Travelers (15 page)

His uncle urged him: “With such a family your whole future is assured.” But Gopi said nothing. He was aware of the desperate looks all the women were throwing at him and the way they hovered round him. The uncle's tone became a mixture of cajolery and testiness: “At your age I was married, settled, one child, another on the way.” Gopi looked with heavy dreamy eyes into the distance, attempting to hear, see, think nothing. The uncle's testy note increased. “Yes, in those days we were not asked—when the family said we were to be married then we were married, finished, no talk.” Gopi's expression did not alter, only his eyes blinked once as he continued to stare into fathomless space. “And that was the right way!” suddenly shouted the uncle and banged his fist so that the teacups rattled on the tin tray.

Gopi's mother came hurrying up, making soothing shushing sounds. The uncle was trembling, and it was evident that there
were many harsh things on his tongue; but he controlled himself, thus bowing to the spirit of the times. Nowadays young men could no longer be commanded by their elders as of old, but some show had to be made—God knows why—of consulting their opinions. As if anyone that age could have any opinions! Anger swept over him again; he poured tea into his saucer and sucked it up, trembling with emotion. Gopi's mother looked at Gopi imploringly; at the same time she slowly passed her hand over his back round and round in a massaging movement as she had done when he was a baby suffering from indigestion.

This affectionate hand passing soothingly over Gopi's back burned him with red-hot irons of reproach. He knew exactly what it was saying—please, for my sake, you're my good son, and what about your sister? Round and round it went, tirelessly as only a mother can be tireless.

Gopi got up so abruptly that his mother started back and his uncle had a shock and spilled tea out of his saucer. Gopi dashed out of the room. One of his sisters was hanging up clothes on a line strung across the veranda. He brushed past her and went into their second room, in which he found some more sisters and their friends. They were all sitting on the floor with their knitting and when he came in they looked up at him and burst out laughing as if they had just been talking or at least thinking about him in a special way. Seeing all these round young faces laughing up at him, he felt better, and when they shifted to make room for him in their circle he was glad to sit down there. He had always enjoyed the company of these girls and had grown up playing games and having jokes with them.

Now they were playing an old favorite called the alphabet game. They went through the alphabet and round the circle, each having to say a particular thing beginning with a particular letter. They had been through films, countries, names of people they knew, and had got on to animals. Gopi joined in with zest. A—for ass, for antelope, for ant, for anteater—as they went round, the girls in the latter part of the circle were having
difficulty thinking up new ones and Gopi rushed in to help them with cheeky suggestions. “Alephant!” he shouted and was slapped for it, “Alpana!” he said, mentioning the name of one of the girls, and promptly two of them gagged him by holding their hands over his mouth. Then they got on to B—buffalo, bison, and bird—but the fourth girl looked mischievously at Gopi and, sticking out the tip of her tongue, said, “Bridegroom!” That was a lot of fun for all of them—yes, then the tables were turned on him and how they giggled and mocked at him and called him “Gopi the Gay and Gallant Groom.” He took it in good part, he loved being teased by them. Then the next girl carried the joke further—“Bride!” she said—so that they all looked at Gopi's sister, for whom the proposal had come, and it was her turn to be teased. Overcome with shyness and pleasure, she hid her face behind her veil but managed for a second to peep at Gopi over the top of it. He interpreted this glance in a way that was not agreeable to him, and it threatened to spoil his enjoyment. Only he wouldn't let it, so firmly he cried, “Bear!”—to which they protested it wasn't his turn, but he outshouted them with “Boar!”—“Bee!”—and “Bull!” and finally called the name of one of the girls—“Bina!”—and then “Beautiful Bina!”—and for this they all turned on him and beat him with their slippers till he hid his head in his arms and laughingly begged for mercy.

