A Writer's Notebook (81 page)

The backwaters of Travancore. They are narrow canals, more or less artificial, that is to say natural stretches of water have been joined up by embanked channels to make a waterway from Trivandrum to Cochin. On each side grow coconuts, and thatched houses with mud roofs stand at the water's edge, each surrounded by its little compound in which grow
bananas, papaya and sometimes a jack tree. Children play; women sit about, or pound rice; in frail boats, sometimes carrying loads of coconuts or leaves or provender for cattle, men and boys slowly paddle up and down; on the banks people fish. I saw one man with a bow and arrow and a little bundle of fish that he had shot. Everyone bathes. It is green, cool and quiet. You get a very curious impression of pastoral life, peaceful and primitive, and not too hard. Now and then a big barge passes, poled by two men from one town to another. Here and there is a modest little temple or a tiny chapel, for a large proportion of the population is Christian.

The river is grown over with the water hyacinth. The plants, with their delicate mauve flowers, rooted not in soil but in water, float along, and as your boat passes through, making a channel of clear water, they are pushed aside; but no sooner has it passed than they drift back with the stream and the breeze, and no trace that you have gone that way remains. So with us who have made some small stir in the world.

The Dewan. I had been told that he was not only an astute but an unscrupulous politician. Everyone agreed that he was as clever as he was crooked. He was a thickset, sturdy man, no taller than I, with alert but not very large eyes, a broad brow, a hooked nose, full lips and a small rounded chin. He had a thick crop of fuzzy hair. He was dressed in a white dhoty, a white tunic fitting close round the neck, and a white scarf; his feet were bare and he wore sandals which he slipped on and off. He had the geniality of the politician who for years has gone out of his way to be cordial with everyone he meets. He talked very good English, fluently, with a copious choice of words, and he put what he had to say plainly and with logical sequence. He had a resonant voice and an easy manner. He
did not agree with a good deal that I said and corrected me with decision, but with the courtesy that took it for granted I was too intelligent to be affronted by contradiction. He was of course very busy, having all the affairs of the state in his charge, but seemed to have enough leisure to talk for the best part of an hour on Indian metaphysics and religion as though there were nothing that interested him more. He seemed well read not only in Indian literature, but in English, but there was no indication that he had any acquaintance with the literature or thought of other European countries.

When I began to speak of religion in India as being the basis of all their philosophy, he corrected me. “No,” he said, “that is not so; there is no religion in India in your sense of the word; there are systems of philosophy, and theism, Hindu theism, is one of its varieties.”

I asked him if educated, cultured Hindus had still an active belief in Karma and transmigration. He answered with emphasis. “I absolutely believe in it myself with all the strength of my being. I am convinced that I have passed through innumerable lives before this one and that I shall have to pass through I do not know how many more before I secure release. Karma and transmigration are the only possible explanations I can see for the inequalities of men and for the evil of the world. Unless I believed in them I should think the world meaningless.”

I asked him if, believing this, the Hindu feared death less than the European. He took a little time to think of his answer, and, as I had already discovered was his way, while he was considering it, talked of something else so that I thought he was not going to answer. Then he said: “The Indian is not like the Japanese who has been taught from his earliest years that life is of no value and that there are a number of reasons for which he must not hesitate for an instant to sacrifice it. The Indian does not fear death because it will take him away from life, he fears it because there is uncertainty in what condition he may be born next. He can have no assurance that
he will be born a Brahmin, an angel or even a God, he may be born a Sudra, a dog or a worm. When he thinks of death it is the future he fears.”

The viña-player. He was a stoutish man of forty, clean-shaven, with all the front part of his head shaven too; his hair, long at the back, was tied in a knot. He was dressed in a dhoty and a collarless shirt. He sat on the floor to play. His instrument was highly decorated, carved in low relief and ending in a dragon's head. He played for a couple of hours, now and then breaking into a few bars of song, music hundreds of years old, but some much less, music of the last century when under a Maharajah of Travancore, himself an accomplished musician, there was great enthusiasm for the art. It is elaborate music, which requires all your attention, and I do not think I could have followed it at all if I hadn't had some acquaintance with modern music. It is slowly rhythmical and when your ear gets accustomed to it various and tuneful. Of late years the composers have been not a little influenced by modern music, European music, and it is queer in these Eastern melodies to discern a faint recollection of the bagpipes or the martial din of a military band.

A Hindu house. The owner was a judge who had inherited it from his fathers. He was dead, and I was received by his widow, a stout woman in white with white curly hair hanging down her back and bare feet. You entered by a door in a blank wall and found yourself in a sort of loggia with a carved wooden ceiling of jackwood. It was decorated with lotus leaves and in the centre a bas-relief of Siva dancing. Then came a small dusty courtyard in which were growing crotons and cassias. Then the house. In front was a veranda with hanging eaves, showing the open woodwork of the roof, beautifully joined, and with a carved ceiling of a rich brown
like that of the loggia. At each end was a raised part under which were receptacles in which the owner normally kept his clothes and which served as seats. Here he received his guests. At the back were two doors with rich locks and hinges of decorated brass; they led to two small dark rooms, with one bed in each, and in one of which the master of the house had slept. At one side was a closed aperture which led to a space in which the grain was kept. Going through a small door at the side you came into another courtyard; at the back of this were the women's apartments and on the sides the kitchen and other small rooms. I was shown into one room in which was some poor, shabby and old-fashioned European furniture.

The first courtyard at night would surely lose its dusty neglected aspect, and under the moon and the stars, cool and silent, form a romantic setting. I should have liked to listen there to the viña-player, his absorbed and serious face lit by the smoky flame of a brass lamp, its wick floating in coconut oil.

The Yogi. He was of average height for an Indian, of a dark honey colour, with close-cropped white hair and a close-cropped white beard. He was not stout, but plump. Though he wore nothing but a white loin-cloth he looked neat, very clean and almost dapper. He walked slowly, leaning on a stick, and he had a slight limp. His mouth was somewhat large, with thickish lips, and his eyes were neither so big nor so lustrous as are the eyes of most Indians; the whites were bloodshot. He bore himself with simplicity and at the same time with dignity. He was cheerful, smiling, polite; he did not give me the impression of a scholar, but rather of a sweet-natured old peasant. He came into the room in which I was lying down on a pallet bed, followed by two or three disciples, and after a few words of cordial greeting seated himself. I was not very well, having fainted a little time before, and he sat close to me. It was because he had been told that I was not well enough
to go to the hall in which he ordinarily sat that he came to the little room into which I had been carried.

After the first few moments he ceased to look at me and with a sidelong stare of a peculiar fixity gazed as it were over my shoulder. His body was absolutely still, but one of his feet tapped now and then a little on the floor. He remained thus for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and they told me afterwards that he was concentrating in meditation on me. Then he broke off and asked me whether I wished to say anything to him or to ask him any questions. I was feeling weak and ill and said so, whereupon he smiled and said: “Silence also is conversation.” He turned his head away again slightly and resumed his concentrated meditation, again looking as it were over my shoulder. He remained like this for perhaps another quarter of an hour, no one saying a word, the other persons in the room with their eyes riveted on him, and then got up, bowed, smiled a farewell, and slowly, leaning on his stick, followed by his disciples, limped out of the room.