5 Indian Masters

by Welknow Indian

  I touched her hand at the door, to know I could touch her, and carried the feel of it home. It was like touching a thought, not just a thought of jug or water, or a pillow or a horse, but a thought as it leaps, as it were, in that instant where the thought lights itself, as the meteor its own tail, I felt it was of the substance of milk, of truth, of joy seen as myself.

  Next day, when I was washed and dressed and had meditated and rested – I was in a muslin dhoti and kurtha – there was still no sign of Savithri at ten or at ten past ten. Not long after, she entered in a South Indian sari of a colour we in Mysore call: “colour of the sky,” with a peacock-gold choli, and a large kumkum on her forehead. She looked awed with herself, and full of reverence. As I went to touch her I refrained – something in her walk was strange.

  “I have been praying.”

  “To whom?”

  “To Shiva,” she whispered. Then she opened her bag and took out a sandal-stick. Her movements were made of erudite silences. “Please light this for me,” she begged.

  By the time I had lit the sandal-stick in the bathroom and come out she had spread her articles of worship about her. There was a small silver censer, with the camphor. There was a silver kumkum-box. She had a few roses, too, fresh and dripping with water.

  “Bring me some Ganges water in this.”

  I put some plain water in her silver plate. She put kumkum into the water.

  “Will you permit me?” she asked. “Permit this, a woman’s business?”

  “Oh, no!” I protested.

  “But it was you who told me at home a man obeys a woman, that it’s Hindu dharma”

  “I obey,” I said.

  Then she knelt before me, removed one by one my slippers and my stockings and put them aside gently-distantly. She took flower and kumkum, and mumbling some song to herself, anointed my feet with them. Now she lit camphor and placing the censer in the middle of the kumkum-water she waved the flame before my face, once, twice and three times in arathi. After this she touched my feet with the water, and made aspersions of it over her head. Kneeling again and placing her head on my feet, she stayed there long, very long, with her breath breaking into gentle sobs. Then she gently held herself up. Taking the kumkum from the box I placed it on her brow, at the parting of her hair, and there where her bosom heaved, the abode of love. I could not touch her any more, nor could she touch me, and we stood for an isolate while. Then suddenly I remembered my mother’s toerings.

  “Stop where you are for a moment,” I begged.

  “I can go nowhere,” she answered, “I belong to you.”

  Gently, as if lost in the aisles of a large temple, I walked about my room, opened my trunk and slowly removed the newspaper cover, then the coconut, the betel nuts, the kumkum that Little Mother had destined for her daughter-in-law. “I, too, had come prepared for this morning,” I said.

  “Really?” she smiled, for in me nothing astonished her.

  “Yes, but it was a preparation made a very long time ago – a long, long time, Savithri. Not a life, not ten lives, but life upon life…..”

  “Yes,” she said. “This Cambridge undergraduate, who smokes like a chimney and dances to barbarian jazz, she says unto you, I’ve known my Lord for a thousand lives, from Janam to Janam have I known my Krishna…..”

  “And the Lord knows himself because Radha is, else he would have gone into penance and sat on Himalaya. The Jumna flows and peacock feathers are on his diadem, because Radha’s smiles enchant the creepers and the birds, Radha is the music of dusk, the red earth, the meaning of night. And this, my love, my spouse,” I whispered, “is from my home. This is coconut, this is betel nut, this is kumkum and these the toerings my Mother wore, and left for my bridal.” Slowly I anointed her with kumkum from my home, offered her the coconut and the betel nuts – there were eight, round and auspicious ones. “And now I shall place the toerings on your feet.”

  “Never,” she said angrily. “You may be a Brahmin for all I know. But do you know of a Hindu woman who’d let her Lord touch her feet?”

  “What a foolish woman you are!” I said, laughing. “And just by this you show why a Brahmin is necessary to educate you all, kings, queens, peasants and merchants. Don’t you know that in marriage both the spouse and the espoused become anointed unto godhead? That explains why in Hindu marriages the married couple can only fall at the feet of the Guru and the Guru alone – for the Guru is higher than any god. Thus, I can now place them on your feet.”

