To vespers with Prema and one of his special buddies, the young and dramatically handsome Swami Aranyananda.fn500 The singing was even more thrilling than I’d remembered. Prema is mad because someone here has prepared a list of all the swamis and brahmacharis of the order, omitting the American ones, as though they didn’t count! (I mean, the American brahmacharis.)
I have to sit next to Nikhilananda at meals, which I hate. He embarrasses me by making conversation. His face is ravaged with nerves. Yet he is admirably opposed to the Indian weaknesses; fatalism, love of chatter, and indifference to social abuses. He bullies Al Winslow and the countess with an arrogance which I have noticed already in several of the swamis—racial aggression toward the Westerner?
This time I am playing it very broad with pranams. As an elderly man, I’m not expected to show such respect to the young swamis, but I do it anyway. (My kind of aggression.) And I have to jump backwards every now and then to prevent someone doing it to me!
Up on the roof after supper. The sooty smoky night air. Plenty of mosquitoes. Air raid sirens go off at irregular intervals from the nearby factories, for no special reason.
December 23. Woke feeling wonderful, and did some exercises. No more Librium. Unicap vitamins. Still eating too much.
Nikhilananda is an anxious egotist. His behavior jars on Swami, though they say very little directly to each other. Swami said rather wistfully to me, “I can’t make conversation.” I think he was afraid Nikhilananda would impress me. This kind of jealousy is his “last infirmity.”
Visited Swami Madhavananda this morning. He was sitting up in bed, solemn with sickness, in his flapped cap. I cannot feel drawn to him or even respectful of his holiness. He just seems sulky.
Prema and I walked down to the little Howrah post officefn501 which is just outside the Math gates. Prema was grimly determined to get his letters registered there—and, by God, he did too—despite all those brown pushing hands with their letters. No one had the least sense of obligation to stand in line and take turns. I think Prema was bent on proving that he can live in India on Indian terms. This is very much part of his attitude toward the immediate future.
Al Winslow is tall, slim, wide assed, boyishly pretty and eager beaverish, with curly hair and a pale face dark ringed under the eyes. Mr. Carlson is middle-aged, but has the smile of a brainy boy, a boy inventor in fact. He can fix anything, from the plumbing to the electric light. He once took lysergic acid and saw a man’s face change into different faces belonging to different historic periods. I walked down with them to the college which is right next to the Math. We were welcomed by Swami Gokulananda, one of the Pious Pig type, who made me promise to speak to the students.
We had to climb over the gate, because the gates into the Math compound are locked during the afternoon and at night. Getting the gates opened is going to be a constant problem, as the guesthouse is outside.
The wonderfulness of Prabhavananda is that he seems every bit as much himself here as he does in Hollywood. He doesn’t make any concession to the environment.
His room, like most of the rooms around here, has the glamor of Victorian Hindu; the funny old photographs and stuffed furniture. The Leggett House, in which both Prema and Arup are staying, has charming old fanlights of colored glass, bottle-green louvered shutters, doorhandles made in the shape of hands.
Great care must be taken to avoid getting your shoes stolen from outside the temple.
Mosquitoes not so bad as last time I was here; but they bite. Mylol is said to help.
Nishta is nice; a big woman, handsome and friendly toward me with a mannish good nature. Maybe she’s lesbian and has a thing with Mrs. Beckmann, who is certainly the most feminine of creatures.
December 24. Tried to write to Don today, but could say nothing coherent. I feel dazed with “unreality”—which simply means unrelatedness. They have pulled me up by the roots, flown me all these thousands of miles and dumped me down here. I can’t be transplanted. But I may not die if I’m moved back promptly. Am getting fatter at an alarming rate. There’s nothing to do but eat. Fat, lonely, bored.
This morning, on the river, two truly huge haystacks on rafts—floating mountains of hay.
We drove into Calcutta, where I made a reservation for Rome on BOAC for January 7. That seems centuries away. Swami changed back into western clothes for the outing; he looked dapper and ridiculously out of place. What crowds and crowds of people! This is what most of the world is really like—overpopulation, near starvation, utter squalor. Old trucks, bullock carts, rickshaws, little closed cabs such as Ramakrishna used to ride in. Holy men smeared all over with ashes. And the skinny wandering bulls.
