Cedilla (53 page)

When we returned to Mrs Osborne’s house it was well after midnight and I was exhausted, but she still seemed to have plenty of energy. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking she was waiting up for me, even worrying about me. I was in the hands of the mountain. Sleeping on the bare earth certainly seemed to suit Mrs O. Being so much less firm than her formidable personality, it must have felt actively soft beneath her.

She told me that she had left a book out for my inspection, and that she would bring me out a fruit juice to refresh me. ‘The local juice is good,’ she said, ‘though not of course as refreshing as the sour cherry juice they make in Poland.’

These were significant concessions, the book and the juice both delivered to me on the verandah, and I felt that my sincerity as a pilgrim was really beginning to wear down Mrs Osborne’s resistance. It was with faint dismay that I noted that the book was by Somerset Maugham, in 1970 definitively out of literary fashion. It was
The Ra
zor’s Edge
. I certainly didn’t expect to have anything to learn from this shallow stylist – this
storyteller
. I was going up to Cambridge in a few months, after all. I was up-to-date. I had discussed Lorca’s passion for another man with a Catalonian-British housewife, in a Bourne End kitchen wreathed in the smoke of our Ducados. I was far too grown-up for Maugham. Perhaps Mrs Osborne had brought the wrong book out to the verandah? A widow for only a matter of weeks, she couldn’t be quite as composed as she seemed.

But no, I was the one who was confused. When Mrs Osborne came out with the mango juice, which was thick even in dilution and extremely delicious, she set me straight about that. ‘A famous English
writer came here to do research on a guru, a spiritual teacher who might give the hero of his next novel a smattering of an Eastern perspective. Mr Maugham came to do some research. He was neither tourist nor pilgrim, but he found something a little more real than he anticipated. He knew enough to bring a basket of fruit as an offering, but the meeting with Ramana Maharshi did not go as he had planned.

‘Mr Somerset Maugham came here expecting to find a charlatan. But he fainted before he even entered the presence of Bhagavan Sri Ramana. Major Chadwick, who was his host, sent for Bhagavan rather than a doctor, and Bhagavan stroked Somerset Maugham’s forehead until he came to himself. Then Bhagavan said, “It is finished. Heart talk is all talk. True talk ends in silence.” Mr Maugham did not say one word, but when he wrote his book he did not describe a charlatan. I have marked the passage for your interest.’

Then Mrs Osborne asked me casually about my tour of the mountain in the dark. ‘Some people find their first
pradakshina
disappointing. Perhaps this is true of you?’ I could have said that I had received more in the way of enlightenment from the Ghost Train at the funfair, and that was without benefit of riding the damn thing, just from watching people’s faces as the cars clattered out into daylight. I managed to say that I was too humble to expect an instant impact even from a profound experience.

‘That is a healthy state of mind.
Pradakshina
is not like a lightning-bolt, but like a single mighty turn of the spiritual generator that charges one’s batteries. I trust your companion was informative?’ I made gracious noises. Then she sprang her trap. ‘Ganesh is a fine teacher, if someone is willing to learn.’

‘
Ganesh?
’ I gurgled. I felt utterly mortified and outmanoeuvred. Bamboozled, even. I had known that at some stage I would be in the same room as Ganesh, since he was a luminary of the ashram, after all. Even before I left Britain I had decided on the attitude I would assume when I met the man who had tried to discourage me from making my visit. I would be friendly but distant. We were united, after all, by more things than divided us. Fellow devotees – that would be my line. I was as much a follower of Ramana Maharshi in my own way as he was in his. But now Ganesh had sneaked in under my radar by
presenting himself in the guise of helper, and escorting me on my first
pradakshina
, as if he was offering a belated blessing on my presence. And all of this insidious conciliation had sneaked up on me without my knowledge.

