Color of Newborn Flowers.”
In 1949 Krishnaji was to discover the flavor of India: the splendor of its rivers, mountains, and countryside; its squalor, poverty, and sorrow; and the dust of the paths on which barefoot sages and seekers had walked for centuries. He was feeling into the Indian mind that dwelt in abstractions and delighted in ideas; he was growing intensely aware of the shadows that separated the ideal from action.
From Delhi he traveled by train to Varanasi. A man sharing his compartment, interested in death and physical phenomena, questioned Krishnaji on the truth of death and on continuity. As the train came to a stop at a local station, an interesting thing happened.
“The train had come to a stop,” said Krishnaji, “and just then a two-wheeled carriage was passing, drawn by a horse. On the carriage was a human corpse, wrapped in an unbleached cloth and tied to two long green-bamboo poles, freshly cut. From some village it was being taken to the river to be burnt. As the carriage moved over the rough road the body was being brutally shaken, and under the cloth the head was obviously getting the worst of it. There was only one passenger in the carriage besides the driver; he must have been a near relative, for his eyes were red with much crying. The sky was the delicate blue of early spring and children were playing and shouting in the dirt of the road. Death must have been a common sight, for everyone went on with what they were doing. Even the inquirer into death did not see the carriage and its burden.”1
The house in which Krishnaji lived at Rajghat in Varanasi, the luminous city of pilgrimage, was built on the site of ancient Kasi on the high ground that arose near the Sangam, the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Varuna. It was here, at the most sacred point of its journey to the sea, that the river took a great curve and swept north towards its source. It was here near the ancient site of the temple Adi Kesava that the Buddha, having attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, is likely to have crossed the sacred river, traveling by ferry, to set foot on the riverbank. Along this ancient road of the pilgrim the Buddha had walked to the deer park at Sarnath to preach his first sermon. The river Varuna bifurcated the land, dividing urban Varanasi from the rural countryside.
Through centuries the seers of this land had come to the banks of the Ganga in Kasi and left the seed of their teaching dormant in the soil. The Buddha, Kapila Muni, Adi Shankara—these great teachers had sat under the shade of ancient gnarled trees, on the ghats or along the riverbank. The villages had names that bore testimony to their presence.
A city known for learning and seeking, for skepticism and doubt and the hard brilliance of the dialectic mind, it was to Kasi that Adi Shankara had come to establish his supremacy. Through the centuries iconoclasts had swept through the city, destroying temples and shrines; but the seed of doubt, of enquiry, and the essence of the great teachings, which resided neither in temple nor in a single book, had been held by scholars and priests. In secret conclave, they kept alive and resonant the petals of a perennial wisdom. Along the banks of this river dialogue and a probing into the “within” of nature and mind had evolved.
Mango and neem trees, flowering cork and peepul grew on the Ganga’s sacred banks. Ruins of temples and ashrams were overgrown with plumed grass and wild creeper. Every dawn Krishnaji stood in darkness on the veranda of his house and watched fire enter the rising sun, creating the world anew. A boat floated past, its sails unfurled. Swollen carcasses—human and animal, vultures sitting perched on their bodies—were carried by the waters. Everything was in slow motion, peaceful; the monsoon currents had ended with their frenzy and devastation, the waters like the poor people who lived on its banks had dignity, whatever their burden.
Achyut and Rao Sahib Patwardhan, Maurice Friedman, Sanjeeva Rao, Nandini, and I with Radhika, my ten-year-old daughter, were in Varanasi. Every evening we went for a walk with Krishnaji on the road of the pilgrim. The white flowers of the cork trees that bordered the road to the riverbank had scattered their fragrance, and perfect white blossoms lay under our feet. The rains had been plentiful; the river had overflown its banks and the rickety bamboo-and-earthen bridge that appeared during the dry months had not yet been erected. We had to cross the river by ferry, plied by a boatman. The sense of the never-changing rhythm of man’s life was revealed in Kasi. A sense of the archaic permeated the land and the people. The unending past was mirrored in the lithe, dark-skinned boatmen on the waters, the women carrying water pots on their heads, the fishermen casting nets.
One evening, a dozen little children and goats stood with their herdsmen, waiting for the ferry on the banks of the river. Krishnaji picked up a baby goat, the gesture swift, natural; his leap into the boat was sure and precise; the children laughed to see the little goat wag its tail and nestle close to the gentle stranger. We crossed the river and the bleating goat went back to its mother.
Seeing a stone on the path, Krishnaji would remove it so that it might not hurt the naked foot of a villager. He was watchful, listening to the sounds of the river, watching people who passed, the waters, trees, birds, and the village dogs who barked incessantly. He would be quiet and we would be quiet with him.
On one of his walks he spoke. “Man is, because he is related; without relationship, man is not. To understand life you have to understand yourself in action, in relationship to people, property, and ideas.”
