows' lot) waiting the sweeper
Morning not yet come, Dec 19, 1962 must be 4 or 5 AM in Benares, writing & fingering my cock & remembering Shostakovitche's dead March as the radio bounces & crashes across India with brass violins—
The smell of frying meat cakes and potatos, Jai Citaram in a toneless voice, & gentle gossip near the rickshaws, the clanging of a temple bell at worship time early a few blocks away.
A lady already arrived with small baskets of parsley & radishes sits in the road where it turns down to the river steps, coughs & spits on the ground & bides in the gloom as the first blue light breaks open clouds in the East sky over the river, seen from balcony thru trees and a few balconied chickenwired houses leaning over the steps.
India in Mind Page 7
