On my twenty-third birthday when I was fed up with London and all the rest of it—boyfriends, marriages (two), jobs (modeling), best friends that are suddenly your best enemies—I had this letter from my girlfriend Sophie who was finding peace in an ashram in South India:
. . . oh Katie you wouldn’t know me I’m such a changed person. I get up at 5—a.m.!!! I am an absolute vegetarian let alone no meat no eggs either and am making fabulous progress with my meditation. I have a special mantra of my own that Swamiji gave me at a special ceremony and I say it over and over in my mind. The sky here is blue all day long and I sit by the sea and watch the waves and have good thoughts . . .
But by the time I got there Sophie had left—under a cloud, it seemed, though when I asked what she had done, they wouldn’t tell me but only pursed their lips and looked sorrowful. I didn’t stay long in that place. I didn’t like the bitchy atmosphere, and that Swamiji was a big fraud, anyone could see that. I couldn’t understand how a girl as sharp as Sophie had ever let herself be fooled by such a type. But I suppose if you want to be fooled you are. I found that out in some of the other ashrams I went to. There were some quite intelligent people in all of them but the way they just shut their eyes to certain things, it was incredible. It is not my role in life to criticize others so I kept quiet and went on to the next place. I went to quite a few of them. These ashrams are a cheap way to live in India and there is always company and it isn’t bad for a few days provided you don’t get involved in their power politics. I was amazed to come across quite a few people I had known over the years and would never have expected to meet here. It is a shock when you see someone you had last met on the beach at St. Tropez now all dressed up in a saffron robe and meditating in some very dusty ashram in Madhya Pradesh. But really I could see their point because they were all as tired as I was of everything we had been doing and this certainly was different.
I enjoyed myself going from one ashram to the other and traveling all over India. Trains and buses are very crowded—I went third class, I had to be careful with my savings—but Indians can tell when you want to be left alone. They are very sensitive that way. I looked out of the window and thought my thoughts. After a time I became quite calm and rested. I hadn’t brought too much stuff with me, but bit by bit I discarded most of that too till I had only a few things left that I could easily carry myself. I didn’t even mind when my watch was pinched off me one night in a railway restroom (so-called). I felt myself to be a changed person. Once, at the beginning of my travels, there was a man sitting next to me on a bus who said he was an astrologer. He was a very sensitive and philosophical person—and I must say I was impressed by how many such one meets in India, quite ordinary people traveling third class. After we had been talking for a time and he had told me the future of India for the next forty years, suddenly out of the blue he said to me “Madam, you have a very sad soul.” It was true. I thought about it for days afterward and cried a bit to myself. I did feel sad inside myself and heavy like with a stone. But as time went on and I kept going around India—the sky always blue like Sophie had said, and lots of rivers and fields as well as desert—just quietly traveling and looking, I stopped feeling like that. Now I was as a matter of fact quite light inside as if that stone had gone.
Then I stopped traveling and stayed in this one place instead. I liked it better than any of the other ashrams for several reasons. One of them was that the scenery was very picturesque. This cannot be said of all ashrams as many of them seem to be in sort of dust bowls, or in the dirtier parts of very dirty holy cities or even cities that aren’t holy at all but just dirty. But this ashram was built on the slope of a mountain, and behind it there were all the other mountains stretching right up to the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas; and on the other side it ran down to the river, which I will not say can have been very clean (with all those pilgrims dipping in it) but certainly looked clean from up above and not only clean but as clear and green as the sky was clear and blue. Also along the bank of the river there were many little pink temples with pink cones and they certainly made a pretty scene. Inside the ashram also the atmosphere was good, which again cannot be said of all of them, far from it. But the reason the atmosphere was good here was because of the head of this ashram who was called Master. They are always called something like that—if not Swamiji then Maharaj-ji or Babaji or Maharishiji or Guruji; but this one was just called plain Master, in English.
He was full of pep and go. Early in the morning he would say “Well what shall we do today!” and then plan some treat like all of us going for a swim in the river with a picnic lunch to follow. He didn’t want anyone to have a dull moment or to fall into a depression, which I suppose many there were apt to do, left to their own devices. In some ways he reminded me of those big business types that sometimes (in other days!) took me out to dinner. They too had that kind of superhuman energy and seemed to be stronger than other people. I forgot to say that Master was a big burly man, and as he didn’t wear all that many clothes—usually only a loin-cloth—you could see just how big and burly he was. His head was large too and it was completely shaven so that it looked even larger. He wasn’t ugly, not at all. Or perhaps if he was one forgot about it very soon because of all that dynamism.