He turned and pointed to the flowing river and then to an old peepul tree. “Most of us are not aware of our relationship to nature. When we see a tree we see it with a utilitarian view—how to get to its shade, how to use its wood. Similarly, we treat the earth and its products. There is no love of the earth, only a usage of earth. If we loved the earth there would be frugality of the things of the
earth. We have lost a sense of tenderness, of sensitivity. Only in the renewal of that can we understand what is relationship. That sensitivity does not come by hanging a few pictures or by putting flowers in your hair. It only comes when the utilitarian attitude is put aside. Then you no longer divide the earth, then you no longer call the earth yours or mine.”
Krishnaji was giving public talks at Kammacha in the heart of the city. As in all his talks the people who attended were Buddhist monks, sannyasis, the devotees from the Theosophical Society who still regarded Krishnaji as the world teacher, tourists, educators, and a large number of young people who came out of curiosity. The great pandits of Varanasi, steeped in the tradition of learning, grammarians and logicians, tantricks and devotees, were also there to listen to this teacher who denied all systems and all gurus. Some of them met him alone. Little discussion was possible, because of difficulties of language, but Rao and Achyut were there to translate.
Krishnaji had numerous discussions with the members of the Rishi Valley Trust, who managed the schools in Varanasi. We discussed the place of authority and fear in education. Krishnaji expressed his dissatisfaction with the approach of the management of the educational institutions and the quality of the teachers at Rajghat. No one quite understood what had to be done. Pandit Iqbal Narain Gurtu, a much respected citizen of Varanasi, who for years had been connected with Mrs. Besant’s work and later with Krishnaji’s schools, was fearful of change. He dug his feet into the ground and declared that any drastic change would be disastrous. Uttar Pradesh was old-fashioned, traditional. Only gradual change was possible. The word “gradual,” however, did not exist in Krishnaji’s dictionary; action was immediate, arising out of seeing the fact of “what is.” So there were marathon meetings.
The Rishi Valley Trust was being shaken to its roots. The members, sensing Krishnaji’s concern at the state of the institutions, submitted their resignations and a new group of members were elected.
In 1948 the Rishi Valley Trust consisted of two independent institutions—a Children’s School at Rajghat, a Boy’s School and a Women’s College in the city of Kammacha, within the Theosophical Society Compound. Another educational complex had been established in the deep south at Rishi Valley in Andhra Pradesh, where Subba Rao was head of a coeducational residential school. Subba Rao, a dedicated man capable of arousing affection and loyalty amongst his students, had built the school with spartan simplicity. Krishnaji’s absence for many years, and the lack of a clear direction as to the purpose of the school, had led to a deterioration of standards at all levels in both Rishi Valley and Rajghat. The teachers were mediocre. Government grants limited all flexibility or possibility of change. Vested interests were entrenched and determined to see that the status quo continued.
On his return to Bombay from Varanasi in March, Krishnaji stayed at my residence, Himmat Nivas on Dongersey Road. It was a rambling flat with
spacious rooms and high ceilings. The spaces had dignity, and Krishnaji filled it with his presence; a quietude lingered even when he was absent.
A large number of visitors came to meet Krishnaji. Amongst them was Morarji Desai, who was then finance minister of Bombay, a state that at the time included both Gujarat and Maharashtra. Krishnaji and he discussed the sacred books of India. Sensing a certain smugness and “holier than thou” attitude in Morarjibhai,1 Krishnaji said that he had not read the Bhagavad Gita and had no
use for sacred books. Morarjibhai was horrified, and told me later that he was unimpressed.
Krishnaji now felt strongly that the existing situation with the Rishi Valley Trust and the schools in Rajghat should not be allowed to continue. At a meeting on February 8, 1949, Krishnaji was to say, “A school born of friction cannot be creative. Unanimity amongst the workers is essential. The school should be treated as an organic whole. There should be concern with how to make the center alive. A dead center can only produce dead institutions. If people are really interested, Rajghat cannot remain with the status quo.”
It was at this meeting that the decision was taken that Rao Sahib Patwardhan would go and work in Rajghat. He went there a few months later. The situation needed deep uprooting of crystalized structures, mentally and physically. Rajghat needed an explosion. But Rao Sahib was hesitant. Either he was not prepared passionately to locate the problem, giving it the one pointed energy the situation demanded, or he did not know how to tackle the problem. His mind, caught in structures, sought alternatives. He did not perceive that the negating of the existing situation would throw up the new. Energy, with its driving passion, and a cleaving vision were needed in Rajghat. Rao Sahib made friends, he was warm and affectionate, everyone loved him; Iqbal Narain Gurtu, the tough doyen of Rajghat, was his close friend. But something in his personal life, or his incapacity to abandon his ideals and live in uncertainty, made any creative action impossible. At the end of the year Rao Sahib returned to Poona, and Rajghat continued to be a mirror of the stagnation that had held Varanasi for centuries.
One morning in early 1949 a tiny, shaven-headed figure dressed in saffron robes rang the bell at the doors of Himmat Nivas. She gave her name as Chinmoyee. The servant who had answered the bell could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl, and came to me to say that a swami was at the door. Knowing Krishnaji’s special affection for the sannyasi and for the saffron robe, I told K and he met Chinmoyee immediately. She was to return again.