  So much theology disturbed and convinced her, and she let me push the toerings on to her second toes, one on the left and other on the right. The little bells on them whisked and sang: I was happy to have touched Savithri’s feet.

  The toerings were the precise size for her. Little Mother was right: for Madeleine they would have been too big.

  Savithri sat on my bed, and the sun who had made himself such an auspicious presence fell upon her clear Rajput face as she sang Mira.

  Sadhu matha ja … Sadhu matha ja …

  O cenobite, O cenobite, do not go.

  Make a pyre for me, and when I burn,

  Put the ashes on your brow,

  O cenobite, do not go.

  We were at Victoria by nine o’clock. We were so happy and so sad altogether, as though no one could take us away from each other and nobody marry us again. We were not married that morning, we discovered, we had ever been married – else how understand that silent, whole knowledge of one another?

  “My love, my love, my love,” she repeated, as though it were a mantra, “my love, and my Lord.”

  “And when will Italy be, and the bridge on the Arno, and the bambino?” I asked.

  She put her head out of the window of the train, and for the first time I noticed the collyrium that tears had spread over her checks and face.

  “I promise you one thing,” she said.

  “And what, Princess, may that be?” I replied, laughing.

  “Parvathi says she will come to Shiva, when Shiva is so lost in meditation that were he to open his eyes the three worlds would burn.”

  “Meaning?” I was so frightened that my voice went awry and hollow.

  “I’ll come when you don’t need me, when you can live without me, O cenobite.” I knew the absolute meaning of it, the exactitude, for Savithri could never whisper, never utter but the whole of truth, even in a joke. But it was always like a sacred text, a cryptogram, with different meanings at different hierarchies of awareness.

  “I understand and accept,” I answered, with a clear and definite navel deep voice. I can hear myself saying that to this day.

  “Italy is,” she continued, relentless, ‘when Shivoham, Shivoham is true.”

  “Meanwhile?”

  “Meanwhile I go back to Allahabad and become Mrs. Pratap Singh.”

  “And run the household of the new Governor,” I added, to hide any acknowledgement and pain. For by now Pratap had become Personal Secretary to His Excellency the Governor of some Indian Province. “Palace or Government House, they’re equal and opposite,” I laughed.

  “And what will the learned historian do?” she asked.

  “Finish the history of the Cathars, and well-wed and twice-wed, become Professor of Medieval European History at some Indian University. India is large and very diverse,” I pleaded.

  “I shall always be a good pupil,” she joked. The train whistled, and took her away.

  I took a taxi, went back to the Stag or the Bunch of Grapes, for I do not remember exactly and stood a drink to some bearded painter who talked abstract art and had a beautiful face. Holy is a pub when one is holy oneself.

  2 The Cat and Shakespeare

  Mother cat sits in cage between the office table and the almirah. In the office there are thirteen clerks. And the boss Bhoothalinga Iyer sneezes from his room. His office is partitioned off and has a swinging door. Every time anyone goes in to answer the boss’s calls the cat seems to rise up. There’s a painful irritating grating – t
he hinges have not been oiled. When the boss calls and the hinges creak, the cat sits up on her haunches, then lies down again. When Govindan Nair lifts her cage (for it’s a she; after all, one discovered it) mother cat lifts up her head and says “meowmeow.” Then, bending down, Govindan Nair gives his pen nib to her and she chews it. “Ah, she chews the origin of numbers,” says Govindan Nair, to whom every mystery seems to open itself. If Lavoisier, as textbooks say, divided oxygen and hydrogen after years of experimentation, our Govindan Nair born in France would only have to stand and say, “Water, show thyself to me!” And hydrogen would have stood to one side somewhat big and bellied, and oxygen would have curled herself shy at his knees and suddenly gone shooting like a mermaid into the big sky. And he would not have lost his head at the Revolution. The British, too, chopped of their kings’ heads. A king chops off your head, or you chop his, but the police state is different from the state Truth policed. The fact is that when the mother cat carries you across the wall and to anywhere, there is nothing but space. Space is white and large and free. Why don’t you go there? Sir, you will say, kneading your snuff, but there is a wall. To which Govindan Nair make answer: Like Usha, why don’t you put stones one over the other, and standing under the bilva tree, you can speak to Shridhar. You can say: That is why Shridhar died. Usha spoke over the wall and the cat carried him away. Funny, sir, that a child is carried away by a cat. Anyway, tell me where is Shridhar gone? He has gone to house three storeys hight. “Is that what you say, mother cat?”Asks Govindan Nair. The mother cat says “meow”. Govindan Nair cannot keep her in the cage any longer. He opens the cage and the cat leaps onto his lap. It is a trained cat. It knows what is right from what is wrong.