As I said, the ashram was built on the slope of a mountain. I don’t think it was planned at all but had just grown: there was one little room next to the other and the Meditation Hall and the dining hall and Master’s quarters—whatever was needed was added and it all ran higgledy-piggledy down the mountain. I had one of the little rooms to myself and made myself very snug in there. The only furniture provided by the ashram was one string bed, but I bought a handloom rug from the Lepers Rehabilitation Center and I also put up some pictures, like a Tibetan Mandala, which was very colorful. Everyone liked my room and wanted to come and spend time there, but I was a bit cagey about that as I needed my privacy. I always had lots to do, like writing letters or washing my hair and I was also learning to play the flute. So I was quite happy and independent and didn’t really need company though there was plenty of it, if and when needed.
There were Master’s Indian disciples who were all learning to be swamis. They wanted to renounce the world and had shaved their heads and wore an orange sort of toga thing. When they were ready, Master was going to make them into full swamis. Most of these junior swamis were very young—just boys, some of them—but even those that weren’t all that young were certainly so at heart. Sometimes they reminded me of a lot of school kids, they were so full of tricks and fun. But I think basically they were very serious—they couldn’t not be, considering how they were renouncing and were supposed to be studying all sorts of very difficult things. The one I liked the best was called Vishwa. I liked him not only because he was the best looking, which he undoubtedly was, but I felt he had a lot going for him. Others said so too—in fact, they all said that Vishwa was the most advanced and was next in line for full initiation. I always let him come and talk to me in my room whenever he wanted to, and we had some interesting conversations.
Then there were Master’s foreign disciples. They weren’t so different from the other Europeans and Americans I had met in other ashrams except that the atmosphere here was so much better and that made them better too. They didn’t have to fight with each other over Master’s favors—I’m afraid that was very much the scene in some of the other ashrams, which were like harems, the way they were all vying for the favor of their guru. But Master never encouraged that sort of relationship, and although of course many of them did have very strong attachments to him, he managed to keep them all healthy. And that’s really saying something because, like in all the other ashrams, many of them were not healthy people; through no fault of their own quite often, they had just had a bad time and were trying to get over it.
Once Master said to me “What about you, Katie?” This was when I was alone with him in his room. He had called me in for some dictation—we were all given little jobs to do for him from time to time, to keep us busy and happy I suppose. Just let me say a few words about his room and get it over with. It was awful. It had linoleum on the floor of the nastiest pattern, and green strip lighting, and the walls were painted green too and had been decorated with calendars and pictures of what were supposed to be gods and saints but might as well have been Bombay film stars, they were so fat and gaudy. Master and all the junior swamis were terribly proud of this room. Whenever he acquired anything new—like some plastic flowers in a hideous vase—he would call everyone to admire and was so pleased and complacent that really it was not possible to say anything except “Yes very nice.”
When he said “What about you, Katie?” I knew at once what he meant. That was another thing about him—he would suddenly come out with something as if there had already been a long talk between you on this subject. So when he asked me that, it was like the end of a conversation, and all I had to do was think for a moment and then I said “I’m okay.” Because that was what he had asked: was I okay? Did I want anything, any help or anything? And I didn’t. I really was okay now. I hadn’t always been but I got so traveling around on my own and then being in this nice place here with him.
This was before the Countess came. Once she was there, everything was rather different. For weeks before her arrival people started talking about her: she was an important figure there, and no wonder since she was very rich and did a lot for the ashram and for Master when he went abroad on his lecture tours. I wondered what she was like. When I asked Vishwa about her, he said “She is a great spiritual lady.”
We were both sitting outside my room. There was a little open space around which several other rooms were grouped. One of these—the biggest, at the corner—was being got ready for the Countess. It was the one that was always kept for her. People were vigorously sweeping in there and scrubbing the floor with soap and water.
“She is rich and from a very aristocratic family,” Vishwa said, “but when she met Master she was ready to give up everything.” He pointed to the room that was being scrubbed: “This is where she stays. And sees—not even a bed—she sleeps on the floor like a holy person. Oh, Katie, when someone like me gives up the world, what is there? It is not such a great thing. But when she does it—” His face glowed. He had very bright eyes and a lovely complexion. He always looked very pure, owing no doubt to the very pure life he led.
