Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Did I have a defective social picture of India? Truer to admit that I had no social picture at all. For me the subcontinent held equal numbers of Maharajahs and untouchables, clustered round that single point of light which was my guru – the double star made by the guru and the mountain as they pooled their cosmic fire. Raghu and his family didn’t seem to fit in with this scheme. They seemed to be prosperous merchants of some sort. I managed to cast my question in marginally more refined terms than the Queen’s. ‘What is the family business, if you don’t mind me asking?’ I was balancing against the basin at the time, while he washed me.

  Raghu didn’t look up. ‘Naturally I don’t mind. Gaitonde and Company are well-established as manufacturers of leather goods.’

  It was good that Raghu was taken up with his chosen task, or he would have seen a look of utter bafflement on my face. The Indian leather manufacturer seemed the stuff of jokes, the equivalent of the contraceptive machine in the Vatican basement.

  ‘But aren’t you a Hindu?’

  ‘I am indeed. As are you. Yet I notice you wear leather footwear.’ He pointed to my shoes, where he had placed them neatly on the bathroom floor.

  I blushed. It was true that I had made an uneasy peace with animal sacrifice carried out for my benefit. Useless to say that my very expensive tailor-made shoes – cobbler-made – were supplied free of charge by the National Health, and that I could hardly refuse them. Hadn’t I in fact rejected the synthetic Space Shoes which Ansell had taken so much trouble to commission at CRX? I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I didn’t try to explain, though it was true, that I thought of my shoes as in some way continuing the cow’s experience of life, taking it to places it had never been.

  Tingling copper wire

  Raghu’s intention was not to chide me. ‘You are a devotee of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, whose teaching is very exalted. My own family are devotees rather of Paramahamsa Yogananda. Many of Ramana Maharshi’s sayings, however, are well known, such as this one: Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.’ In fact this supposedly familiar saying of my Guru was news to me. It provided much food for thought, much spiritual cud to be dwelt on. ‘And now, John, I think I can honestly say that you are as clean as a whistle.’

  When I complimented him he merely said, ‘You are not in England any more, John – that savage land where they wipe themselves with sandpaper! Water is always best.’ He teased me sweetly a little longer along the same lines, India the advanced civilisation, Britain a backwater. And of course he had a point. ‘Isn’t your government getting ready for decimalisation just now? But here we have already introduced our naya paisas. You will like your new pence, I dare to predict, once you are used to them.’

  Then Raghu insisted on giving me a proper wash, even taking the trouble to delve into my armpits. ‘You will sleep better, John,’ he said, ‘for being cool and clean.’

  I was still thinking about his tannery revelations. Since I had taken off into the air above London Airport relatively few hours earlier I seemed to have been shown nothing but irregular behaviour on the part of Bos taurus, of the order Artiodactyla and tribe Bovidi. Cows lolled in slabs on trolleys in the First Class cabin of the Indian national airline, on the streets they languorously licked the mucilage made from their boiled-up relatives, they gave their hides to good Hindus to be made into shoes and jackets. I was being served notice, I felt, that Maya was feverishly at work in these territories, yet I also had the feeling – it was a distinct strand of consciousness within my fatigue, like a tingling copper wire in a skein of dull wool – that everything had changed now that I was sharing a land-mass with my guru, whose ‘death’ had only intensified his local presence.

  I had also eaten food of an unaccustomed, revelatory spiciness. Even under temperate conditions chilli, turmeric, garam masala and their allies alter consciousness and tighten the scalp. They pinch and knead the housing of the brain, producing a benign confusion of thought. In a climate of active heat, spicy food brings about a psychological cancellation like the breaking of a fever. By the time I was ready for bed I had taken the new temperature inside myself and was part-way attuned to it.

  When Raghu had settled me in a downstairs bedroom with the pee bottle within reach, I should by rights have fallen asleep in seconds. In fact I was kept awake by a pulsing node of thought and feeling – to be frank, an erection. An implacable specimen of its kind.