Mrs O had a certain malicious twinkle in her eyes when she said, ‘Perhaps you were not looking forward to meeting Ganesh, John. It is a mistake to waste time on such feelings. Certainly you should know that the letter Ganesh sent you in England was written in consultation with me. He did not know quite what to do, and we agreed on a course of action. Why not ask him about our discussion tomorrow? He will be coming to take you to the ashram. And now I am tired, and you must be in a similar state – except that you have a bed which tonight, I trust, will meet your exacting standards.’ There were times when it would have been a relief to know, by peeping into her bedroom in a way that I never could, that she was a hypocrite about her austerity and actually rolled herself up for the night in bedding so luxurious it made my Margaret Erskine Dream-Cloud seem like wire wool.

Ganesh turned up again shortly after breakfast the next day, lively and smiling. I had wanted to approach the precincts of the ashram with an attention washed entirely clean of worldly concerns, but that really wasn’t on the cards after what Mrs O had told me the previous night.

This time Rajah Manikkam did the pushing, which made me wonder why he hadn’t been used on the previous occasion. I knew that Westerners were technically unclean to many Hindus, and one of the advantages of the hand-folding
namaskaaram
gesture is that it offers a polite abstention from touch. Selfishly I approved, since people who are keen to shake my hand are usually in pain socially, and likely to inflict some of their own. Now I wondered if touching the wheelchair wasn’t itself under a taboo for a brahmin like Ganesh, which would mean that on our first
pradakshina
, when he told me about Parvati’s penance on Arunachala, he had taken on some trifling mortification of his own.

I felt it was up to me to take the initiative, and I started the conversation formally. ‘My name is John Cromer, I am a devotee from England, and you I think are Ganesh, head of the ashram.’ Ideally
I would have wanted to have a proper face-to-face confrontation, to
thrash things out
in bold British style, but that wasn’t possible with him walking alongside me. I would have liked to fix him hypnotically with my gaze, a weapon that can be powerful on occasion but is all too easy to dodge. The ray-gun has rusted onto its tripod.

‘Indeed I am Ganesh, but I am by no means “head” of the ashram. What need of a head as long as there are hearts? After Bhagavan’s
mahasamadhi
his younger brother Chinnaswami was there to oversee the ashram. Then my father T. N. Venkataraman succeeded him. I am editor of
The Mountain Path
with Mrs Osborne, which is privilege and labour enough.’ Much of the labour, I imagined, had to do with keeping his collaborator sweet. ‘But let there be a new beginning between us. You are here, you are welcome, you are doing
pradakshina
, perhaps it has started to take effect. You may remember that I wrote you a letter that did not encourage you to continue with your visit, and perhaps you wonder why.’

‘Mrs Osborne said she had something to do with it.’

‘Indeed so. Yours was an unusual case, John Cromer, both in the strength of your devotion and in the obstacles in your path. Obstacles which, as perhaps you remember, were only belatedly revealed to us. I proposed that I remind you of what Bhagavan said about internal and external change: that if you could realise yourself in the jungle, you could do so anywhere. An outward journey was not necessary, and could simply be a distraction. Mrs Osborne is – can we agree? – capable of great determination. She said instead that we should not preach, but simply be as discouraging as possible on the mundane level. Her thinking (and for this also there is much precedent) was that if your visit was meant to happen then no such strictures would have the slightest effect.’

I could hear him smile at this point. A smile is a perfectly audible aspect of conversation. It colours not only speech but silence. ‘It seems that determination is not exclusively Mrs Osborne’s province. I hope you understand our …
stratagem
, and the fact that we are very happy for its failure.’

‘I promise I will try.’ By this time we had reached the ashram, and Ganesh said, ‘I shall take you to the Old Hall and then perhaps leave you to meditate. If you need me just mention my name to anyone you
see. Ganesh, the god after whom I am named, is the god who removes obstacles, and I would be happy to live up to my name, despite your past doubts.’

I had been determined to memorise my first impressions of the ashram, but alas while Ganesh was offering ambiguous compliments on my mental powers my attention was divided, and those first impressions became lost. There’s a mystical idea that everything that ever happened (and will happen) is stored in a sort of metaphysical store room called the Akasic Records, the astral equivalent of that Harrods Depository where Granny kept ‘nice’ (or even ‘good’) furniture for which she didn’t have space. I suppose my lost impressions must be there, properly docketed, but they slipped away from me immediately.

