My Guru & His Disciple (30 page)

Arup is still shaky. Swami is very concerned because, he says, if you aren't perfectly well, you are not allowed to take 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 performed by a primitive tribe, instead of the most ordinary of Hindu holy acts.

Poor Arup, when I went in to visit him, seemed isolated and a bit humiliated by his illness, which I suspect is nothing but psychosomatically expressed 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.

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 6th.

December 26. Prema has taken hundreds of photographs, from which we are to choose illustrations for the Ramakrishna book. We spent the morning looking through them. Prema, with his usual crushing frankness, remarked that he has been rereading the book and doesn't think it's really “great.” I agreed with him, of course, and added that I could probably give a much more vivid impression of Ramakrishna when talking to a sympathetic stranger in a bar, after several drinks. There is that in me which will never write its best to order. Deep down, I have always resented the censorship of the Math.

Meanwhile, thank God for the greatness of Willa Cather. I am relishing every single page of The Song of the Lark.

December 27. This afternoon, I talked at the Ramakrishna Mission College. They had fixed up their gymnasium for the occasion; the stage seemed partly a shrine, partly an Oriental parlor. On the back wall a thing like a monster valentine, enclosing Vivekananda's portrait. 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 before speaking; they were terribly hot.)

I was fairly good, I guess. Not that I said anything much, but it came through without hesitation and loud. Then Swami was asked to 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. 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—smiling and teasing and yet quite serious. Many of the students had their arms around each other as they listened. They were slim pliant-waisted youths with dark melancholy mocking eyes and smiling white teeth; many wore mustaches. Afterwards we were served gray sweetened milk-tea and oranges and cookies. There were also glasses of water. Swami, who is determined I shan't be poisoned on this visit, said quite loudly, “Don't drink that, Chris.”

December 28. This morning, one of the papers prints an interview with me, which 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?”

Today Swami, George, Prema, and I had 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 right.

Now and then, one or another of the swamis would start a chant. I noticed particularly one sturdy old swami because he chanted with such enthusiasm. I could easily picture him as a young boy, just entering the monastery; he hadn't really changed at all. He had taken his vows unquestioningly and never faltered. Such a comical old man, his nose nearly meeting his chin. And all he has done with his life has been to take Ramakrishna's teachings absolutely literally. With the result that he has no children, no money, no fame, and isn't afraid of anything in this world or the next.

Later Prema lectured at the college, on the Vedanta Society of Southern California, showing slides made from his own photographs. Seen in this setting, they seemed exotic because they gave you such an exaggerated impression of American luxury and cleanliness. Even the freeway looked well swept, and the Hollywood shrine room appeared so sleek with polish, so well carpeted, that it was more like a hotel bedroom. The very flowers and trees had an air of wealth … I didn't feel that the students quite understood any of these pictures. Surely they must find them unnatural, almost sinister?

Then we were shown a documentary film of the procession which inaugurated the Vivekananda centenary celebrations, last winter—a straggling confusion of military cadets, banners, floats, cows, musicians, political speakers. Vivekananda appeared again and again—as a giant photograph, as a cardboard cutout borne aloft, as a plaster statue on a truck; absurd and yet imposing. And this all the students understood and applauded.

December 29. Swami, George, and I have moved into Calcutta. During the sitting of the Parliament of Religions, we are to stay at the International House of the Ramakrishna Institute of Culture, because it is much nearer to the place where the Parliament is being held. The International House is grand and well planned, but its floors are grimy with fallen dirt, like floors in New York.

That day, a Dr. Roy, whom we had just met, offered to get us a negative of one of the photographs taken on August 16, 1886, showing Ramakrishna's corpse lying on a cot, surrounded by his disciples, before being carried to the cremation ghat. Prema and I had already seen this and wanted to publish it in
Ramakrishna and His Disciples.

Hitherto, the Math had been against displaying any of these photographs of the corpse, feeling that this would be in bad taste. When one of them was included among the illustrations to
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,
its lower third had been cut off, so that only the mourners were visible, gazing down at what you couldn't see.

We objected to this censorship because it suggested that something repulsive had had to be concealed—which was not true. The corpse certainly hasn't been prettified and posed, as it would have been by Western morticians. It lies openmouthed, showing its teeth, looking totally discarded. But the general effect isn't shocking, merely a simple statement of the fact of death. Swami agreed with our point of view, adding that many representations of the crucified Christ with his bleeding wounds
are
repulsive, yet they are shown openly in churches. Thanks to Swami's persuasiveness, we got the Math's permission to publish.

*   *   *

The inaugural session of the Parliament of Religions began at 3:30 p.m. and went on for three hours. Not one of the speakers bothered to project his voice; they droned through their written addresses as if they were saying mass. There was an audience of about eight thousand people and I doubt if eight hundred of them really understood English. They sat there with—no, one can't call it patience—with animal passivity.

I got a rosette to wear, to show that I was a delegate of the Parliament; orange, with blue and purple ribbons, enclosing a soulful portrait of Swamiji which is inscribed: “Every soul is potentially divine.”

