Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Now,’ she said in English, ‘the idea is simply this: all we are gatting is surrandered to lotus feet of Lord.’

The foreigners nodded vigorously and smiled.

‘Now I must mantion there will be maditation in English by Baba himself,’ announced Pushpa.

But Sanaki Baba was in no mood for meditation that day. He was chatting away on whatever took his fancy to the Professor and the young preacher, both of whom he had brought up on to the white-sheeted platform. Pushpa looked displeased.

Perhaps sensing this, Sanaki Baba relented, and a very abbreviated meditation session began. He closed his eyes for a couple of minutes and told his audience to do the same. Then he said a long ‘Om’. Finally, in a confident, warm and peaceful voice, in atrociously accented English, pausing long between each phrase, he murmured:

‘The river of love, the river of bliss, the liver of right. . ‘Take in environment and supreme being through nostrils. .

‘Now you will feel anand and alok — blissness and lightness. Feel, do not think. . ’

Suddenly he got up and began to sing. Someone struck up the rhythm on the tabla, someone else began clashing small cymbals together. Then he began to dance. Seeing Dipankar he said: ‘Get up, Divyakar, get up and dance. And you, ladies, get up. Mataji, get up, get up,’ he said, dragging a reluctant old woman of sixty to her feet. Soon she was dancing away by herself. Other women began dancing. The foreigners began dancing, and danced with great gusto. Everyone was dancing, each by himself and all together — and smiling with joy and contentment. Even Dipankar, who hated dancing, was dancing to the sound of the cymbals and the tabla and the obsessively chanted name of Krishna, Krishna, Radha’s beloved, Krishna.

The cymbals, tabla, and chanting stopped, and the dancing was over as suddenly as it had begun.

Sanaki Baba was smiling benignantly all around and sweating.

Pushpa had some announcements to make, but before she did so, she surveyed the audience and frowned with concentration. For a few seconds she gathered her thoughts. Then she told them rather reprovingly in English: ‘You have now dancing and sermon and sankirtan and maditation. And the love. But when you are in offices and factories, then what? Then Babaji is not with you in physical form. Then Babaji is with you, but not in physical form. So you must not become attached to the dancing and the practice. If you get attached, it is no use. You must have the saakshi bhaava, the feeling of witnessing, or else what is the use?’

Clearly Pushpa was not entirely happy. She then announced the time of dinner and mentioned that Sanaki Baba would be speaking to a huge congregation at noon the next day. She provided clear instructions on how to get there.

Dinner was simple but good: curds, vegetables, rice — and rasmalai for dessert. Dipankar managed to sit next to Pushpa. Everything she said seemed to him to be utterly charming and utterly true.

‘I used to be in teaching,’ she said to him in Hindi. ‘I was tied to so many things. But then this came, and Baba said to me, manage it all, and I felt as free as a bird. Young people are not stupid,’ she added seriously. ‘Most religious sadhus have destroyed religion. They like big funds, big followings, complete control. I am left free by Babaji. I have no boss. Even IAS officers, even Ministers have a boss. Even the Prime Minister has a boss. He must answer to the people.’

Dipankar nodded his head in vigorous assent.

All of a sudden he felt like renouncing everything — Sri Aurobindo, the Chatterji mansion, the possibility of a job in a bank, his hut under the laburnum tree, all the Chatterjis including Cuddles — and being free — free and boss-less as a bird.

‘How true,’ he said, looking at her wonderingly.

Postcard 1

Dear Dada,

I am writing to you from a tent near the Ganga, lying on a bed of straw. It’s hot here, and noisy, because you can always hear loudspeakers with bhajans and kirtans and other announcements and the whistles of the frequent trains, but I am at peace. I have found my Ideal, Dada. I had a sense on the train coming here that it would be in Brahmpur that I would discover who I truly was and the direction of my individual existence, and I even hoped that I might find my Ideal. But since the only girl I knew in Brahmpur was Lata, I was worried lest it was she who should turn out to be my Ideal. That is partly why I have so far avoided visiting her family, and have deferred meeting Savita and her husband till after the Pul Mela is over. But now I need not worry.

Her name is Pushpa, and she is indeed a flower. But she is a serious person, so our pushpa-lila will consist of throwing ideas and feelings at each other, though I would like to sprinkle her with roses and jasmines. As Robi Babu says:

. . for me alone your love has been waiting

Through worlds and ages awake and wandering,

Is this true?

That my voice, eyes, lips have brought you relief,

In a trice, from the cycle of life after life,

Is this true?

That you read on my soft forehead infinite Truth,

My ever-loving friend,

Is this true?

Just looking at her, listening to her is enough for me, though. I think I have gone beyond mere physical attraction. It is the Female Principle that I adore in her.

Postcard 2

A mouse is playing at my feet, and last night I was kept awake by it — and, of course, by my thoughts. But this is all the lila, the play of the Universe, and I have plunged into it with great happiness. I am afraid the first postcard disappeared quickly, so I’m continuing on another one of the two dozen self-addressed postcards that Ma insisted on my taking with me.

Also, you must forgive my handwriting, which is bad. Pushpa has wonderful handwriting. I saw her write my name in the entry book in English, and she put a mystical full moon of a dot above my ‘i’.

How are Ma and Baba and Meenakshi and Kuku and Tapan and Cuddles and yourself? I do not miss any of you as yet, and when I think of you, I try to think of you with a disinterested love. I do not even miss my thatched hut where I meditate — or ‘maditate’, as Pushpa, with her delightful accent and warm smile, puts it. She says we should be free — free as birds — and I have decided to travel after the Mela wherever my spirit takes me in order that I can truly discover the Entirety of

Postcard 3

my own soul and the Being of India. Just wandering around at the Pul Mela has helped me to realize that the Spiritual Source of India is not the Zero or Unity or Duality or even the Trinity, but Infinity itself. If I felt that she might agree, I would ask her to travel with me, but she is a devotee of Sanaki Baba, and has decided to devote her whole life to him.

But I realize I haven’t told you who he is. He is the holy man, the baba in whose compound I am staying down here on the sands of the Ganga. Mr Maitra brought me to see him, and Sanaki Baba decided I should stay here. He is a man of great wisdom and sweetness and humour. Mr Maitra told him how unhappy and peace-less he felt, and Sanaki Baba provided him with some relief and told him that he would later explain to him how to meditate. When he left, Babaji turned to me and said: ‘Divyakar’—he likes to call me Divyakar sometimes for some reason—‘I crash into a table in the darkness, yet it is not the table that has hurt me but the lack of light. So, with old age, all these small things hurt, because the light of meditation is absent.’ ‘But meditation, Baba,’ I said, ‘is not easy. You make it sound as if it were easy.’ ‘Is sleep easy?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But not for an insomniac,’ he said. ‘And meditation is easy, but you must gain that ease again.’