The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  December 28. This morning, the Amrita Bazar Patrika carries a piece on me by Tarafdar without one word in it of what I actually dictated to him. It begins, “Why did distinguished writer Christopher Isherwood become such a strong admirer of Swami Vivekananda (to the extent of banging his fist on the table in raptures, as he did in Calcutta on Friday)?”

  Then Gokulananda arrived, to announce that my talk had not been taped. Could he have a copy of it? Told him with sadistic relish that there was no copy; I never write my speeches. But he then produced a short version of the speech taken down in longhand by one of the students—quite inaccurate, but earning a big B for emotional blackmail. Now I’m obliged to go back to the college and redictate the whole thing to a tape recorder. Fuck them.

  Today, I finished The Song of the Lark. It’s certainly one of her greatest.

  Why do I feel such an intense eagerness to leave this place, and this country? I count the days. It is an experience, being here. I am getting something out of it, I know. And yet I strain like a leashed animal to escape.

  Today, Prema, Swami, Krishna and I ate lunch with the swamis, in the monastery dining room, sitting on the floor. You eat with your right hand; mustn’t use your left. I finally had to sit on mine, because it kept flying up to my mouth to help the other. At intervals, one or other of the swamis would start a chant. Often these chants sound lively and aggressive, like political slogans. I noticed particularly one sturdy old monk, who walks around with a pilgrim’s staff; he chanted with such an air of game toughness and sturdy enthusiasm. You saw him as a young boy and now as an old man. He hadn’t changed. He had taken his vows and he would go through with this thing to the end with unquestioning loyalty and faith. Such a comical old man, his chin nearly meeting his nose. All he has done—all—is to take what Ramakrishna said quite literally; and so has no problems, and no money and no fame, and is maybe a saint. One out of dozens.

  But I hate floor eating. It is messy and unsnug. Couldn’t get my plate clean of the dull runny tepid food.

  Along with the interview in the newspaper was a photo Prema just took of me, making me look lean faced, sly and shifty eyed, rather like Oppenheimer.fn507

  To the college, where I taped my talk—it turned into something entirely different. The students sat around bright eyed, but they didn’t really understand; when it was Swami’s turn they asked him to speak Bengali. Later, Prema gave his lecture on the Vedanta Society of Southern California, illustrated with slides. The slides gave an extraordinarily strong impression of luxury, cleanliness and lack of clutter. In contrast to here, even the freeway looked tidy, and the shrines seemed so sleek with polish and well carpeted, they were like comfortable hotel rooms, and the flowers and trees were so luxuriant. The audience was more or less the same as yesterday’s, except for some small kids who lay bundled up, two to a wrapper, on the floor under the screen. Prema spoke excellently, but they didn’t really understand either him or the pictures. (The scenes from Disneyland might as well have been visions obtained through mescalin.) But then there was a Bengali film showing the procession which inaugurated the Vivekananda celebrations, last winter—an endless straggling confusion of cars, banners, military cadets, cows, musicians, trucks, political speakers—and this they truly understood. It was their Vivekananda—he appeared again and again, as a photograph, as a cardboard cutout, as a plaster statue—imposing his presence through sheer campy absurdity—made into a god in order not to be taken seriously. (How he would have raged against the editors of the Delhi centenary volume; it is a jungle of misprints!fn508)

  Just before supper, the lights in the guesthouse failed and stayed failed. Bed in the dark.

  December 29. Swami, Krishna and I have just moved into Calcutta. During the Parliament of Religions, we are to stay at the International House of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, because it will be easier for us to get to the meetings. It is very grand and well planned, but the floors are grimy with fallen dirt, as in New York. However, we have air conditioners.

  The place is run by Swami Ranganathananda, a very handsome well-built middle-aged man, who is reputed to live entirely on milk. There is also a sort of hostess, Mrs. Bouman, who is Dutch and tall in her winding sari, and rather like Virginia Woolf. And there is Aranyananda, looking older today and unshaven, but still beautiful. I took the dust of his feet, and he tried to do the same to me. When I jumped backwards, protesting, he said, “We regard you as more than a swami.”