Of course I got more and more curious about her, but when she came I was disappointed. I had expected her to be very special, but the only special thing about her was that I should meet her here. Otherwise she was a type I had often come across at posh parties and in the salons where I used to model. And the way she walked toward me and said “Welcome!”—she might as well have been walking across a carpet in a salon. She had a full-blown, middle-aged figure (she must have been in her fifties) but very thin legs on which she took long strides with her toes turned out. She gave me a deep searching look—and that too I was used to from someone like her because very worldly people always do that: to find out who you are and how usable. But in her case now I suppose it was to search down into my soul and see what that was like.
I don’t know what her conclusion was, but I must have passed because she was always kind to me and even asked for my company quite often. Perhaps this was partly because we lived across from each other and she suffered from insomnia and needed someone to talk to at night. I’m a sound sleeper myself and wasn’t always very keen when she came to wake me. But she would nag me till I got up. “Come on, Katie, be a sport,” she would say. She used many English expressions like that: she spoke English very fluently though with a funny accent. I heard her speak to the French and Italian and German people in the ashram very fluently in their languages too. I don’t know what nationality she herself was—a sort of mixture I think—but of course people like her have been everywhere, not to mention their assorted governesses when young.
She always made me come into her room. She said mine was too luxurious, she didn’t feel right in it as she had given up all that. Hers certainly wasn’t luxurious. Like Vishwa had said, there wasn’t a stick of furniture in it and she slept on the floor on a mat. As the electricity supply in the ashram was very fitful, we usually sat by candlelight. It was queer sitting like that with her on the floor with a stub of candle between us. I didn’t have to do much talking as she did it all. She used her arms a lot, in sweeping gestures, and I can still see them weaving around there by candlelight as if she was doing a dance with them; and her eyes, which were big and baby-blue, were stretched wide open in wonder at everything she was telling me. Her life was like a fairy tale, she said. She gave me all the details though I can’t recall them as I kept dropping off to sleep (naturally at two in the morning). From time to time she’d stop and say sharply “Are you asleep, Katie,” and then she would poke me till I said no I wasn’t. She told me how she first met Master at a lecture he had come to give in Paris. At the end of the lecture she went up to him—she said she had to elbow her way through a crowd of women all trying to get near him—and simply bowed down at his feet. No words spoken. There had been no need. It had been predestined.
She was also very fond of Vishwa. It seemed all three of them—i.e. her, Master, and Vishwa—had been closely related to each other in several previous incarnations. I think they had been either her sons or her husbands or fathers, I can’t remember which exactly but it was very close so it was no wonder she felt about them the way she did. She had big plans for Vishwa. He was to go abroad and be a spiritual leader. She and Master often talked about it, and it was fascinating listening to them, but there was one thing I couldn’t understand and that was why did it have to be Vishwa and not Master who was to be a spiritual leader in the West? I’d have thought Master himself had terrific qualifications for it.
Once I asked them. We were sitting in Master’s room and the two of them were talking about Vishwa’s future. When I asked “What about Master?” she gave a dramatic laugh and pointed at him like she was accusing him: “Ask him! Why don’t you ask him!”
He gave a guilty smile and shifted around a bit on his throne. I say throne—it really was that: he received everyone in this room so a sort of dais had been fixed up at one end and a deer skin spread on it for him to sit on; loving disciples had painted an arched back to the dais and decorated it with stars and symbols stuck on in silver paper (hideous!).
When she saw him smile like that, she really got exasperated. “If you knew, Katie,” she said, “how I have argued with him, how I have fought, how I have begged and pleaded on my knees. But he is as stubborn as—as—”
“A mule,” he kindly helped her out.
“Forgive me,” she said (because you can’t call your guru names, that just isn’t done!); though next moment she had worked herself up again: “Do you know,” she asked me, “how many people were waiting for him at the airport last time he went to New York? Do you know how many came to his lectures? That they had to be turned away from the door till we took a bigger hall! And not to speak of those who came to enroll for the special three-week Meditation-via-Contemplation course.”
“She is right,” he said. “They are very kind to me.”
“Kind! They want him—need him—are crazy with love and devotion—”
“It’s all true,” he said. “But the trouble is, you see, I’m a very, very lazy person.” And as he said this, he gave a big yawn and stretched himself to prove how lazy he was: but he didn’t look it—on the contrary, when he stretched like that, pushing out his big chest, he looked like he was humming with energy.
