Cedilla (41 page)

Then Mum pounced in my place. The moment we heard Dad’s key in the lock she swept out to meet him. I could hear her urgently whispering, but no response from Dad. There are times, of course, when words aren’t necessary and facial expression says it all.

Mum bustled back in and shook her head at me. ‘I’m sorry, John – but you can’t say we didn’t try.’

Dad followed her in, moving as if he was exhausted. He sat down and put his hand over his face. Still he said nothing. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Mum, ‘put the boy out of his misery! I’m the one who’ll have to make him feel better – what’s the point of dragging it out?’

When Dad took his hands away from his face, I almost thought that he was hiding a smile. He was good at that. He reached into his pocket, saying, ‘You can’t say I didn’t try,’ and produced a little folder of card. An airline ticket. It was a First Class return, and in the space marked Payment Required it said
NO CHARGE
.

He had foxed me completely. He had also foxed Mum, who had been led up the garden path by his sombre expression when he came through the front door. She had thought his embassy among the beggars had failed, and she made a creditable job of suppressing the joy she must have felt. I lost sight of her for a minute or two – the lack of flexibility in my neck means I have to wait for faces to present themselves in their own good time. When I saw her expression again it was changed, changed utterly.

I’ve never seen a children’s party struck by lightning, the carbonised cake, the birthday girl twitching in her melted frock, but I think Mum’s face that afternoon was a match for that scene of celebration blasted. She had been lifted for a little moment by my good news, her joy had kept pace with mine, and then she had realised what it meant for her rather than me, and then everything was ash and sizzling hair.

I was flying away, a Peter Pan determined to grow up, leaving Wendy stranded on the ground. I was serving notice of her redundancy as a mother. The one thing that had seemed certain about her life was that I would always need her – never replace her, and certainly never manage without anyone at all.

She reached over to the Air India ticket in its little folder and looked at it, as if it was a death notice in the newspaper, perhaps her own. She frowned, as if her name had been spelled wrong, and said, ‘Dennis, this can’t be right.’ She licked her lips. Her lips were often dry. She would pour a glass of water and then forget to drink it. Sultan the cat was just as likely to wet his whistle with it as she was. ‘It says he’s going over for more than a month. For five weeks.’

‘Yes, m’dear. That’s what he wants, and quite right too. No point in travelling all that way and then having to come back next minute, is there?’

‘You can’t mean that, Dennis. Who’s going to look after him?’

‘He’ll have the time of his life. He doesn’t need us, m’dear, that’s what you don’t understand. Why should he? That’s not nature’s way. He’s good at getting himself looked after. First he’ll sit on a plane and a lot of pretty girls will make a fuss of him, and then he’ll sit under a tree shamming as a holy man, and people will be thoroughly fooled and bring him treats.’ This wasn’t at all how I saw my pilgrimage and my quest, but after his efforts on my behalf Dad was entitled to tease me a little. ‘You’ll see. He’ll have a whale of a time.’

I wanted all the gory details of the negotiation. ‘What did you say to Mr Dalal, Dad? Was he nice? Did you say
devotee
and
pilgrimage
?’

‘He was nice enough, but I’m not sure your pi-jaw would have done the trick, John. Our Mr Dalal had both feet firmly on the ground. I did mention that you were going to Cambridge, and he said his old college was Cat’s – they invite him to a summer party with strawberries and champagne. Hoping for a donation, I expect. “Cat’s” is
St Catherine’s, by the way. Perhaps he hoped I wouldn’t know. I explained that I’d been supposed to go to Cambridge myself, except that I was invited to a let’s-beat-the-Nazis party that went on till all hours and couldn’t attend. Clash of engagements. We had a bit of a chuckle over that.’ All told I felt that Dad had done me proud with Mr Dalal. He had done a little kowtowing after all, a little oiling of the wheels. ‘He said he and his lovely wife would be delighted to meet me and
my
lovely wife for cocktails at the Garden House Hotel. A lot of play-acting, really.’

Then his face became stern. ‘It’s not on, you know, to give a ticket away. A discount is one thing, a free gift is quite another. That chap broke IATA rule 151. He knows he did, he knows I know it, and he knows I can’t do a damn thing about it.’