  We had lunch at the institute—rather delicious British-type fish rissoles—and got involved with Dr. Miroslav Novák, who is head of something called The Czechoslovakian Church. (He calls himself a Protestant, but other information seems to suggest that he is Russian Orthodox. At the meeting he wore a black Protestant pastor’s robe on which was embroidered in red what appeared to be the Holy Grail.)fn509 Didn’t like him. Too much a faux bonhomme.fn510

  Aranyananda introduced us to a Dr. Roy, who is a surgeon and lives here. He will get us a negative of the complete cremation picture for our book. It is far more impressive than the two-thirds which are usually printed. The gazes of the mourners have a focus, and the corpse isn’t at all shocking; it is nearly buried in flowers. As Swami says, many crucifixion scenes are far more gruesome. But no doubt there will be fusses. The Math itself is opposed to printing the whole picture. We shall see. This is something I’m prepared to take a strong stand about.fn511

  After lunch, Aranyananda was in a flap, because he had to produce biographies of the foreign delegates. So I helped him correct their awful English. An adorable brahmachari named S[h]ashi Kanto,fn512 who rooms with Aranyananda, made this task seem even lighter.

  But there was nothing light about the inaugural session of the parliament. It began at 3:30 p.m. and went on for three hours. Next to the hashish experience in Tangier, this was the least endurable time stretch I have ever known. Not one of the speakers bothered to project; they droned out their written speeches as if they were saying mass. There was an audience of about eight thousand people, and I doubt if eighty of them really understood English. They sat there with—no, one can’t call it patience—with the inertia of cows. Nikhilananda, who was next to me on the platform, fidgeted openly and didn’t bother to applaud. He really is a very second-class swami, but I find his disgust humanly sympathetic. When it was my turn, I spoke too loud and too urgently—rather like a communist speaker in the thirties.

  After the meeting, Swami, Krishna and I were taken to the Calcutta Club by a Mr. and Mrs. Gupta. He’s a cricket-anyone? English-type Bengali; he even wears a kind of blazer and knotted scarf. He has some important job managing the port of Calcutta. Her name is Mallika.fn513 She’s American, plump, pale, blonde, humorless. The Calcutta Club was founded in 1909fn514 by an Indian who was refused admission to the regular British club—but it is more British than the British, charmingly old-world London club atmosphere. A weepy young rich drunk who was a friend of theirs was introduced to Swami and confessed embarrassingly. He was playing a scene.

  Then we went on to the Star Theater, to see the old paintings of Ramakrishna and Girish Ghosh backstage.fn515 The backstage part of the theater is probably very much as they knew it; the rest has been modernized. They were doing a modern play by Debnarayan Gupta (whom we met) called Tapasi. The plot was wildly complicated, with old-fashioned coincidences; recognition of a blind mother, first deserted by her husband and then reunited with him when he too goes blind. Sheer Dickens. But the acting was so lively and enjoyable. Without understanding a word, you could see how naturally theatrical these Bengalis are, and how unnatural it is for them to put on a ditch-dull show like the Parliament of Religions.

  Afterwards, the Guptas took us to supper at the Sky Room, quite a grand restaurant, but the food was inferior to the guesthouse. A mixed clientele—two bald-headed Britishers out on a spree with Hindu girls; two club-type Britishers obviously trying to pretend they were in London; a mixed-up family of Eurasians, some of them beautiful.

&
nbsp; As night falls, a truly hideous smoky fog closes down on the city, from all the charcoal pots on the streets and the soft coal fires in houses. Back in my room I really wondered if I should be able to breathe. In these few hours my shirt has become filthy around the neckband.

  December 30. Swami didn’t sleep much. He complains of the smoke but won’t go back to the Math. Showed him an astonishing folder I found waiting for me last night when I got back to the institute; a bunch of pages of lettering and pictures in ink and watercolor, headed “Jesus Christ Writes to Christoper Isherwood in Calcutta.” There is a small snapshot of a skinny bearded young man, naked to the waist, grinning in a slightly mad self-conscious way. On the other pages, various facts are revealed—that Jesus is opposed to the partition of India, that he has broken with St. Peter (who, it appears, is now in London), that he was helped by Cyril Frederick Golding to get a job in The Times of India’s layout department. Some quotes: “Peter came and established the Rock of Hatred in advertising. I joined him on the Rock and got what I wanted.” “During the War and the riots of Calcutta, Peter loved God as his own child and raised his wages to a thousand silver pieces per month; but Christ, after looking at the cruelty of man, resigned from the services of Peter and took up the pen for judgment.” However, on the next page, Christ says, “Oh, why bring tears in the eye of an old man! He suffers anyway.” All this rings faintly homosexual, especially as the last page refers to “John.” Christ approves of Sir Christopher Wren, Beethoven, Mozart. He disapproves of Nero.