That evening he asked me to go for a stroll with him. We walked by the river, which was very busy with people dipping in it for religious reasons. The temples were also busy—whenever we passed one, they seemed to be bursting in there with hymns, and cymbals, and little bells.
Master said: “It is true that everyone is very kind to me in the West. Oh they make a big fuss when I come. They have even made a song for me—it goes—wait, let me see—”
He stopped still and several people took the opportunity to come up to ask for his blessing. There were many other holy men walking about but somehow Master stood out. Some of the holy men also came up to be blessed by him.
“Yes, it goes: ‘He’s here! Our Master-ji is here! Jai jai Master! Jai jai He!’ They stand waiting for me at the airport, and when I come out of the customs they burst into song. They carry big banners and also have drums and flutes. What a noise they make! Some of them begin to dance there and then on the spot, they are so happy. And everyone stares and looks at me, all the respectable people at the airport, and they wonder ‘Now who is this ruffian?’”
He had to stop again because a shopkeeper came running out of his stall to crouch at Master’s feet. He was the grocer—everyone knew he used false weights—as well as the local moneylender and the biggest rogue in town, but when Master blessed him I could see tears come in his eyes, he felt so good.
“A car has been bought for my use,” Master said when we walked on again. “Also a lease has been taken on a beautiful residence in New Hampshire. Now they wish to buy an airplane to enable me to fly from coast to coast.” He sighed. “She is right to be angry with me. But what am I to do? I stand in the middle of Times Square or Piccadilly, London, and I look up and there are all the beautiful beautiful buildings stretching so high up into heaven: yes I look at them but it is not them I see at all, Katie! Not them at all!”
He looked up and I with him, and I understood that what he saw in Times Square and Piccadilly was what we saw now—all those mountains growing higher and higher above the river, and some of them so high that you couldn’t make out whether it was them, with snow on top, or the sky with clouds in it.
Before the Countess’s arrival, everything had been very easygoing. We usually did our meditation, but if we happened to miss out, it never mattered too much. Also there was a lot of sitting around gossiping or trips to the bazaar for eats. But the Countess put us on a stricter regime. Now we all had a timetable to follow, and there were gongs and bells going off all day to remind us. This started at 5 A.M. when it was meditation time, followed by purificatory bathing time, and study time, and discussion time, and hymn time, and so on till lights-out time. Throughout the day disciples could be seen making their way up or down the mountainside as they passed from one group activity to the other. If there was any delay in the schedule, the Countess got impatient and clapped her hands and chivied people along. The way she herself clambered up and down the mountain was just simply amazing for someone her age. Sometimes she went right to the top of the ashram where there was a pink plaster pillar inscribed with Golden Rules for Golden Living (a sort of Indian Ten Commandments): from here she could look all around, survey her domain as it were. When she wanted to summon everyone, she climbed up there with a pair of cymbals and how she beat them together! Boom! Bang! She must have had military blood in her veins, probably German.
She had drawn up a very strict timetable for Vishwa to cover every aspect of his education. He had to learn all sorts of things; not only English and a bit of French and German, but also how to use a knife and fork and even how to address people by their proper titles in case ambassadors and big church people and such were drawn into the movement as was fully expected. Because I’d been a model, I was put in charge of his deportment. I was supposed to teach him how to walk and sit nicely. He had to come to my room for lessons in the afternoons, and it was quite fun though I really didn’t know what to teach him. As far as I was concerned, he was more graceful than anyone I’d ever seen. I loved the way he sat on the floor with his legs tucked under him; he could sit like that without moving for hours and hours. Or he might lie full length on the floor with his head supported on one hand and his ascetic’s robe falling in folds around him so that he looked like a piece of sculpture you might see in a museum. I forgot to say that the Countess had decided he wasn’t to shave his hair anymore like the other junior swamis but was to grow it and have long curls. It wasn’t long yet but it was certainly curly and framed his face very prettily.