With Banubai

Asha's life with Banubai was simple but not dull. Banubai lived in a house by the river; it was an old house with many unexpected little rooms and verandas in which unexpected activities went on. One room held the offices of the University of Universal Synthesis and also served as the living quarters of its founder-president; an exponent of the Kathak school of dance held his classes on a veranda; in another room a scholar of the Purva-Mimamsa philosophy was editing his papers. Many people came

and went, and most of them were visitors for Banubai. She liked to help people and give them spiritual comfort, so they came to her and she talked to them. She wasn't in the least surprised to see Asha turn up; in fact, she said she had been expecting her. Asha shared Banubai's simple meals and at night she rolled out a mat on the floor of Banubai's room and lay down to sleep on it. She had left all her jewelry behind and wore only white cotton saris. She was at peace.

This may have been partly due to the atmosphere of the city, which was an ancient and holy one, but mostly it was the effect of Banubai's personality. Banubai was an extraordinary woman. She came from a rich Parsi family and had had a pampered upbringing and the best education possible at convent schools in India and finishing schools abroad. But she had always been an unusual person with unusual gifts. She could look deep into other people's personalities, and it enabled her to have so immediate an intuition of what activated them that it was often possible for her to tell them something about their past and make a guess at their future. She gained quite a reputation that way, and people began to come to her for guidance. At that time she was still living with her parents in Bombay in a large rococo Edwardian house. It was a strange experience for her parents to have all these people coming to visit their daughter, and it was only because they realized that Banubai was too special a person to be kept only to themselves that they managed to tolerate these visitors who brought their Hindu smells of asafetida and sweat among the Persian carpets, French furniture, and English silver.

Her reputation was not only established among poor people—always the first to recognize a saint—but extended to the educated classes. She even had a number of sophisticated, highly Westernized visitors, and if most of them came in the first place to see her as a curiosity, some of them were truly impressed by her powers. That was how Asha had first come to her—many years ago when Asha was still young and beautiful
and Banubai in early middle age. Asha had come with a party of friends; it had been a sort of outing for them, in between some other social events. Banubai didn't take much notice of any of the friends but she was at once interested in Asha. It was as if she saw something in her that others couldn't see. She told her that she had a spiritual nature, and although the friends tittered, Asha suddenly became very serious. When it was time to leave, she told her friends to go ahead and she herself stayed behind and had a long talk with Banubai. That was the beginning of their association, and although many years passed during which Asha felt no need of her, in her moments of deepest crisis she often turned to Banubai.

Banubai's parents were dead now, the Bombay house was sold, and Banubai lived in Benares in a few rooms rented in the crowded old house on the river. But really it was only outwardly that there was any change. Banubai was old now but only in her body; her spirit remained as it had been. She had lost all her teeth and had never bothered to have a new set fitted, but her smile was as radiant and childlike as before. She was tiny and skinny and her face had puckered itself around the cavern of her toothless mouth; for many years now she had always worn the same rather bizarre costume that she had devised for herself—a pair of men's wide cotton pajamas, a loose shirt over them, a mass of bead necklaces, and a turban wound around her head. She perched on the edge of a bed, bright as a bird, with bright eyes and a bright, bright voice.

“Oh, you'll never change!” cried Asha, overcome with admiration of her friend's ever youthful spirits.

“And you too will never change,” said Banubai.

At that Asha groaned, for she felt it like a stone sitting on her—all the change that had come over her since she and Banubai had first met.

But Banubai insisted, “You are still the same, always the same.” She sucked in her cheeks as if to suppress a smile. “I'm sure you have been having another love affair?”

Asha admitted as much by flinging her hands before her face in shame.

“You see. Always the same. . . . And with a very handsome young man?”

“Oh, Banubai, Banubai!” Asha was in pain but she was also half laughing. How good it was to be known and understood so deeply! She said, “Banubai, what shall I do?”

“What have you come here to do?”

“Just to be with you.”

“That's enough, then.”