  This excerpt is from The Cat and. Shakespeare: A Tale of Modern India (1965). An earlier version was published as The Cat in the Chelsea Review (New York) in 1959.

  Children below were playing hide-and-seek among the rice bags. The ration shop was also their playground. While the mothers waited, the children played among the bags. Govindan Nair wanted to go down and play with the children, but there was this Ummathur file and seventeen sacks lost. Who had stolen the sacks? Was it a gang of poor men or was it merchants’ marauders? Stroking the cat, his pen in his mouth, Govindan Nair was contemplating. When he thinks in this manner it means he wants to do something mechanical. He always carried a pen knife with him, for sharpening pencils and such other things (including rose twigs). He usually took this out pulled out the blade and started rubbing it up and down the edge of table. Just where he worked on his files, he had written, or rather carved, many names – his own, the name of his boss, and Usha’s (I was surprised once when I went to visit him to find Usha’s name there, but it was there). Sharpening the knife, he started humming to himself.

  “Hey nonny, nonny, nonny …”

  GOVINDAN NAIR: What a kind thought, Abraham. Whoever it is that had the idea. I was thinking this morning. There are so many rats at home. There are so many rats in the office. You remember the Sidpur file? It might have been the rats. Big ones like bandicoots, they be. And then, at home there are so many. Even they seem to have famine. A country at war has rations. A rationed country has little food. When there is little grain to eat, the rats become so courageous. They will bite off anything. Even the nose of a man. (He looks around him and speaks to John.). So, I say, thank you for having had such a kind thought, Mr. John (Everybody bursts out laughing again. The boss also sneezes.) Thank you, Mr. John, for this wonderful gift. A cat, sir, a cat.

  Now, now let me make a speech in the manner of Hamlet.

  To be or not to be. No, No. (He looks at the cat.)

  A kitten sans cat, kitten being the

  diminutive for cat. Vide Prescott

  Of the great grammatical fame.

  A kitten sans cat, that is the

  Question. (He turns the cage round and round.)

  To live is not difficult

  sir, for flesh is the form of

  existence, and man in his journey to

  the ultimate knows that

  to yield to the flesh is to

  grow grain. To yield to the pipe

  is to blow flame. Asthma is

  the trouble that Polonius reveals

  for fool; he did behind the curtain

  asthamatic.

  John:

  And what happened to him?

  Govindan Nair:

  Sir, Lady, by now I pierce (he makes as if he pierces something with the right arm) the veil, and the ashthamatic falls (A thud)

  John:

  Murder, murder.

  Govindan Nair:

  Rank muder.

  Rank murder and dark desolation. For Ophelia

  Syed Sahib:

  Go, get thee to a nunnery.

  John:

  Why, Abraham, that’s the place for you. Isn’t that so?

  Syed Sahib :

  To the nunnery, maid (looking at the cat)

  Govindan Nair:

  To the rank growth I go,

  Hey nonny, nonny

  To the slipping world I go,

  Hey nonny, nonny

  I tell you what, sir. In the kingdom of Denmark there’s one blessed thing. Whatever they are they are not made (Lets the cat out of the cage. It leaps on a desk familiar, affectionate, but distant. It licks its front paw.) The kingdom of Denmark is just like a ration office.