Arup is sick, with the shakes. Nikhilananda has nosebleeds due to his high blood pressure; he has been told to stay in bed for a week. Wish he would!
Prema told me a strange tale about bands of transvestites who roam around the villages. (Though, as a matter of fact, he first saw them in Benares and took them at first glance for raddled old whores, then realized they were men.) The second time he saw them was at Kamarpukur. They are supposed, according to someone who informed him, to be “neuter.” They have ways of knowing when a woman in the neighborhood is going to have a child, and then they come around and “do something” (unspecified) to the husband. They are terribly malicious. You must never cross them, or they’ll revenge themselves on you. They sing and dance to amuse people.
Came out of my room around 5 p.m., after finishing (and enjoying) Waugh’s Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. The river and the people in their bright colored clothes were just a river and people and clothes. I might as well have been in any foreign town anywhere. Hard to convey the strangeness of this unstrangeness. Let’s put it that I felt as if I might easily have returned to my room, come out again and found myself, this time, in Cuzco. It would have made that little difference.
This evening, after arati,fn502 we had a puja for Jesus. They built up an altar on a side aisle of the temple, with shelves of fruit and cakes, all surrounded by a picture of the Virgin and Child. I had been told to read the birth of Jesus from Luke and the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew. Was much disconcerted because they had given me a Roman Catholic bible, with different words, such as “our supersubstantial bread.” So I had to keep transposing and improvising when I couldn’t remember the King James. Then Prema spoke, in his somewhat now-my-dear-friends American way, but quite well. And then Prabhavananda spoke, on the Lord’s Prayer. All the dark faces of the swamis, listening. I knew exactly how I ought to be feeling, so I didn’t feel anything at all. But the ceremony wasn’t in the least revolting. They sang a couple of songs to “Sri Isa”fn503 in Bengali, which had the merit of taking Jesus right out of the Episcopalian church and putting him back in the middle of Asia, where he belongs. Krishna recorded it all on his new Jap recorder.
December 25. How nice to wake here, on my refreshingly hard bed, under the mosquito net! Waking up is helped by the rude crows, and a bird which emits liquid tropical whistles; and the factory sirens, and river-boat hooters and the noise of trains crossing the Vivekananda Bridge; and then finally a great smashing clash of buckets and pans as the help starts to get ready for breakfast, which we eat at 7:30 a.m. There is a rather sanctimonious head servant named John. He has been butler to many grand families and has worked in England, I believe. He is a Catholic and attended midnight mass yesterday.
Last night, in my dreams, my ordinary life suddenly caught up with me—I was surrounded by my playmates, Jack [Larson] and Jim [Bridges], Bill [Brown] and Paul [Wonner], Gavin, Jim Charlton, [Mark Cooper],fn504 etc. And Don was there too. And that was so much realler than this oriental backdrop. I felt very happy.
This morning, at breakfast, Prabhavananda tried one of the swamis’ yellow flapcaps on Krishna. He looked very good in it. Probably he will henceforth wear it always.
Arup is still shaky. Swami is very concerned because, he says, if you aren’t perfectly well, they won’t give you sannyas. One of the
hazards of the ceremony is that you have to bathe in the Ganges, and in the middle of the night, too. Telling me this, Swami drops his voice, as though he were describing some obscene rite of sexual initiation, instead of the most ordinary of holy acts.
We breakfast Britishly, on porridge, scrambled eggs, marmalade, strong tea and lots and lots of hard toast.
Nikhilananda is said to be recovering already.
This morning was astonishingly cold. (It has warmed up now, around noon.) Borrowed a sweater from Arup, rather than one of Prema’s, because I felt this would make him feel a bit more included. Arup is isolated by his illness, which is really nothing but psychosomatic India-horror. Prema has almost forced him into this role by grabbing the role of India-lover. The greatest possible demonstration of India-love is not to get sick here.
