Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Mrs Osborne was thinking the arrangements through. ‘I assume you can make your water without excessive trouble. As for the other, Kuppu here’ — indicating the gardener’s wife — ‘can bring you water with which to clean yourself, but her caste, though humble enough, is too high to permit her to rinse out the commode, let alone attending you more intimately than that. We will perhaps have to pay a little something to a road-sweeper to clean things up. A Colony person.’ By ‘Colony’ she seemed to mean pariah or untouchable .

With all the arrangements made, at least in Mrs Osborne’s head, she came to sit down by me. ‘You did not say you were so small,’ she said. It’s true that I had been careful in my letters to be offhand about my disability, since the last thing I wanted to do was to give the ashram any excuse to reject me. ‘Would you not rather be taller?’ It was an odd question to come from someone who was small herself, a little old lady who was somehow both plump and drawn.

I assumed that this was a trick question, and formulated a neutrally humble response. ‘I have learned to accept this body without mistaking its illusory nature. And as the Bible says, Which of you by thinking can add one cubit to his stature? ’

‘Very good, John, Matthew chapter 6, verse 27. If you want to quote Scripture you must hope you can keep up with me! But did I say anything about a cubit? A cubit would be an ambitious target. But if change is offered you should take advantage. I’m very sure that I can increase your height — yes, even in the limited time available. How long is it that you stay? Five weeks?’

‘A little less, now. But can you really make me taller? Wouldn’t that be a miracle?’

‘It is only medicine. All medicine is miraculous when it works. Faith will be amply rewarded, but is not required for the efficacy of the procedure, which is entirely scientific. Are you familiar with homœopathy? We should measure you right away, and once again before you leave, and … we shall see what we shall see.’ She gave a little chuckle.

I had heard of homœopathy. It was something that my GP Flanny denounced as culpable faddishness, just as she sneered at vegetarianism, which gave me the immediate idea that there might be something in it (whatever it was). Certainly the presence of a compound vowel in the word, drawing my attention like an insect’s compound eye, spoke strongly in its favour. It was on my list of things to explore — but it was far further down the list than India.

‘You should pay attention to homœopathy, young man,’ she said. ‘I can show you books.’ One thing I didn’t want was a reading holiday. I hadn’t come half-way round the world to find myself in an open-air outpost of Bourne End Library, The Verandah Annexe perhaps, with someone who seemed a much less sympathetic librarian than Mrs Pavey, pushing her own interests rather than exploring selflessly on my behalf.

Perhaps she sensed my resistance, because she went on to say, ‘Homœopathy is one of the few good things that the West can boast. Of course there are local equivalents, in India above all, but that is not my skill. And I have had a number of illustrious patients, who could have chosen other practitioners. Who could indeed have healed themselves if they had chosen to.’ She was looking almost skittish now, and I found that I was beginning to be intrigued.

‘Who do you mean?’

‘I mean Sri Bhagavan.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You treated Ramana Maharshi. What ailment did you treat Bhagavan for?’

‘A small growth appeared on his elbow. He submitted to my treatment, as also to others more drastic. I was unable to achieve results — the prospects had never been good. Homœopathy is better suited to prevention than cure of entrenched conditions. Others treated him with knives rather than my little pills. The ashram doctor removed the growth, but it returned and was diagnosed as a sarcoma. Three more times his flesh was gouged to the bone. Three more times the growth returned. Only when amputation was recommended did he refuse further treatment.’

I knew some of the circumstances. When asked if his arm hurt, he replied, in a gentle voice and with his distinctive radiant smile, ‘If you know the pain of a scorpion bite, then imagine a thousand scorpion bites — it is somewhat like that.’ He made it clear that this sort of physical collapse was only to be expected, like the blowing of a fuse when a humble appliance (in this case a human body) has been plugged into an overwhelming source of power.

I was yawning so hard it hurt my jaws. My apparatus was overwhelmed with new impressions and changes of scene. Darkness had come without my noticing. Before I went to bed Mrs Osborne summoned Rajah Manikkam one more time. He helped me stand by the wall of the house, and Mrs Osborne marked my height on the wall. I’d seen Mum do the same with Peter as he grew, in the kitchen at Trees, but of course there had been no point in wasting pencil lead by measuring me — though I had a late growth spurt during my time at Burnham Grammar School, by courtesy of the surgeon’s knife, when in that mystical intervention my leg was shortened and made longer. It felt strange to be the object of so hopeful a ritual, in this unfamiliar place.

Then Rajah Manikkam helped me to take my shoes off and to lie down on the bedframe. It was still hot, but I had certainly expected some sort of blanket or even sheet. None arrived, and I didn’t dare to ask for any such embodiment of Western cosseting. If Mrs Osborne thought nothing of sleeping on the road while doing pradakshina she would hardly be indulgent if a pilgrim wanted pillows to be plumped up for his benefit. Already I seemed to personify the folly of offering hospitality too freely to strangers. I nerved myself to ask for the pee bottle to be left within my reach. Wishing me goodnight, Mrs Osborne said, ‘Tomorrow you will visit the ashram and meet Ganesh.’

‘Couldn’t I pay my homage to Arunachala? For so long I have seen the mountain in my dreams.’

‘Young man, you must be as patient as Arunachala himself. For one thing, we must decide how someone with your limitations is to undertake the ritual circumambulation of the mountain. At the ashram you will meet fellow devotees and you will be fed. The holy mountain does not offer lunch.’ She looked at me shrewdly. ‘Perhaps you do not wish to meet Ganesh?’ It was true that I wasn’t in a hurry to make the acquaintance of the gentleman who had seemed to offer encouragement, then tried to put the kibosh on my pilgrimage before it had begun. ‘He is your great friend, I assure you,’ she said, and I mimed one more yawn as an alternative to answering her.

‘Don’t be alarmed if you hear strange cries in the morning. Peacocks live wild in this area — their cries are disturbing to those unfamiliar with them.’ I was able to assure Mrs Osborne that on the contrary, peacock cries would make me feel at home, since Bourne End was infested with them. I didn’t go into the whole saga of Tom Stoppard and the Abbotsbrook Estate. It was too long a story to tell a new acquaintance.

Brusque, peremptory dawn

I slept poorly that first night, buffeted by alternating gusts of exhaustion and exhilaration. I had been provided with a bed, but none of the institutions that I had been in, not notably sybaritic, would really have called it by that name. It was only a metal frame with planks laid across it, sans mattress, sans pillow. By morning my body was as sore as it had been for many years. Snakes and scorpions had left me well alone, but I wasn’t spared by mosquitoes. I let them feed with a willing heart, though I couldn’t really classify them as holy just by virtue of living on the mountain. On my toes they battened especially.