  I think he’s quite likely to show up today. I rather wish he’d come and make a scandal at the parliament and brighten things a bit.

  I forgot to mention yesterday that Swami is conspiring with Dr. Roy to bribe the custodians to hand over a coat belonging to Ramakrishna which is at Mathur’s former house.fn516 Roy says it isn’t being kept properly, and Swami wants to bring it to the Hollywood Center.

  Calcutta is a pale faded yellow city—all strong color has been burned, parched out of it by the sun. At night it is crowded but cheerless, under its pall of dirty smoke. A poor wretched place; the joyless street of six million people. Looking out the window at dawn, you see bent figures in wispy smoke-colored garments moving silently about like emanations of the smoke, as they light their fires to create more smoke.

  Ranganathananda showed us around the institute. He is the Monsignor Sheen type,fn517 very handsome, grey haired, youthful, fanatically energetic, fiercely ambitious, socially alert. He tells us he keeps his health by doing asanas. He no longer sticks to his all-milk diet but still limits himself to just a few vegetables.

  The institute is really well equipped and admirably efficient. Poor students can get meals almost for nothing and study all day in the library. There is a meditation room with nothing in it but an electric light projecting from a kind of lingam. It is in the shape of a flame. Swami, who doesn’t really like or trust Ranganathananda, complained that it was much too strong; you couldn’t concentrate.

  Ranganathananda is greatly excited about the growth of interest in Vedanta among the Japanese. He showed me a letter from a young Japanese who is coming here soon to join the order and work at the institute. His eyes gleam with fanatical delight as he tells about this. I feel he thinks he is running the order singlehanded.

  Aranyananda and Shashi Kanto were also around; they came with me to the parliament for my speech. Shashi Kanto says his name means Moon Beauty or Husband of the Moon. He is from near Bombay, a big boy of about eighteen, bulky and yet graceful in his cocoon of white muslin. The cropped hair and little topknot suit the charm of his long sensitive affectionate nose and dark soft velvet eyes. He seems utterly incapable of anything but love. He finds all manner of excuses to be around us. Every day he washes Swami’s and Krishna’s gerua clothes.

  At the parliament, I found that two or three of the speakers were missing; there were only Prema, and a Captain Bhag Singh,fn518 and the president of the day, Dr. Chatterjee. Prema talked on “Vivekananda Through the Eye of an American.” He was good but much too brief. He seems quite a dour elderly figure on the platform; projecting grim austerity. He even reminds me a little of de Gaulle. As for myself, I was pretty good. I pretended to myself that the audience could understand me, and indeed they seemed to—probably because I talked a lot of political stuff about Vivekananda and the English, the oppressors in their bondage to the oppressed, etc.

  When it was over, a tiresome peg-toothed swami (of the Gokulananda tribe—swamis fall into quite recognizable physical groups, I notice) tried to sick the journalists on to me. But Aranyananda charged them like a little tiger and made a way for me through to the car. As we drove back to the institute, he was very indignant because there had been a translator to render the gist of the talks into Bengali, and, said Aranyananda, he hadn’t done so but had wandered off into remarks of his own. Aranyananda said that the audience did understand English and would certainly have booed the translator if they hadn’t been intimidated by the pictures of Ramakrishna etc., which made the pandal into a shrine where you had to behave yourself.

  December 31. Just before going to bed, I started to get the gripes and shits. I shivered a lot and couldn’t sleep all night. Lying awake in the dark, I was swept by gusts of furious resentment—against India, against being pushed around, even against Swami himself. I resolved to tell him that I refuse ever again to appear in the temple or anywhere else and talk about God. Part of this resolve is quite valid; I do think that when I give these God lectures it is Sunday religion in the worst sense. As long as I quite unashamedly get drunk, have sex and write books like A Single Man, I simply cannot appear before people as a sort of lay minister. The inevitable result must be that my ordinary life becomes divided and untruthful. Or rather, in the end, the only truth left is in my drunkenness, my sex and my art, not in my religion. For me, religion must be quite private as far as I’m publicly concerned. I can still write about it informatively, but I must not appear before people on a platform as a living witness and example.