From that point on, Mum and Dad, despite their different feelings in the matter, accepted that I would be going to India. I had my doubts. I wasn’t half as confident as I made out.

Like any competent lawyer, I had been selective in the documents I had submitted to the family court. I had exercised my discretion (exercising discretion is how lawyers lie). I had shown them the first letter from the ashram, but not what came after.

There had seemed no point in mentioning disability ahead of time, before the principle of welcome was established. After the delightful letter from Mr Ganesan had arrived, it seemed a good moment to mention such unspiritual trifles. I tried to be as casual as possible. Oh, by the way … did I happen to mention …?

The reply came quickly and was crushing. Mr V. Ganesan said that conditions in the ashram were somewhat austere, entirely unsuitable for someone with my difficulties. I wrote back, stubborn and cheeky, expressing regret that a devotee of Ramana Maharshi should pay so much attention to this irrelevant body, this old coat we wear for a little while. In any case, he could prevent me from staying in the ashram, but not from coming to Tiruvannamalai. ‘As for sleeping,’ I said rather grandly, ‘there is always the road, which refuses no one. And did not our Bhagavan describe the bliss he always felt while
begging?’ Peter pushed me to the letter box and did the actual posting for me, while I prayed that my bluff wouldn’t blow up in my face.

It was a very hollow bluff. Certainly Bhagavan had talked about the bliss of begging, but his was a rather different case. He was a Brahmin who had cast off his privileges, a splendid spiritual moulting – but I couldn’t help feeling that the memory of privilege is a privilege in itself. There’s an afterglow of entitlement which can act to insulate the organism even while it fancies itself naked to the elements. I on the other hand felt as if I had been begging since I was three, in one way or another. It was hardly likely that things would be easier for me in India.

I had been a busy correspondent. There was a third letter which I also didn’t show to Mum and Dad, though this time I had a better excuse. I had destroyed it, with Peter’s help. We were systematic about it – tearing it into small strips, which we carefully burned before flushing the ashes away. Peter didn’t ask who the letter was from or what it contained. He could see at a glance that it had thrown me into confusion, the very state which my Indian expedition was meant to dissipate.

The letter was from Mouni Sadhu. I had written to him in care of his publishers, George Allen & Unwin – Ruskin House, Museum Street – thanking him for his books. Incantation of the Tarot had allowed me to ventilate pain without losing dignity (let’s hope), while
In Days of Great Peace
, although its direct effect on me had been oddly muted, had led me to Arthur Osborne’s book and Ramana Maharshi himself. I mentioned my visit to Tiruvannamalai and I suppose I was asking for his blessing on it. Blessing was not what came.

The air letter came from Australia, where (as it turned out) Mouni Sadhu made his home. He said there was no point in my going to Tiruvannamalai with the Maharshi gone. The spiritual effect had vanished, as he was in a position to know. If I went there all I’d find was greedy people after my money. Piccadilly Circus offered a better prospect of enlightenment.

Even with this terrible letter ceremonially annihilated, there was a risk that Mum (or even Dad) would notice something wrong in my demeanour. I wasn’t confident that I could fend off questions without revealing my dismay. I got through the day somehow, and gave myself a talking-to once I was safely in bed.

I had saved almost fifty pounds out of the Supplementary Benefit (a little over three pounds weekly) awarded me by a tender-hearted government. I had offered to put this little income towards my keep at Trees, but Dad had said he was sure I could find better uses for it. I had been expecting to have to stump up a certain amount for the ticket to India, but now that obligation had vanished. I wasn’t rich, but I was quite rich enough to be fleeced by the money-grubbers of southern India without having cause for complaint. Even if Mouni Sadhu was right, I would cope. Hadn’t I survived financial shipwreck before, when the Guardian Bank betrayed my trust, sinking without trace in a haven advertised to be safer than houses? After this internal pep talk sleep came sweetly.

A week later I had to play another charade in front of Mum and Dad, but this time in a different key of feeling. A letter arrived from the ashram to say that Mr and Mrs Osborne had been kind enough to say that I could stay with them, although Arthur was unwell and I shouldn’t expect too much. Now it was relief and exhilaration that I had to mask. My bluff had been successful and my desperate gamble had come up trumps. It was Arthur Osborne who had introduced me to Ramana Maharshi in the first place (with Mouni Sadhu it was a case of mistaken identity – I had walked straight past him). Now I would be able to thank my benefactor in person. Mouni Sadhu must be wrong about the departure of spiritual aura from Tiruvannamalai if Arthur Osborne lived there still.