  My celibacy vow had come under pressure from more than one flank already, before my first full day in India. The visiting card from S. P. Munshi at the airport was tucked safely away, but it was so strongly charged with spiritual-erotic impulses that I could feel it pulsating in the darkness. Temptation had opened up a second front at dinner, and I had played eye ping-pong with a charming and not obviously attached young man. Why not give up an enterprise which was obviously doomed and have a good old wank? I managed to persevere, mainly (I’m afraid) by thinking what an impression the household would get of me, and of the wicked West, when Sumati’s servant changed the sheets. ‘Taily’ was the last part of me to go to sleep, and the first to rise in the morning. I ignored it. I would not give in to its sly throbbings. ‘Taily’ seemed the right, childish word for it, this gross part which proved me an adult but wouldn’t let me be one.

  I prayed that I would be able to withstand the temptations of spending time in Kashi’s proximity. Obviously I wasn’t going to molest him in any positive way, but it might already count as a betrayal of my vow to have dwelt on his image and to have become excited by it later, in private. In fact, the next morning I didn’t see him at all – he’d left the house early to run errands – which left me rather disappointed. The pressure was off my self-control, and I felt almost cheated. I hadn’t meant to pray quite so hard.

  After he had seen to my morning needs as benignly as he had the ones of the night before, Raghu explained that Mrs Osborne’s ‘bung him on the bus’ plan had undergone further modification. Raghu and Sumati would now be bunging me in the car and driving me to Tiruvannamalai. It wasn’t very far, about a hundred miles. It was all decided. I must admit I was relieved not to have to face the bus, though I had been thinking of enquiring about trains. Perhaps going there by train would have been too presumptuous an emulation of my guru, a bit too much like feeling tired all of a sudden and hopping up on a donkey, just when you happen to reach the outskirts of Jerusalem.

  Little houses overgrown with creepers

  Before we set off Raghu explained one slight complication: I would be showing them the way. I tried to tell myself that he was having trouble with his English, but in my heart of hearts I knew it wasn’t likely. He meant what he said. In some strange way I was to guide the party. I hoped that my adopted religion, which had called to me with its depth and subtlety, wasn’t going to turn out to be full of tests and ordeals after all, like the wearying one I was born into. I didn’t feel that I needed to prove myself in that sort of way.

  But why, then, was it my task to show citizens of Madras the way to Tiruvannamalai? Two reasons, really. The first was that Raghu and Sumati could manage conversational Tamil, but couldn’t read it. They were all at sea with the script. This was a little shock. I didn’t quite assume that all Indian people spoke all Indian languages. I knew there were very many, though I didn’t know enough to put them in the hundreds. But I did assume that all Indian people in Tamil Nadu would be at home with the Tamil language. Why else would they live there? In fact the families of Raghu and Sumati came originally from Kerala, and they spoke Marathi at home.

  That was one part of the difficulty. The other was that signposts in Tamil Nadu were written exclusively in Tamil. In a recent access of nationalist fervour, the state government had removed the familiar ABC letters from signs. The British had packed their bags and left, but if they changed their minds and came back they would be properly baffled,
just like the anticipated Nazi invaders of 1940, who would have found no signposts at all and been all at sea if they had forgotten to bring maps.

  The changeover of signposts had only happened a year or two before 1970 – if I’d made my pilgrimage earlier, then the trip to Tiruvannamalai would have been a piece of cake.

  The state authorities hadn’t anticipated that others beside the few remaining Britishers would have trouble with the signs. Indians from other states who worked in Tamil Nadu relied on English to help them find their way, so they were running around confused as well. There were already indications that the authorities would think again – trade was beginning to suffer, and pressure was mounting to let the English alphabet return from exile. So if my pilgrimage had taken place in a later year, the last stage of the journey might well have been a simple matter again. It was only around 1970 that a devotee had an extra set of obstacles to overcome – but that was the year I had chosen for my visit. It was as if my whimsical guru had overheard me thinking about the spiritual life as a sort of treasure hunt, and was dropping in a few more puzzles for my benefit, to draw out the game and sweeten the victory, like an announcer who leaves an endless pause after the words, ‘And the winner is …’