After the first few days we gave up having lessons and just talked and spent our time together. He sat on the rug and I on the bed. He told me the story of his life and I told him mine. But his was much better than mine. His father had been the station master at some very small junction, and the family lived in a little railway house near enough the tracks to run and put the signals up or down as required. Vishwa had plenty of brothers and sisters to play with, and friends at the little school he went to at the other end of town; but quite often he felt like not being with anyone. He would set off to school with his copies and pencils like everyone else, but halfway he would change his mind and take another turning that led out of town into some open fields. Here he would lie down under a tree and look at patches of sky through the leaves of the tree, and the leaves moving ever so gently if there was a breeze or some birds shook their wings in there. He would stay all day and in the evening go home and not tell anyone. His mother was a religious person who regularly visited the temple and sometimes he went with her but he never felt anything special. Then Master came to town and gave a lecture in a tent that was put up for him on the parade ground. Vishwa went with his mother to hear him, again not expecting anything special, but the moment he saw Master something very peculiar happened: he couldn’t quite describe it, but he said it was like when there is a wedding on a dark night and the fireworks start and there are those that shoot up into the sky and then burst into a huge white fountain of light scattering sparks all over so that you are blinded and dazzled with it. It was like that, Vishwa said. Then he just went away with Master. His family were sad at first to lose him, but they were proud too like all families are when one of them renounces the world to become a holy man.
Those were good afternoons we had, and we usually took the precaution of locking the door so no one could interrupt us. If we heard the Countess coming—one good thing about her, you could always hear her a mile off, she never moved an inch without shouting instructions to someone—the moment we heard her we’d jump up and unlock the door and fling it wide open: so when she looked in, she could see us having our lesson—Vishwa walking up and down with a book on his head, or sitting like on a dais to give a lecture and me showing him what to do with his hands.
When I told him the story of my life, we both cried. Especially when I told him about my first marriage when I was only sixteen and Danny just twenty. He was a bass player in a group and he was really good and would have got somewhere if he hadn’t freaked out. It was terrible seeing him do that, and the way he treated me after those first six months we had together, which were out of this world. I never had anything like that with anyone ever again, though I got involved with many people afterward. Everything just got worse and worse till I reached an all-time low with my second marriage, which was to a company director (so-called, though don’t ask me what sort of company) and a very smooth operator indeed besides being a sadist. Vishwa couldn’t stand it when I came to that part of my story. He begged me not to go on, he put his hands over his ears. We weren’t in my room that time but on top of the ashram by the Pillar of the Golden Rules. The view from here was fantastic, and it was so high up that you felt you might as well be in heaven, especially at this hour of the evening when the sky was turning all sorts of colors though mostly gold from the sun setting in it. Everything I was telling Vishwa seemed very far away. I can’t say it was as if it had never happened, but it seemed like it had happened in someone else’s life. There were tears on Vishwa’s lashes, and I couldn’t help myself, I had to kiss them away. After which we kissed properly. His mouth was as soft as a flower and his breath as sweet; of course he had never tasted meat nor eaten anything except the purest food such as a lamb might eat.
The door of my room was not the only one that was locked during those hot afternoons. Quite a few of the foreign disciples locked theirs for purposes I never cared to inquire into. At first I used to pretend to myself they were sleeping, and afterward I didn’t care what they were doing. I mean, even if they weren’t sleeping, I felt there was something just as good and innocent about what they actually were doing. And after a white—when we had told each other the story of our respective lives and had run out of conversation—Vishwa and I began to do it too. This was about the time when preparations were going on for his final Renunciation and Initiation ceremony. It’s considered the most important day in the life of a junior swami, when he ceases to be junior and becomes a senior or proper swami. It’s a very solemn ceremony. A funeral pyre is lit and his junior robe and his caste thread are burned on it. All this is symbolic—it means he’s dead to the world but resurrected to the spiritual life. In Vishwa’s case, his resurrection was a bit different from the usual. He wasn’t fitted out in the standard senior swami outfit—which is a piece of orange cloth and a begging bowl—but instead the Countess dressed him up in the clothes he was to wear in the West. She had herself designed a white silk robe for him, together with accessories like beads, sandals, the deer skin he was to sit on, and an embroidered shawl.
Getting all this ready meant many trips to the bazaar, and often she made Vishwa and me go with her. She swept through the bazaar the same way she did through the ashram, and the shopkeepers leaned eagerly out of their stalls to offer their salaams, which she returned or not as they happened to be standing in her books. She was pretty strict with all of them—but most of all with the tailor whose job it was to stitch Vishwa’s new silk robes. We spent hours in his little shop while Vishwa had to stand there and be fitted. The tailor crouched at his feet, stitching and restitching the hem to the Countess’s instructions. She and I would stand back and look at Vishwa with our heads to one side while the tailor waited anxiously for her verdict. Ten to one she would say “No! Again!”