Then I went on with Swami to the Star Theatre, where Girish Ghosh used to act in and direct his own plays. Swami wanted me to see the old paintings of Ramakrishna and Girish which still hang there, backstage. The backstage part of the theatre is probably very much as they knew it; the rest has been modernized.

A performance was about to begin. Actors and actresses paused to bow to the paintings before going on stage. We went out front and watched the play for a while. I would gladly have stayed longer, if Swami hadn't wanted to get back to the Institute of Culture. Without understanding a word, I felt I could never tire of the actors' intonations and gestures, their delight in their own vitality. Bengalis seem born for the drama. I felt I was getting glimpses of the kind of fun Ramakrishna and Girish had together, during one of Girish's drunken visits.

As night falls, a hideous smoky fog closes down—from all the charcoal pots on the streets and the soft coal fires in the houses. In my room, even though it is air-conditioned, I began to wonder seriously if I shouldn't be choked in my sleep.

December 30. Swami didn't sleep much. He complains of the smoke but won't go back to the Math. Looking out the window at dawn, I saw bent figures in wispy smoke-colored garments moving silently about like emanations of the smoke, as they lit fires to create more smoke.

At the Parliament, Prema spoke on “Vivekananda through the eyes of an American,” very well. Here he is obliged to wear the white robe of the brahmachari, which turns him into a (to me) disconcertingly austere figure who seems older than the Prema I know. We laughed about this, later.

When it was my turn to speak, I tried to pretend to myself that the whole audience could understand me. And I found myself instinctively working to strengthen this illusion by using the great keynote names over and over again—Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Brahmananda, and even Gandhi. These produced automatic applause, as I had known they would. I began my speech by saying that I wished them to regard me as an Englishman, not an American—thus offering them a tribute to Vivekananda by a descendant of their oppressors.

One of the youngest swamis accompanied me back to the Institute, having fiercely repelled the journalists and bossed a way through the crowd for me, to the car. He was bubbling with indignation because the interpreter who was there to render the gist of our speeches into Bengali hadn't done so but had made comments of his own. The swami added that many people in the audience did understand English and that they would certainly have booed the interpreter if they hadn't been intimidated by the pictures of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda which hung behind the platform. These turned the hall into a sacred place, in which you had to behave yourself.

December 31. Just before going to bed, I started to get the gripes. 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 the senior swamis of the Math (not the younger ones), against Swami himself, even. 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 honestly 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 promiscuous sex, and write books like A Single Man, I simply cannot appear before people as a sort of lay monk. Whenever I do, my life becomes divided and untruthful—or rather, the only truth left is in my drunkenness, my sex, and my art. (There are, of course, dozens of audiences which would be ready to accept the drink, sex, and art. To these I could also talk about God without falseness. They might be embarrassed but they would listen. Such audiences are not to be found within the Vedanta Society, however.)

This morning, a party of us went out to Narendrapur, where the Ramakrishna Mission has a huge project, a sort of Boys Town which includes schools, clinics, and a farm. It is impressively efficient. We have been told that the government favors the Mission because it is one of the very few social-service agencies in which there is no graft.

The hot sun made me feel sick, but it was lovely to be out in the clean country air. I came back to the Institute and lay down. One of the swamis soon appeared at my door, wanting me to take on a chore—probably to unsnarl the English in which some of the delegates' speeches are written; I have done this a couple of times already. I would perhaps have said yes if he had asked me nicely, but he prodded me so peremptorily that I acted dazed-sick until he went away frustrated.

January 1, 1964. A good omen. The first person to visit my room was a young brahmachari named Sashi Kanto. He had come to wish me a happy new year. He says his name means “Moon Beauty” or “Husband of the Moon.” He is from somewhere near Bombay—a big boy, bulky and yet graceful in his cocoon of white muslin. The cropped hair and the little topknot which he wears as a brahmachari suit the charm of his long sensitive nose and dark soft velvet eyes. He seems incapable of anything but love. Such languishing looks, delicate hand touches, and flashing glances are only possible for the absolutely innocent. Every day, he washes Swami's and George's gerua robes, regarding the opportunity to do them this service as a great grace.

I am still resolved to tell Swami that I won't give any more religious talks after I leave India. But I'll offer to give two talks about this trip, one in Hollywood and one at the Montecito convent, and also two readings on other Sundays before he returns to California.

Dr. Biswas, who is the son-in-law of Swami's sister, came to give me a checkup. While he was examining me, I asked—to make conversation: “Are you in general practice, Doctor?” “No,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I specialize in leprosy.” His hands were touching my skin as he said this. It was silly of me, but I felt an involuntary recoil and had to cover it by expressing great interest. He said there is a lot of leprosy still around and no law compels lepers to report for treatment; many are ashamed to do this. People of all classes get it—usually during childhood, from lepers who are nursing them.

After lunch today, Swami told a lady, one of the Swiss delegates, to stop wearing hats. She had on a weird contraption, like a slipped turban. She explained that she wore hats at the meetings out of respect for our holy surroundings. Swami answered that that was merely an idea of St. Paul's; it doesn't apply in India. He advised her to wear gerua on her head if she felt she had to wear something. But later she appeared hatless, with a ribbon around her hair, and looked very nice.