  Raghu had asked a neighbour, a native speaker of Tamil, to write down the magic word ‘Tiruvannamalai’ on a piece of paper – in fact a sturdy piece of card, of the same weight and texture as the pieces of card which protected Dad’s shirts (to some tiny extent) from crushing when they returned from the laundry. Tamil script is made up of lovely flowing characters, loops, swirls and emphatic dots, which had an immediate appeal, making me wonder why I had ever bothered with shorthand, whose practical utility had been more or less irrelevant to me, if not actually a drawback in my eyes.

  Tamil characters display a beguiling combination of architecture and flow, grid and embroidery. A line of printed Tamil looks to Western eyes like a row of irregular little houses overgrown with rather stylised creepers. When it’s written by hand, the curvaceous element predominates.

  For some reason the stiffness of the card made me feel much more confident about the enterprise. Surely our plan was similarly crush-proof. Raghu and Sumati could remember the first part of the journey. They could negotiate our departure from the city. It was only out in the country that they would falter. That was where I would take over, comparing the curious loops and curlicues of Tamil script with what I saw written on signposts, and directing us safely to our destination. I said with as much confidence as I could muster, ‘Whenever I see a signpost, I’ll try to match it with what I’ve got written down here. Easy!’ What could go wrong?

  Not quite everything, as it turned out. Raghu kindly put me in the front seat of the car, with a canvas of some sort behind me. Sumati was in the back with my things. She said something to Raghu in (I suppose) Marathi after we had set off, and I asked Raghu to translate. He seemed a bit embarrassed, but I told him it was impossible for me to be offended by hosts who were going to so much trouble to help me. Then he told me, ‘Sumati said, “How can such a small person have so much luggage?” She says it’s all right for us up here in the front, but she’s getting squashed by your things.’ I laughed and asked Raghu to translate back to Sumati, ‘Please help this small person to compress his luggage by accepting the small cheese which is at the top of his case.’ It was a Germanic interpretation of Edam – I’d chosen smoked so it would travel better. She ferreted out the sausage of cheese in its tight plastic skin and soon started tucking into her snack.

  On our car trip I noticed that the rule of waiting until men had finished eating didn’t always apply. I assume it made a difference that we weren’t at table, in a formal setting, and also that the food was a gift from me. I couldn’t help feeling that I was derailing Raghu’s day, but Sumati gave every sign of having a fine old time. The expedition seemed to free her from the constraints of an Indian lady’s home. Unable to turn round and watch her, I sent out auditory antennæ instead, turning my ears backwards like a cat’s, cocked pockets of vibrating fur. I could hear the little snuffles of appreciation, almost guttural, which Sumati made while she ate.

  She who handles nothingness

  A little later she spoke again, at greater length, and Raghu translated for my benefit. ‘Sumati is warning you against going on pradakshina with Mrs Osborne late in the day. You understand pradakshina?’ I did. Pradakshina is the ritual clockwise circumambulation of the holy mountain Arunachala. It is to be done barefoot, and in a prescribed manner: ‘like a pregnant queen in her ninth month’. I didn’t know quite how I was going to manage that.

  ‘Sumati and Mrs Osborne started their walk round the mountain at about four or five, when the worst of the sun was over. She was worried that it would not be until late that they returned home. Mrs Osborne had not told her they would be sleeping by the roadside. When they started walking, she believed they would reach home that night. However, Mrs Osborne said that it was supremely beneficial to sleep while on pradakshina. She was remarkably insistent and Sumati had to give in.’ Here Raghu broke off his translating to make a comment of his own. ‘You will discover, John, that with Mrs Osborne it is usually better to give in.’