A weirdly skinny oldish man who is a journalist and also connected with the Ramakrishna-Shivananda Ashrama at Baraset came to see me because he has always treasured my remarks about the guru in “What Vedanta Means to Me.” He really did have the clippings with him and I couldn’t help feeling flattered, although he was as embarrassing as hell about it. He brought me a book he has written, called The Patter of Asude, which is described by the blurb as “the funniest book ever.” Also a Christmas cake, very small and heavy and hard. This he wanted me to eat right away. He offered me a rusty knife to cut it with. But Swami prevented this; promising him, however, that we’ll meet again next week when we visit Brahmananda’s birthplace.
Walked with Prema down by the ghats beyond the Math property. Old tumbledown dark crimson houses, with French statues in their gardens, and broken walls and vines climbing over everything. Pools full of water flowers, open stinking drains, white cows, lanes that wander to a sudden end, choked with rubble and garbage. Down at the ghats, brown-skinned youths scrubbed their faded paper-thin wearing-cloths and changed them without ever exposing their sex. They dunk their heads in the cloudy brown river water, swill it around in their mouths and spit it out. They have good wide shoulders but wretchedly thin legs. Prema says he is never troubled by lust in this country. We talked about the Franklin scandal. Prema believes he was guilty.
All over the Math grounds, they are putting up pandals, canvas tent halls with a bamboo framework, for speeches and mass meals on the day of the Vivekananda birthday puja, January 6. Also, in the field in front of the guesthouse, they have dug latrines and shit holes.
This afternoon, Swami, Krishna, Prema and I went to the opening of the Women’s Congress. A stunning bore. All the speeches are in English and most of them you just cannot listen to; the Bengali accent and the droning delivery keep nudging you over to the brink of sleep. Thousands of people. On the platform, the Maharanee of Gwalior, a plump lady in widow’s white.fn505 They kept saying, “She has come all the way from Gwalior to attend this meeting,” which was hardly tactful towards us world pilgrims. Also a pra[v]rajika,fn506 with her shaven head looking like a small brown bespectacled nut. Also a lady named Maria Bürgi from Switzerland, wearing an improbable green toque and suffering from acute enthusiasm. And that dreary old ass, Yatiswarananda, as chairman. The only gleam of joy was in the presence of Swami Aranyananda, who is really one of the handsomest boys I have seen in this part of the world. He comes from […] the southern tip of India. His magnificent, nearly black eyes, very dark skin and fierce white teeth. His smile is fierce, tigerish, and challenging; but his eyes regard you with a languishing intimate sweetness. You can imagine him using phrases of classical oriental endearment like “soul of my soul” without the least embarrassment.
The front of the platform was lined with pots of pointsettias. On the wall back of the stage were three crude paintings, of Vivekananda, Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi, all of them decorated with garlands. Of the three, Vivekananda has been noticeably “favored”; his portrait is larger and more boldly executed than the others. On either side of the portraits were huge objects which looked like the fans used to fan some late Roman emperor. Whenever a speaker began to speak, a technician would promptly appear with a screwdriver and adjust the mike to his or her height, getting between speaker and audience and ruining the effect of the opening lines. I got a delegate’s rosette to wear: orange with blue and purple ribbons enclosing a soulful picture of Swamiji inscribed, “Every soul is potentially divine.”
In the middle of the street, a dead cow, killed by a car. This is said to be most unusual. As we drove home, Prema wanted to buy Life and Time, to divert poor Arup, whose fever is up again. Swami protested, because it meant delay in our getting home to supper. Why, he said, couldn’t Arup show a little renunciation, one week before taking sannyas? But Prema quietly and firmly bought the magazines anyway.
December 26. This morning had a strange bright unhealthy chill; the sun burned one side of your body while the other shivered as if in a tomb. Arup is dreadfully hungry and worried about his health. He is confined to his room. Prema is primly healthy and pleased with himself.
Prema has taken hundreds of photographs for the Ramakrishna book. We spent the morning looking through them, sitting in front of the Leggett House on the marble bench by the entrance stairs. The benches are backed by sort of stone bolsters. White stone dust comes off on your pants. The charm of the little garden plot along the river embankment. A fountain full of green scum, supported by three swans below and above by two cupids, one of them headless. The gardeners are working on the chrysanthemums, dahlias and roses. At the foot of the embankment, discarded leaf plates and broken earthenware cups are agitated by the lapping river waves. A young swami who has just taken his bath wrings out his wet gerua cloth and hangs it up to dry in the breeze.