The story of her life symbolizes one important aspect of the Indian ethos, in which the revolutionary spirit and religion integrate. Chinmoyee, whose original name was Tapas, came from a family of Bengali revolutionaries. Her father and brother had died in jail. Her mother had worked in an educational institution and brought up her two daughters. According to a close friend of Tapas, “She was a brilliant mathematician and a keen student of astronomy.”
1 Bhai means brother in Gujarati. It is a suffix attached to the name of an elder person as a term of respect.
In Western India a first name is rarely used for a man or woman. In Gujarat, bhai is used with the first name for a man, behen or sister for a woman. It is the equivalent of the North Indian ‘ji’.
After graduating, she was for some time headmistress of the Sister Nivedita School in Calcutta. She had always wanted to lead a religious life, and after her mother’s death, at the age of thirty-four, she left home in search of a sannyas guru. She spent some time in the Ramakrishna Mission, and six months in Anandmai Ma’s ashram. Life in these places did not satisfy her. She spent her time in Varanasi meeting scholars like Gopinath Kaviraj and Gobind Gopal Mookherjee.
It was at this time that she met the great scholar saint of Bengal, Anirvanji. He agreed to be her sannyas guru and gave her the name Chinmoyee. For the next four years she was with him, helping him first with his work of translating the Vedas, and then Shri Aurobindo’s Life Divine into Bengali. They were then living in Almora, in Uttar Pradesh. It was in connection with collecting funds for the publication of Anirvanji’s works that she went to Bombay. A friend suggested she go to hear Krishnamurti, who was then giving talks in Bombay. She went to hear him and then sought an interview.
That interview seems to have changed her whole being—it certainly changed her whole life. Back in Almora, she proceeded to arrange affairs for Anirvanji; and as soon as she could hand over her duties to another, she left him. She resumed her original name, Tapas, and gave up the saffron robes.
Completely on her own, some inner urge prompted her to undertake a trip to Kailash and Manasarovar Lake in Tibet that first summer, sacred sites of pilgrimage. Kailash, a cone-shaped mountain, is regarded as the abode of Shiva and his consort Parvati. Manasarovar Lake is situated to one side of Kailash. The azure waters of this lake are calm, and mythical swans are believed to appear on its waters. The journey to Kailash is fraught with great dangers. (The route to Kailash from the Tibetan side has recently been opened to pilgrims by the Government of China.) Alone and unaccompanied, she set out on a most hazardous journey through passes over 18,000 feet high, joining a party of pilgrims only when she was no longer permitted to travel alone.
In 1950 she returned to see Krishnaji. She was unrecognizable: Wearing a white kurta and pyjama, her gray-flecked hair had grown shoulder length. She came to Krishnaji and said, “I have come.” He replied, “Good”; and she slowly became part of his surroundings.
In the years to come she would travel to every part of India where Krishnaji spoke: in time she began to look after Krishnaji’s wardrobe. She would slip into the house unnoticed and make herself invisible—even to the extent of hiding behind doors—unpack Krishnaji’s bags, wash and iron his clothes, arrange them in the cupboard, and potter around. Though Tapas herself only wore white, she had developed a fine sense of color. It was she who got her friends to buy natural honey-colored cottons and textured bark-colored wild silks for Krishnaji’s
kurtas. She transformed his wardrobe with an unusual eye for the rare and
beautiful. But she was fiercely possessive of her role. The slightest disorder in the room was corrected and the servants concerned were spoken to severely. They regarded her as a terror; but Tapas, being a sannyasin, wiped away all irritation, anger within them. They touched her feet and carried on. She sat through discussions but never participated, though her friends tell me that she
had deep understanding of the teaching and used to speak to small groups wherever she went.
When Krishnaji was not in India she would disappear into the mountains alone, unafraid—in the centuries-old tradition, she was a wanderer. It was impossible to determine her age. In the twenty-five years I knew her she hardly aged. She eventually fell ill with an illness that could not be diagnosed. Her body gradually wasted away, and she died of a heart attack in 1976.
Nandini’s problems with her husband, Bhagwan Mehta, were approaching crisis. A few months after meeting Krishnaji, she had told her husband she wanted to lead a celibate life. Inevitably, the situation exploded. Sir Chunilal Mehta was bewildered, torn between his son and his guru; for it was universally believed that Krishnaji’s teaching had influenced Nandini and led her to cease her physical relationship with her husband. It was assumed that Nandini was immature and that her intention was born out of this immaturity. Sir Chunilal sought Krishnaji’s intervention, hoping that Krishnaji would persuade Nandini to change her mind; or, given time and with Krishnaji’s absence, Nandini’s capricious decision would change. But the situation could not be defused.
It is not my intention to explore the marital incidents that were to lead to an explosion in my sister’s home. The situation was made for whispers and gossip, and the “elite” in the vast metropolitan city were agitated. Men looked afresh at their wives, the clans closed in. The eyes of the dwellers of Malabar Hill turned to the huge, rambling house on Ridge Road, furnished with the trappings of a rich merchant prince, rich for generations, where women kept their heads covered and singing was taboo. Lady Chunilal, Nandini’s mother-in-law, was a