But once she said not to the tailor but to me: “Vishwa stands very well now. He has a good pose.”
“Not bad,” I said, continuing to look critically at Vishwa and in such a way that he had a job not to laugh.
What she said next however killed all desire for laughter: “I think we could end the deportment lessons now,” and then she shouted at the tailor: “What is this! What are you doing! What sort of monkey work do you call that!”
I managed to persuade her that I hadn’t finished with Vishwa yet and there were still a few tricks of the trade I had to teach him. But I knew it was a short reprieve and that soon our lessons would have to end. Also plans were now afoot for Vishwa’s departure. He was to go with the Countess when she returned to Europe in a few weeks’ time; and she was already very busy corresponding with her contacts in various places, and all sorts of lectures and meetings were being arranged. But that wasn’t the only thing worrying me: what was even worse was the change I felt taking place in Vishwa himself, especially after his Renunciation and Initiation ceremony. I think he was getting quite impressed with himself. The Countess made a point of treating him as if he were a guru already, and she bowed to him the same way she did to Master. And of course whatever she did everyone else followed suit, specially the foreign disciples. I might just say that they’re always keen on things like that—I mean, bowing down and touching feet—I don’t know what kick they get out of it but they do, the Countess along with the rest. Most of them do it very clumsily—not like Indians who are born to it—so sometimes you feel like laughing when you look at them. But they’re always very solemn about it and afterward, when they stumble up again, there’s a sort of holy glow on their faces. Vishwa looked down at them with a benign expression and he also got into the habit of blessing them the way Master did.
Now I stayed alone in the afternoons, feeling very miserable, specially when I thought of what was going on in some of the other rooms and how happy people were in there. After a few days of this I couldn’t stand being on my own and started wandering around looking for company. But the only person up and doing at that time of day was the Countess, who I didn’t particularly want to be with. So I went and sat in Master’s room, where the door was always open in case any of us needed him any time. Like everybody else, he was often asleep that time of afternoon but it didn’t matter. Just being in his presence was good. I sat on one of the green plastic benches that were ranged round his room and looked at him sleeping, which he did sitting upright on his throne. Quite suddenly he would open his eyes and look straight at me and say “Ah, Katie” as if he’d known all along that I was sitting there.
One day there was an awful commotion outside. Master woke up as the Countess came in with two foreign disciples, a boy and a girl, who stood hanging their heads while she told us what she had caught them doing. They were two very young disciples; I think the boy didn’t even have to shave yet. One couldn’t imagine them doing anything really evil, and Master didn’t seem to think so. He just told them to go away and have their afternoon rest. But because the Countess was very upset he tried to comfort her, which he did by telling about his early life in the world when he was a married man. It had been an arranged marriage of course, and his wife had been very young, just out of school. Being married for them had been like a game, specially the cooking and housekeeping part, which she had enjoyed very much. Every Sunday she had dressed up in a spangled sari and high-heeled shoes and he had escorted her on the bus to the cinema where they stood in a queue for the one-rupee seats. He had loved her more than he had ever loved anyone or anything in all his life and had not thought it possible to love so much. But it only lasted two years, at the end of which time she died of a miscarriage. He left his home then and wandered about for many years, doing all sorts of different jobs. He worked as a motor mechanic, and a salesman for medical supplies, and had even been in films for a while on the distribution side. But not finding rest anywhere, he finally decided to give up the world. He explained to us that it had been the only logical thing to do. Having learned during his two years of marriage how happy it was possible for a human being to be, he was never again satisfied to settle for anything less; but also seeing how it couldn’t last on a worldly plane, he had decided to look for it elsewhere and help other people to do so with him.
I liked what he said, but I don’t think the Countess took much of it in. She was more in her own thoughts. She was silent and gloomy, which was very unusual for her. When she woke me that night for her midnight confessions, she seemed quite a different person: and now she didn’t talk about her fairy-tale life or her wonderful plans for the future but on the contrary about all the terrible things she had suffered in the past. She went right back to the time she was in her teens and had eloped with and married an old man, a friend of her father’s, and from there on it was all just one long terrible story of bad marriages and unhappy love affairs and other sufferings that I wished I didn’t have to listen to. But I couldn’t leave her in the state she was in. She was crying and sobbing and lying face down on the ground. It was eerie in that bare cell of hers with the one piece of candle flickering in the wind, which was very strong, and the rain beating down like fists on the tin roof.