Prema, with his usual crushing frankness, remarked that he has been reading through the Ramakrishna book and doesn’t think it’s really “great.” I agree with him, of course. But I added that I could probably draw a much better portrait of Ramakrishna to a sympathetic stranger one evening when I had had a few drinks. There is that in me which will never write its best to order. Deep down, something has always been resenting the censorship of the Math and Madhavananda’s comments.
Meanwhile, thank God for the genius of Willa Cather. I am relishing every single page of The Song of the Lark.
This afternoon, I wanted to get into the Math grounds before the gates were opened. But I couldn’t climb over the side gate because there were so many people standing there. And the main gate was much worse: a crowd of maybe a hundred, including two cows. So I had to wait my turn. A tiny child begged cross-legged on an outspread mat. An adult beggar exhibited his deformed hand. Merchants squatted behind white cupie-dollish figures of Ramakrishna and framed photos of Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore. Quite well-dressed middle-aged men crouched to piss in the ditch alongside the lane, exposing ugly naked shanks. The dhoti looks so proper from in front; then, from behind, you glimpse the bare legs; and the effect is indecent because it seems unintentional.
White cranes perch on the backs of the cows, apparently searching them for lice. Anyhow, the cows seem to like it.
Tension at supper this evening. We asked Mr. Carlson and Al Winslow to get us a birthday cake for Swami. But it was a great mistake, because we embarrassed him in the presence of Nikhilananda, who smiled in a superior manner, to remind us that sannyasins are not supposed to recognize birth and death. Nikhilananda told corny Jew stories. Prabhavananda looked small and sad, at the other end of the table. And the cake was hard as rock.
December 27. A tedious interview with an ass of a journalist named D.P. Tarafdar, of the Amrita Bazar Patrika. He wrote down everything very slowly in longhand. Then Prema and I dashed into town to pick up some film for taking pictures of the Parliament of Religions delegates. Prema rejoiced that he will soon be retiring from all these concerns into the seclusion of preparation for sannyas. It was hot and loud in Calcutta, with a hint of the weary heat of the coming months and the smell of sewers and septic dust. How easily one can lose one’s vitality here!
This afternoon
, I talked at the Ramakrishna Mission College. They had fixed up the gymnasium for the occasion; the stage was part shrine, part oriental parlor. On the back wall was a thing like a monster valentine, enclosing Vivekananda’s portrait. Below this were a number of basketwork lotuses. Incense was burning before them. Downstage were a draped couch and a draped table, with a stick of incense burning on it, right under the noses of us speakers, as we sat on the couch, garlanded by the students, like gods. (Luckily we were allowed to take the garlands off again; they were terribly hot.)
I was fairly good, I guess. Not that I said anything much, but it came through without hesitation, and good and loud. Many of the students had their arms round each other as they listened. They were thin, pliant-waisted youths with dark mocking eyes and smiling teeth and, quite often, moustaches. Then Swami was asked to come up on to [the] platform and answer questions. He was all silver and gold—silver hair and gold skin with a silvery light on it, and the blending yellow of his robe—and again his greatness was revealed. He told the boys that their college would be a success only when it produced at least a dozen monks a year. He was adorable—so amused and teasing and yet quite quite serious. By an awful effort of piggy peg-toothed Gokulananda, Nikhilananda was not asked to speak. He sulked a bit about this, but I will admit that he had the grace not to sulk afterwards at supper.
After Prabhavananda, there was Justice P. B. Mukherjee, who spoke for nearly an hour, flipping through the pages of a manuscript which could probably have lasted [two to three] hours if read in its entirety. When it was over, Swami Gokulananda, without the faintest trace of irony, said, “All’s well that ends well.” We were then served grey sweetened milk tea and oranges and cookies. There were also glasses of water. Swami, who is determined that I shan’t be poisoned on this visit, said quite loudly, “Don’t drink it, Chris.”
The Sixties Page 42
