V. Naipaul - The Mystic Masseur

‘My dress is a little dusty,’ Mr Stewart admitted, ‘but I am still sound in wind and limb.’ He brightened. ‘I knew I was going to meet you again. Do you remember our first meeting?’

‘I really sorry about that.’

‘Oh, I understand. But we must have a talk soon. I feel I can talk to you. The vibrations are right. No, don’t deny it. The vibrations are there all right.’

Ganesh smiled at the compliment and in the end accepted an invitation to tea. He did so only out of politeness and had no intention of going, but a talk with Ramlogan made him change his mind.

‘He is a lonely man, sahib,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It have nobody here who really like him and, believe me, I don’t think he half as mad as people say. I would go if I was you. You go get on all right with him, seeing that both of you is educated people.’

So Ganesh went to the thatched hut outside Parrot Trace where Mr Stewart now lived. From the outside it looked like any other hut, grass roof and mud walls, but inside it was all order and simplicity. There was a small bed, a small table, and a small chair.

‘A man needs no more,’ Mr Stewart said.

Ganesh was about to sit in the chair without being asked when Mr Stewart said, ‘Nooh! Not that one.’ He lifted up the chair and showed it. ‘Something I made myself, but I fear it is a trifle unreliable. Made from local materials, you know.’

Ganesh was more interested in Mr Stewart’s clothes. He was dressed conventionally, khaki trousers and white shirt, and there was no sign anywhere of the yellow robe.

Mr Stewart divined Ganesh’s interest. ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear. No spiritual significance, I’ve decided.’

Mr Stewart showed Ganesh some day statuettes he had made of Hindu gods and goddesses and Ganesh was astonished, not by the artistry, but by the fact that Mr Stewart had made them at all.

Mr Stewart pointed to a water-colour on the wall. ‘I’ve been working on that picture for years. Once or twice a year I get a new idea for it and it has to be drawn all over again.’

The water-colour, done in blues and yellows and browns, depicted a number of brown hands reaching out for a yellow light in the top left-hand corner.

‘This, I think, is rather interesting.’ Ganesh followed Mr Stewart’s finger and saw a blue shrunk hand curling backwards from the yellow light. ‘Some see Illumination,’ Mr Stewart explained. ‘But they do sometimes get burnt and withdraw.’

‘Why all the hands brown?’

‘Hindu hands. Only people really striving after the indefinite today. You look worried.’

‘Yes, I worried.’

‘About life?’

‘I think so,’ Ganesh said. ‘Yes, I think I worried about life.’

‘Doubts?’ Mr Stewart probed.

Ganesh only smiled because he didn’t know what Mr Stewart meant.

Mr Stewart sat down on the bed next to him and said, ‘What do you do?’

Ganesh laughed. ‘Nothing at all. I guess I just doing a lot of thinking.’

‘Meditating?’

‘Yes, meditating.’

Mr Stewart jumped up and clasped his hands before the water-colour. ‘Typical!’ he said, and closed his eyes as if in ecstasy. ‘Typical!’

Then he opened his eyes and said, ‘But now — tea.’

He had taken a lot of trouble to prepare tea. There were sandwiches of three sorts, biscuits, and cakes. And although Ganesh was beginning to like Mr Stewart and wanted to eat his food, all his Hindu instincts rose high and he was nauseated to bite into a cold egg-and-cress sandwich.

Mr Stewart saw. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot, anyway.’

‘Oh, I like it. But I more thirsty than hungry, that’s all.’

They talked, and talked. Mr Stewart was anxious to learn all of Ganesh’s problems.

‘Don’t think you are wasting your time meditating,’ he said. ‘I know the things that are worrying you, and I think one day you may find the answer. One day you may even bring it all out in a book. If I weren’t so terribly afraid of getting involved I might have written a book myself. But you must find your own spiritual rhythm before you start doing anything. You must stop being worried about life.’

‘All right,’ Ganesh said.

Mr Stewart talked like a man who had saved up conversation for years. He told Ganesh all about his life, his experiences in the First World War, his disillusionment, his rejection of Christianity. Ganesh was entranced. Apart from the insistence that he was a Kashmiri Hindu, Mr Stewart was as sane as any of the masters at the Queen’s Royal College; and as the afternoon wore on, his blue eyes ceased to be frightening and looked sad.

‘Why you don’t go to India then?’ Ganesh asked.

‘Politics. Don’t want to get involved in any way. You can’t imagine how soothing it is here. One day you may go to London — I pray not — and you will see how sick you can get gazing from your taxi at the stupid, cruel faces of the mob on the pavements. You can’t help being involved there. Here there is no such need.’

The tropical night fell suddenly and Mr Stewart lit an oil lamp. The hut felt very small and very sad, and Ganesh was sorry that soon he had to go and leave Mr Stewart to his loneliness.

‘You must write your thoughts,’ Mr Stewart said. ‘They may help other people. You know, I felt all along that I was going to meet someone like you.’

Before Ganesh left, Mr Stewart presented him with twenty copies of The Science of Thought Review.

‘They have given me a great deal of comfort,’ he said. ‘And you may find them useful.’

Ganesh said in surprise, ‘But is not an Indian magazine, Mr Stewart. It say here that it print in England.’

‘Yes, in England,’ Mr Stewart said sadly. ‘But in one of the prettier parts. In Chichester, in Sussex.’

That was the end of their conversation and Ganesh saw no more of Mr Stewart. When he called at the hut some three weeks later, he found it occupied by a young labourer and his wife. Many years afterwards Ganesh learnt what had happened to Mr Stewart. About six months after their conversation he had returned to England and joined the army. He died in Italy.

This was the man whose memory Ganesh so handsomely honoured in the dedication of his autobiography:

TO LORD STEWART OF CHICHESTER

Friend and Counsellor

of Many Years

Ganesh had become more than a regular visitor at Ramlogan’s. He was eating there every day now; and when he called, Ramlogan no longer allowed him to remain in the shop, but invited him in immediately to the room at the back. This caused Leela to retreat to the bedroom or the kitchen.

And even the back room began to undergo improvements. The table got an oilcloth cover; the unpainted, mildewed partitions became gay with huge Chinese calendars; the hammock made from a sugar sack was replaced by one made from a flour sack. A vase appeared one day on the oilcloth on the table; and less than a week later paper roses bloomed in the vase. Ganesh himself was treated with increasing honour. At first they fed him out of enamel dishes. Now they gave him earthenware ones. They knew no higher honour.

The table itself was to offer a further surprise. One day a whole series of booklets on The Art of Salesmanship appeared on it.

Ramlogan said, ‘I bet you does miss all the big books and thing you did have in Port of Spain, eh, sahib?’

Ganesh said he didn’t.

Ramlogan strove to be casual. ‘I have a few books myself. Leela put them out on the table.’

‘They look pretty and nice.’

‘Education, sahib, is one hell of a thing. Nobody did bother to send me to school, you know. When I was five they send me out to cut grass instead. But look at Leela and she sister. Both of them does read and write, you know, sahib. Although I don’t know what happening to Soomintra since she married that damn fool in San Fernando.’