The monsoon had started, and when you looked up now, there weren’t any mountains left, only clouds hanging down very heavily; and when you looked down, the river was also heavy and full. Every day there were stories of pilgrims drowning in it, and one night it washed over one bank and swept away a little colony of huts that the lepers had built for themselves. Now they no longer sat sunning themselves on the bridge but were carted away to the infectious-diseases hospital. The rains came gushing down the mountain right into the ashram so that we were all wading ankle-deep in mud and water. Many rooms were flooded and their occupants had to move into other people’s rooms, resulting in personality clashes. Everyone bore grudges and took sides so that it became rather like the other ashrams I had visited and not liked.
The person who changed the most was the Countess. Although she was still dashing up and down the mountain, it was no longer to get the place in running order. Now she tucked up her skirts to wade from room to room to peer through chinks and see what people were up to. She didn’t trust anyone but appointed herself as a one-man spying organization. She even suspected Master and me! At least me—she asked me what I went to his room for in the afternoon and sniffed at my reply in a way I didn’t care for. After that one awful outburst she had, she didn’t call me at night anymore but she was certainly after me during the day.
She guarded Vishwa like a dragon. She wouldn’t even let me pass his room, and if she saw me going anywhere in that direction, she’d come running to tell me to take the other way around. I wasn’t invited anymore to accompany them to the bazaar but only she and Vishwa set off, with her holding a big black umbrella over them both. If they happened to pass me on the way, she would tilt the umbrella so he wouldn’t be able to see me. Not that this was necessary as he never seemed to see me anyway. His eyes were always lowered and the expression on his face very serious. He had stopped joking around with the junior swamis, which I suppose was only fitting now he was a senior swami as well as about to become a spiritual leader. The Countess had fixed up a throne for him at the end of Master’s room so he wouldn’t have to sit on the floor and the benches along with the rest of us. When we all got together in there, Master would be at one end on his throne and Vishwa at the other on his. At Master’s end there was always lots going on—everyone laughing and Master making jokes and having his fun—but Vishwa just sat very straight in the lotus pose and never looked at anyone or spoke, and only when the Countess pushed people to go and touch his feet, he’d raise a hand to bless them.
With the rains came flies and mosquitoes, and people began to fall sick with all sorts of mysterious fevers. The Countess—who was terrified of germs and had had herself pumped full of every kind of injection before coming to India—was now in a great hurry to be off with Vishwa. But before they could leave, he too came down with one of those fevers. She took him at once into her own room and kept him isolated in there with everything shut tight. She wouldn’t let any of us near him. But I peeped in through the chinks, not caring whether she saw me or not. I even pleaded with her to let me come in, and once she let me but only to look at him from the door while she stood guard by his pillow. His eyes were shut and he was breathing heavily and moaning in an awful way. The Countess said I could go now, but instead I rushed up to Vishwa’s bed. She tried to get between us but I pushed her out of the way and got down by the bed and held him where he lay moaning with his eyes shut. The Countess shrieked and pulled at me to get me away. I was shrieking too. We must have sounded and looked like a couple of madwomen. Vishwa opened his eyes and when he saw me there and moreover found that he was in my arms, he began to shriek too, as if he was frightened of me and that perhaps I was the very person he was having those terrible fever dreams about that made him groan.
It may have been this accidental shock treatment but that night Vishwa’s fever came down and he began to get better. Master announced that there was going to be a Yagna or prayer-meet to give thanks for Vishwa’s recovery. It was to be a really big show. Hordes of helpers came up from the town, all eager to take part in this event so as to benefit from the spiritual virtue it was expected to generate. The Meditation Hall was repainted salmon pink and the huge holy OM sign at one end of it was lit up all around with colored bulbs that flashed on and off. Everyone worked with a will, and apparently good was already beginning to be generated because the rains stopped, the mud lanes in the ashram dried up, and the river flowed back into its banks. The disciples stopped quarreling, which may have been partly due to the fact that everyone could move back into their own rooms.
The Countess and Vishwa kept going down into the town to finish off with the tailors and embroiderers. They also went to the printer who was making large posters to be sent abroad to advertise Vishwa’s arrival. The Countess often asked me to go with them: she was really a good-natured person and did not want me to feel left out. Especially now that she was sure there wasn’t a dangerous situation working up between me and Vishwa. There she was right. I wasn’t in the least interested in him and felt that the less I saw of him the better. I couldn’t forget the way he had shrieked that night in the Countess’s room as if I was something impure and dreadful. But on the contrary to me it seemed that it had been he who was impure and dreadful with his fever dreams. I didn’t even like to think what went on in them.