And, for the time being, Asha also found it to be enough. Banubai had a little girl servant to cook her meals but her cooking was not good enough for Asha, who pushed her aside and took over from her. Asha was a marvelous cook and she enjoyed it too. She squatted over the bucket of coal, which constituted Banubai's kitchen arrangements, and she stirred and stirred in little pots, and sang as she stirred, and took a pinch of this and a little bit more of that, and flung it in and stirred again, and superb smells unfolded throughout the house. Banubai adored these dishes that Asha prepared for her, and she licked everything up and then she licked all her fingers one by one. They also sent food down to the founder-president of the University of Universal Synthesis, or sometimes they had him up to eat with them, which he enjoyed very much, for he was a lonely and frequently hungry old man. When she wasn't cooking or doing some other little household tasks, Asha listened to Banubai talking to all the people who came to see her with their problems. Sometimes tears came to Asha's eyes when she heard the terrible troubles that oppressed people; but Banubai was never downcast—she said it was good for people to suffer that way, it helped them to realize more quickly just what sort of stuff this world was made of and consequently to turn away from it into another, better path.

And Asha felt that yes, Banubai was right. What were all her troubles finally—what was the world, what was Gopi or her own
advancing years and frequent despair: it was all really nothing. This feeling came over her particularly in the evenings when she sat in the window of Banubai's house and looked out over the river, where boats went up and down and people dipped and prayed and the setting sun made the river pink and silver: then it was as if that expanse of holy water washed all heavy things away and left her calm and light.

Lee

We're in the middle of one of our domestic crises because the latest cook has run off again. They're always running off for some reason or other (usually they say they're not being paid enough). Swamiji discussed this crisis with Evie and Margaret and me—well, actually he didn't discuss it so much as dispose of it. Evie said she would do the cooking but Swamiji said no, he needed her, and then he told Margaret that under special decree she was appointed cook for the day. He was twinkling at her ever so humorously. She cried, “Oh, but Swamiji, I can't!” which was quite true, she can't. He said why not try and he would be very interested to taste the result of her experiment; he turned to Evie and me and asked wouldn't we be interested too. Margaret kept on protesting for a while but it didn't do her any good, in the end she had to go. Swamiji continued to joke with her, but she became quite still and serious and just before she went she did a funny thing: she bent down and touched his feet, sort of prostrating herself as she did this in utter humility. She seemed to like doing it. I was surprised but no one else seemed to be. I also somehow felt uneasy—as if something unpleasant had occurred.

Of course as always (how does he do this?) he knew what I was thinking. He said, “You've never done that to me.” When I didn't answer, he kept on saying, “Have you?”—challenging me—till I had to say no. Then he smiled and looked at me sideways and wrinkled his forehead so that his cap rode up: “I think you're too proud to do it?”

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't admit I was too proud—I never felt proud with him, never—but it was true that I wouldn't do what I'd just seen Margaret doing.

“Lee is a very proud girl,” he said to Evie. “Proud and obstinate,” he added and turned again from Evie to me, and there was something different in his eyes now: it was as if he were measuring me, testing me for strength.

I said, “It's not true, I'm not.”

“No? Then why don't you do it?”

He waited. But he knew I couldn't and seemed to be mocking me for this disability. At last he said to Evie: “You do it.”

She got up without one moment's hesitation and bent down to touch his feet. She did it so beautifully. He patted her head which was bent before him but he wasn't looking at her, he was looking at me over the top of her and even triumphantly, as if he had proved a point against me. And I felt ashamed, I felt he was right and that he had proved a point against me—I
was
proud, I
was
obstinate—but I couldn't help myself, I still couldn't do what he wanted me to.

I left him so quickly that it was like running away. At that moment I wanted to run fast and far. But in fact I only got as far as the kitchen. The kitchen is at the outskirts of the ashram and it isn't a new hutment like the other buildings but an old brick shed that had been left standing on the land when Swamiji took it over. As I passed, I heard a groan from inside, so I knew Margaret was in trouble.