Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

She asked for a clear description of the cow, and nodded as I passed on everything that I could remember. I hesitated to mention the streak of shit on her flank, but this rather lowly detail didn’t make her stop nodding. ‘This is certainly a photism, a visual manifestation of Lakshmi the goddess, in fact of course — though the correspondence is not exact — of Lakshmi the disciple, an extraordinary cow who achieved enlightenment on June 18th, 1948.’ I didn’t quite see how Mrs Osborne could be so definite, but this was a lady pickled in certainties who could go for years without saying ‘perhaps’. I would have liked to quarrel with that rather gossamer word photism , since the massive presence of the cow, the overwhelming likelihood that it would send me flying, were not things registered by the eye alone.

‘We have no choice but to call her a disciple of Bhagavan. Even as a calf she would come and place her head at his feet. That was before I came here, of course, but I was there on the day that Sri Bhagavan held her head in his hands when she was in the throes of her death. He watched over her almost as he had done with his own mother when she shed her body. Her samadhi is at the ashram.’

Samadhi meaning resting-place. By etymology a putting together, joining, completion, and so either the state of bliss or a place of rest. The actual cow festival is on January 15th, but I didn’t think Lakshmi should be made to wait. Taking a cue from Lewis Carroll, I would celebrate her unbirthday. Mrs Osborne helped me prepare a puja for Lakshmi. Puja is I suppose the elementary form of worship in Hinduism. Chanting is more abstract, and meditation still more so. That’s the order in which they are ranked for the benefit of those who think in terms of progression. But physical puja has its place, there’s no doubt about that.

Mrs Osborne gave me guidance about the offering I should make: a miniature meal for the god, laid out on a banana-leaf. A few grains of rice, a little pile of vegetables, a dab of sambhar . Mountain banana was particularly pleasing to the Lakshmi she knew, she said, the historical one. This foreshortened feast appealed to many deep memories — it was a snack of savoury reminiscence in itself. I remembered Mum’s doctrine that every forkful I put in my mouth should ideally contain each element of what was on the plate, the meal in microcosm.

We discussed whether the offering should be taken to the shrine in the ashram. Eventually we decided that it should be fed to an actual cow. Mrs O brought out an image of Lakshmi onto the verandah for my benefit. An image wasn’t strictly necessary, since the real shrine is in your heart. We waved joss-sticks around — always a pleasure in its own right. Then we entrusted the little meal to Rajah Manikkam, who took it away and fed it to the cow of his choice, a white cow if he could find one, shit-streak not required.

Bloated with a pilgrim’s blood

At night I pondered the difficulty of my quest and prayed for softness in that awful bed. My compassion for the mosquitoes biting my toes had lasted all of a day. I had given them a good night’s feed, with a willing heart, but enough was enough. There’s such a thing as taking liberties. After that, I was all in favour of squashing them and bother the karma. I even wondered if we could get hold of some poison somehow. Wouldn’t the mosquitoes be likely to be reborn in better lives, rewarded for dying while bloated with a pilgrim’s blood?

Then when Peter came, I acquired a secret weapon in the fight for a good night’s sleep. A dog followed us home from the market. We fed it on vada scraps and anything else that came to hand. It wasn’t a house dog but a street dog, wily and craven. Peter had named him Yogi Bear, after the cartoon character, a sweetly clueless creature to whom he bore no resemblance whatever. I’m sure Peter really chose the name out of fond mockery of my religion, but it stuck even after he had gone.

The dog was skinny, he was fidgety and his fur was as coarse as a wire brush, but he was an absolute godsend in the night. I could lean on him just enough to change the position of my spine, and get a little relief from the ordeal of the bed. In the mornings he would make himself scarce, though I expect Kuppu had spotted him and was turning a blind eye.

Even with the dog in place my sleep was fitful, and I would take in impressions which fully registered only later. Sleep is a mist subject to intermittent thinning, with occasional patches of clear visibility. So I was dimly aware that in the early hours Mrs Osborne had crept out onto the verandah, carrying a kerosene lamp of some sort, and crept away again. It can’t have been long after three. Time for Lucia’s morning meditation, before the abrupt arrival of dawn stacked the odds against inwardness. Like any good hostess she was quietly making sure that all was well with her guest. Did I have everything I needed?

Then she crept back holding something just out of sight. In my half-sleep I registered that this hunchback was suddenly growing very tall, and then that she had produced a very nasty-looking stick. Without a word she brought it cracking down on the dog, on my innocent bedmate and physiotherapy cushion. Who yelped and ran. I was shocked, frightened and in my bleary-eyed way actually very angry that this vegetarian devotee of a religion of respect for all creation should harbour such a core of rage and cruelty. What sort of person gets up early to meditate and casually brutalises an animal before she starts?

This demonic incarnation of Mrs Osborne gave a nod of satisfaction and returned to the house, so that the conversation which I so badly needed to have with her about how she squared such behaviour with her faith had to wait till morning.

After those few hours’ delay, though, I felt awkward raising the subject, which was dishonourable and absurd. It wasn’t that my feelings had eased, but the good manners in which I had been brought up intervened, and I was very aware of feeling rude and disobliging. I gave less good an account of myself in the argument than I should have. I don’t think I was ever fully rested during the entire five weeks of my stay in India, but that morning broken sleep and emotional upset conspired to make me ineffective.

I pleaded that the dog was helping me sleep, and got the usual reply of Nonshenshe , and the familiar boast of how well she slept, despite her age, on a bare floor. I tried to explain one more time that our situations were different, but she obviously concluded that I was a softy. Even after the initial conjuring of the bed by her and Rajah Manikkam I hadn’t been satisfied — the drawback of that kind of bed being that the knots loosen unevenly, so that a few stay taut and dig into you while the others start to lower you to the ground. More than once she and the gardener had made adjustments, winding tapes round the bed to reinforce the slackened ropes and hold them in place.

I had no alternative but to bring up matters of doctrine. ‘Didn’t Bhagavan warn us never to abuse animals round Arunachala, since they might be siddhas in animal form?’

‘You forget, John, that I have seen that scabby dog hanging around and scratching itself for months. A siddha might take the form of a dog’ — and here her delivery became positively venomous — ‘but would certainly be immune to fleas. On the other hand it might very well be a demon.’ She regarded the matter as closed, and moved away before I could remind her that Bhagavan himself in states of extreme inwardness had been infested with worse things than fleas — his flesh had been eaten by ants.

It points to my oddly intermediate state of mind that summer that I could accept a cow on the mountainside being a goddess, but not a dog on the verandah being a demon.