  ‘Sumati was terrified, because as is well known, there are snakes and scorpions on the mountain in great numbers. She mentioned this to Mrs Osborne who said that everything on the mountain was holy. She wasn’t worried, and indeed she was snoring within minutes, while Sumati was unable to sleep a wink. Sumati has never seen a holy scorpion. If she did drop off then her sleep was only jerky, but Mrs Osborne slept well and woke refreshed.’ He added in a tactful undertone, ‘Sumati once expressed the opinion that Mrs Osborne was a suunyakaari. Literally it means she who manipulates nothingness – perhaps you can come up with an improved translation? I have found no English word better than witch …’

  Sumati interrupted with a sharp question. It required no knowledge of Marathi to interpret it as meaning, ‘What nonsense are you telling him now?’

  All the time we were driving I had been inspecting road signs for their correspondence with the Tamil hieroglyph which was written on the card and also, as the journey went on, imprinted on my mind. I took a certain amount of pride in having mastered a long foreign word in its original script. Our progress seemed to be rather wayward in terms of overall direction, however, and eventually we came across a sign where both directions seemed to point to Tiruvannamalai.

  Under this sign of ambiguous welcome we decided to stop for refreshment. I was grateful for the rest. My bottom had started to ache unbearably on the journey. Now that Raghu had opened the car door, I could swing my legs round with his help, so that I was sitting on the edge of the seat. As I shifted round I could see that the canvas cover on the back of the seat had become drenched with sweat. Capillary action was assisting the process of cooling, at the cost of a slight embarrassment.

  Sumati had brought a picnic. I don’t know where we would have got food anyway, but Raghu explained she wouldn’t willingly consume any food or drink not prepared within her own house. She had brought along sandwiches and a flask of coffee. I realised that she must have shopped specially for sliced bread and perhaps for the cucumber and tomatoes. I remember Dad telling me that the tomato was actually a native of South America, but it has turned itself into an exemplary world citizen, blending in with every possible cuisine, Mediterranean, Indian, even condescending to enrobe Mr Heinz’s baked beans and be rendered down for his ketchup.

  I tried one of the sandwiches and pronounced it delicious. In fact it was a pretty fair imitation of a flavourless British catering sandwich. She had even cut the crusts off.

  Raghu looked almost dismayed at my appreciation, and rattled off some Marathi words at Sumati. It turned out, when he translated her reply, that he was asking if she had at least put some salt and pepper on them. (She had, of course.) Even properly seasoned they tasted of little enough, he thought, but without salt and pepper it was like chewing mouthfuls of air.
<
br />   ‘Aren’t you going to try one?’ I asked, and they rather despondently agreed, chewing politely and clearly despairing of understanding the insipid passions of the Raj.

  Dancing on the edge of pain

  It turned out that Sumati had also brought along a few samosas and poriyal and chapattis, in a much smaller bag. I felt almost ashamed that she had put my needs first, and also overestimated my appetite, so that the sandwich supply greatly outweighed what she had brought for her husband and herself. Politeness, though, demanded that I try a samosa when it was offered me, even though I was a sandwich millionaire and they had little of their own food to spare.

  That samosa was a rite of passage in its own right. Nothing I had ever put in my mouth could have prepared me for the experience. It became painfully clear that Sumati had gone easy on me with her spices the previous evening. Now like some tribal teenager in an initiation ceremony my tongue had to run over hot coals without being blistered. My taste buds hopped and winced, dancing on the edge of pain. Even more than the night before I had the sensation of a hallucinated clarity, as my senses narrowed to a point and simultaneously opened up with an unprecedented freshness.

  Yet even with the spices burning off my old habits of mind I could hardly register the landscape around us, let alone describe it. My mental vocabulary was so limited, and this country was neither lush nor bare, or else was both at once. It was green, but a green that was mostly blue and brown.

  While we were eating our food, the fiery and the bland, a group of people had come up to see what we were doing. In great contrast to Mum on any comparable occasion, Raghu and Sumati seemed unperturbed by the uninvited company. The most inquisitive of the bunch was an old man with a lovely character etched into his features – his looked like a face from a documentary film. Perhaps the old superstition is true, and the camera steals the soul, just not all at once, but in tiny incremental larcenies. Certainly it’s the faces that have never been photographed which have the strongest identities.