I didn’t want to be a charity case while I was in India, and racked my brain to think of what service I could offer. I settled on cutting vegetables and binding books, since it resonated with what Arthur had written. Those were activities favoured by Ramana Maharshi during his days in the ashram which formed around him. These were not books in the Western sense but little notebooks, a few pages roughly sewn together, and I thought I could probably manage.

It would be quite wrong to say that Ramana Maharshi formed an ashram – he merely stayed where he was, and an ashram grew around him. He couldn’t help sustaining a rich spiritual eco-system, any
more than a great tree can avoid attracting squirrels, birds and insects. In the early days his participation was less than minimal. How could it be otherwise? He was silent, cross-legged, absorbed in the bliss of Brahman.

Of course nothing could be more alien to someone in my circumstances of life, or more inspiring, than this voluntary movelessness – if you can call something voluntary which is the product of a transcendent amnesia. He didn’t even notice!

His first devotee had originally been worshipping a stone god in the town, getting money by begging so as to buy camphor, sandal paste and milk, adoring the statue with tears of love in his eyes, until someone said, ‘Why do you keep worshipping this stone god? In a cave on the hill there is a live Swami. He never speaks, and there isn’t anyone to look after him. Why not make your worship to him?’

At first the new love-object’s similarity to the old, although it was warmed from within, must have outweighed the differences. Still, food must be offered to this human statue in more than a symbolical fashion – nourishment was required to enter the mouth. The sites of excretion must be kept in order.

The ritual attentions carried over. The devotee poured a little buttermilk over this living statue’s head. Meeting no objection, he followed this up with anointings of milk and then ghee. Encouraged, if only by immobility and silence, he daubed this undissenting body with sandal paste and
kumkum
. He offered fire-oblations and chanted mantras, as priests do to the statues in temples.

Indian religious practice is a sort of calligraphy whose logic is to cover every surface with intricate patterns, and then to fill the spaces between. There would be no end to this loving and meticulous scribbling.

Then one morning when the devotee came into the cave he found a change. The Swami was in the same position as when he had been left, but there was writing on the wall. It said (I paraphrase) that the service rendered was quite enough.

Amazement in the cave. For one thing, it was news that the Swami could read and write. Literacy in God-men was not a given. It was also (briefly) baffling how the writing had been done. There was no stationery cabinet in the cave. The Swami had virtually nothing in
the way of possessions, if you can even use the word ‘possessions’ of someone whose non-spiritual activities are in abeyance. He ‘owned’ a loin-cloth, though that had only recently been put on him, and a cup made of half a coconut shell.

He had made marks on the wall with a half-burnt stick from the fire. Possibly there is a subtle reference here to the part played by the ego in its own dissolution. In the process of self-enquiry, the ego is like the stick that stirs the funeral pyre to make sure that everything is consumed, and burns to nothingness in its turn.

After that, people started to ask questions, and to get them answered, either by means of a burnt stick again, or by his writing in the sand. This style of teaching (
upadesa
) was superseded when the questioners started to bring their own pieces of paper and writing instruments for him to use. Then they would take the pieces of paper away with them to make fair copies of their own.

Sometimes Ramana Maharshi composed verses, and when others gathered them together he made no objection – though the term ‘necklace’ used of one such collection could apply to all such, the beads being strung together by another hand than the maker’s. I imagined helping the Osbornes by mending little books of this type, restringing the beads and giving them a quick buff-up in passing. I had my limits, but I was quite handy with Sellotape.

I told Mum about the new arrangement as if it was no more than an administrative detail, that I would be staying in a private house not an ashram. I thought there might be some crumb of comfort in that. By this time I wouldn’t have blamed Mum for developing a hatred for Mrs Pavey, the seeming friend who had slipped into her bicycle basket a book that from her point of view might just as well have been called
How To Disown and Desert Your Loving Mother
as
Ramana
Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge
.