The Great Yagna began and it really was great. The Meditation Hall was packed and was terribly hot not only with all the people there but also because of the sacrificial flames that sizzled as more and more clarified butter was poured on them amid incantations. Everyone was smiling and singing and sweating. Master was terrific—he was right by the fire stark naked except for the tiniest bit of loincloth. His chest glistened with oil and seemed to reflect the flames leaping about. Sometimes he jumped up on his throne and waved his arms to make everyone join in louder; and when they did, he got so happy he did a little jig standing up there. Vishwa was on the other side of the hall also on a throne. He was half reclining in his spotless white robe; he did not seem to feel the heat at all but lay there as if made out of cool marble. He reminded me of the god Shiva resting on top of his snowy mountain. The Countess sat near him, and I saw how she tried to talk to him once or twice but he took no notice of her. After a while she got up and went out, which was not surprising for it really was not her scene, all mat noise and singing and the neon lights and decorations.
It went on all night. No one seemed to get tired—they just got more and more worked up and the singing got louder and the fire hotter. Other people too began to do little jigs like Master’s. I left the hall and walked around by myself. It was a fantastic night, the sky sprinkled all over with stars and a moon like a melon. When I passed the Countess’s door, she called me in. She was lying on her mat on the floor and said she had a migraine. No wonder, with all that noise. I liked it myself but I knew that, though she was very much attracted to Eastern religions, her taste in music was more for the Western classical type (she loved string quartets and had had a long affaire with a cellist). She confessed to me that she was very anxious to leave now and get Vishwa started on his career. I think she would have liked to confess more things, but I had to get on. I made my way uphill past all the different buildings till I had reached the top of the ashram and the Pillar of the Golden Rules. Here I stood and looked down.
I saw the doors of the Meditation Hall open and Master and Vishwa come out. They were lit up by the lights from the hall. Master was big and black and naked except for his triangle of orange cloth, and Vishwa was shining in white. I saw Master raise his arm and point it up, up to the top of the ashram. The two of them reminded me of a painting I’ve seen of I think it was an angel pointing out a path to a pilgrim. And like a pilgrim Vishwa began to climb up the path that Master had shown him. I stood by the Pillar of the Golden Rules and waited for him. When he got to me, we didn’t have to speak one word. He was like a charged dynamo; I’d never known him like that. It was more like it might have been with Master instead of Vishwa. The drums and hymns down in the Meditation Hall also reached their crescendo just then. Of course Vishwa was too taken up with what he was doing to notice anything going on around him, so it was only me that saw the Countess come uphill. She was walking quite slowly and I suppose I could have warned Vishwa in time but it seemed a pity to interrupt him, so I just let her come on up and find us.
Master finally settled everything to everyone’s satisfaction. He said Vishwa and I were to be a couple, and whereas Vishwa was to be the Guru, I was to embody the Mother principle (which is also very important). Once she caught on to the idea, the Countess rather liked it. She designed an outfit for me too—a sort of flowing white silk robe, really quite becoming. You might have seen posters of Vishwa and me together, both of us in these white robes, his hair black and curly, mine blond and straight. I suppose we do make a good couple—anyway, people seem to like us and to get something out of us. We do our best. It’s not very hard; mostly we just have to sit there and radiate. The results are quite satisfactory—I mean the effect we seem to have on people who need it. The person who really has to work hard is the Countess because she has to look after all the business and organizational end. We have a strenuous tour program. Sometimes it’s like being on a one-night stand and doing your turn and then packing up in a hurry to get to the next one. Some of the places we stay in aren’t too good—motels where you have to pay in advance in case you flit—and when she is very tired, the Countess wrings her hands and says “My God, what am I doing here?” It must be strange for her who’s been used to all the grand hotels everywhere, but of course really she likes it. It’s her life’s fulfillment. But for Vishwa and me it’s just a job we do, and all the time we want to be somewhere else and are thinking of that other place. I often remember what Master told me, what happened to him when he looked up in Times Square and Piccadilly, and it’s beginning to happen to me too. I seem to see those mountains and the river and temples; and then I long to be there.