  Luckily, Swami’s sister came to visit him in the morning with her son-in-law, who is a doctor; Dr. G.K. Biswas. He examined me and gave me pills. I felt achey and sleepy.

  Three women got me into a corner at the end of the balcony and started to ask me about karma, reincarnation and so forth. Another little woman joined in. Another came and got my autograph, after giving me a New Year’s card. And merciless Aranyananda, after shooing away a man who said he was the son of a millionaire, got me to correct a translation of a speech made by one of the Japanese delegates.

  Then I was fetched to go out to Narendrapur, where the mission has a huge project; schools, clinics and a farm. This was more fun than I’d expected, because Winslow and Carlson and Prema’s two friends who are staying at the Great Eastern, Bill Chapman and Jay Taylor, all came along. I very much liked Swami Lokeswarananda, who runs the place; he reminded me of Dore Schary. Also, there was a nice solid young bra[h]machari from Pavitrananda’s center in New York, called Amul (his name is Clare Street) who has been here three years already. Also a handsome and sexy nineteen-year-old boy from Cheshire, named Mark Vallance,fn519 who isn’t a devotee yet but has come here to teach English—or rather, his very no-shit Midlands accent. He plans to start reading Vivekananda’s works as soon as he has finished [Hemingway’s] For Whom the Bell Tolls!

  Sick as I was and groggy from the hot sun, I was hugely impressed by the Narendrapur project. It makes you feel that India isn’t in such a bad way after all. The government favors the mission because it is one of the very few social service agencies where there is no graft. Vivekananda was absolutely right; you simply cannot do this work without dedicated people. For others, it is too tiresome, so they turn into crooks. Lokeswarananda told us how he went to the ministry prepared to ask for 25,000 rupees for his project. But before he could speak, the minister told him, “Look, Swami, we admire your work, we respect what you are aiming for—but we simply cannot let you have more than half a million. It’
s no use arguing. That’s our limit.” So he got half a million.

  It was lovely to be out in the clean country air. Afterwards I came home exhausted and lay down and napped on the bed. Aranyananda tried to wake me to perform some new chore, but I acted dazed-sick and he went away.

  1964

  January 1. Slept well and woke feeling much better. I still am resolved to tell Swami I won’t give any more religious talks; but I’ll do so only after my talk at Belur on the 6th; and I’ll offer to give two talks about this trip, in Hollywood and at Santa Barbara, and also two readings on other Sundays while he is still away.

  Like a marvellous omen of joy for 1964, the first person to appear at my door (while I was shaving) was brahmachari Shashi Kanto. He had come to wish me a happy New Year.

  Dr. Biswas looked in to see me after breakfast. I have to admit it gave me a slight jolt when he told me that he’s the senior medical officer in a leprosy clinic! He says the disease can now often be cured and always arrested, but that there is still a great deal of it around. There is still no law to compel lepers to report themselves and be treated. People from all classes get it—usually during childhood, from infected nurses. People with European blood are hard to cure; they have no immunity to it. Often they must be treated for the rest of their lives.

  Swami presided at the parliament yesterday. He says Nikhilananda tried to persuade him to speak first (the president is supposed to speak last) and then leave. This was because Nikhilananda plans to do this when he presides, and he wanted to have a precedent created for him.

  View from my bedroom window, on to the street outside: A large building, once a wealthy family mansion, now broken down and overcrowded. The plaster has fallen away from it in great pieces, exposing brickwork. Its green shutters are faded. Small trees grow from crevices in the upper balcony. A bamboo pole is fixed across the main entrance, to hang laundry from; a crow perches on it. There is more laundry in another part of the balcony which has carved balustrades and some faceless figures which may once have been lions. The trunks of the four tall palms in front of the house are stained with smoke. An old woman fans a charcoal brazier. A young man pees against the wall. Barefoot children wander back and forth. Along the street a white cow passes. Then an incredibly stringy calf. (The cows belong to people. The bulls were let free in the streets as sacred creatures, whenever a loved person died.) A bridge connects the main house with a garden house. It, too, is ornate, with broken Corinthian pillars, but now it is roofed with corrugated iron and bamboo matting. Two long saris, of different shades of green, are drying from the rail of the bridge.