  John:

  How so, Mr. Nair? That’s a great idea – Shakespearean, I should say.

  Govindan Nair:

  Shakespeare knew every mystery of the ration shop. Here however we haven’t to murder a brother to marry his wife. Here we marry whom we like. The ration card marries. You are married even when there is no wife. You are married without looking at horoscopes. The dead are not buried in ration shops. There will be no grave scene. Ophelia will die but she will have no skull left for Hamlet, a future Hamlet, to see. We slip, sir, from sleep to wake from wake to sleep. We marry the wife in dream, and we wake up king of Denmark. We marry Ophelia in dream and wake up having a Polonius to bury. We live in continual mystery. In fact I ask you, John, my friend (sharpening his knife on the table), when one commits murder in a dream, is that murder or not?

  John:

  (very clever) That’s jurisprudence. I’m only a clerk, Y.P. John is only a clerk.

  Govindan Nair:

  I ask you, what is dream? Are you sure you are not in dream (laughing)? As asthamtic cough, with the cry of children under the creak of balance, and the cat, a Persian cat on the table of Ration Office No.66. Is it a dream or is it real?

  John:

  Every bit is real, but the whole is not. So it is not a dream

  Govindan Nair:

  In the dream the whole is real.

  Abraham:

  The Boss is worried about the Ummathur file.

  Govindan Nair:

  Are you are sure the wagon did not go to Coimbatore? Or did it go to Cannore? Both have C in them. Even when awake we make such an error. The reason, sir, why I ask you “are you in dream or in waking state?” is simple. In dream the dead appears.

  John:

  That is so. (The cat comes and lies before Nair, It seems to be listening carefully to what Nair is saying.)

  Govindan Nair:

  In ration offices, as we all know, the dead have numbers. Killing be no murder.

  John:

  (addressing himself to Abraham) What ho, Horatio.

  Now, Govindan Nair walked straight over to John’s table. Perhaps he just wanted to consult a file.

  “John,” he said, while the mother cat stood behind him.

  “Yes, mister,” said John, very sure of himself.

  “John, this is a cat,” he said, lifting up the cat and placing it on John’s table. The whole office stopped work. Even Bhoothalinga seemed involved in this silence.

  “What’s that? Cried Abraham, and came over to John’s table.

  “Oh, I am only talking to him about the cat.”

 
; “What cat? said Syed, his hand on Govindan Nair’s shoulders.

  “Why, man, cat. There’s cat only. All cats belong to one speices-cat. Call it cat or call it marjara which is Sanskrit or better still poochi which is Malayalam, it’s the same – isn’t that so, John?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said John, rising from his seat.

  “So, gentlemen, I wanted to know how much zoology our friend knew. What is a Persian cat called in Latin? In fact what is the Latin name for a cat?”

  “Felinus,” said Abraham, remembering his church instructions.

  “Then Felinus Persiana would be a Persian cat,” said Govindan Nair, who knew of course everything.

  “Yes,” said Abraham dubiously.

  “And man?”

  “Humanus.”

  “And I?” he said

  “Ego.”

  “Make me a Latin sentence, Abraham. Ego esse humanus malabario et lux esse felinus persiana, or some such thing..”

  “I don’t know that much Latin,” said Abraham.

  The curious thing was that the boss did not call. The cat continued to raise her tail and bunch herself to be caressed. Govindan Nair still held the penknife in the other hand as if it were his pencil. Man must hold something with his hands, otherwise how could he know what he is about? If you carry a penknife like a pencil in your hand you are a clerk. Is there any doubt about it? “Speaking biologically,” Govindan Nair used to say “a hundred generations of clerks will secrete lead from their bowels and clerks’ fingers will bear capillaries like those in the new office pencils. You write morning, noon, and night. You could even write in your dreams.”