It was only in the Old Hall that I began to take in my surroundings. I had approached the holy of holies without the proper preparation. I found myself about six feet from the couch on which Ramana Maharshi had spent so much of his time in the body. Ganesh had delivered me into the heart of a spiritual furnace, where everything can be consumed before the devotee hears so much as a crackle.

A photograph of Ramana Maharshi, half life-size, was reverently propped up on the couch. My view was clear, except for a middle-aged man at the very edge of my vision. He was performing a strange sequence of actions. He would sink to his knees and then struggle upright, only to be brought to his knees again. His face was washed with ecstatic tears. It was as if he was being swept over and buoyed up, continuously, by jostling waves of devotion. Eventually he subsided into a prostrate position, with his arms outstretched and clasped in front of him. It was as if he had been swept off his feet at last by a seventh wave of self-realisation, bigger than the rest. The closeness of those holy tears vividly brought back the weeping of S. P. Munshi at Bombay airport, and the way that its electrolytic dew had seemed to percolate directly into my skin.

At this point, though, it was hard to say if the osmotic transfusion of spiritual energy from that generous liquor had made any
difference. My view of the couch was clear, and yet the couch itself was an obstacle. It was undeniably gaudy, covered as it was with red brocade.

An outsider could easily think that this was a religion based on the couch – a furniture cult. Couches outnumbered gurus in the Old Hall, after all, two to one. Here was the couch itself, with a photograph of the couch displayed on it. Yes, it had Ramana Maharshi sitting on the couch in the picture, but that might just be some sort of testimonial to the excellence of the springing, as attested on a historical occasion. The guru seemed to make no attempt to match the couch. He was as plain as the furniture was fancy.

From the corded look of his neck this must be a picture from late life. His facial hair and the stubble on his head are white, but his unpresumptuous smile is ageless and the expression in the eyes quietly expectant. He is leaning against a low wall of white cushions. His right hand rests lightly on his knee, while the arm is placed a little higher up the leg. His legs are crossed, so that the sole of his right foot is presented to the camera.

The couch has no significance at all. Bhagavan’s choice was to sit on the floor, until he was persuaded that he would make it easier for devotees if he adopted the traditional pose. He was indifferent to such choices on the part of his followers, and the couch was the merest prop.

Another traditional pose for the guru is sitting on a tiger skin. I had seen photographs of Bhagavan doing just that and found them very jarring. I felt queasy, not liking to be reminded that there was an overlap between spiritual leaders (or their advisers) and big-game hunters. I prefer the symbolic power of the big cats, their aura, to be kept separate from their skin, sliced from the owner – the owner-occupier – at huge karmic cost.

I did know something of the history of that particular skin, though, the one in the photographs, and how little importance it had for Ramana Maharshi himself.

One day a devotee appeared to pay his respects to the guru and left with the tiger skin rolled up under his arm. The worthies of the ashram nabbed him and asked him what he thought he was doing. He simply said, ‘Swami gave it to me.’ Obvious nonsense, but for form’s
sake they had to check with Bhagavan before turning him over to the worldly authorities. ‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said.

But why? His answer was classic Maharshi in the gentle chiding it delivered to his followers (not that they noticed, I dare say): ‘Somebody comes in and says sit on the tiger skin. I do so. Somebody else comes in and asks to keep it. I say yes.’

Later in his life Bhagavan sat in the New Hall instead. When he was sick, and Mrs Osborne and others were treating him, a sign went up: no one to enter between twelve o’clock and two. The usual well-meaning acolyte meddling. The idea was to give Bhagavan time to recover. He himself voiced no objection to the rule. In fact he took it so much to heart that he vacated the premises between those hours, so as to be freely available outside.

The couch in front of me was something that someone’s tasteless auntie would sit on, something that might turn up at a flea market. I had travelled here to find out who I really was, not to think snide thoughts about upholstery, but it wasn’t easy. Even at these high spiritual temperatures the asbestos of habit fought against combustion. My reflex of triviality was a stubborn
vasana
, a deep rut from a previous life needing to be raked smoothly over in the sand of the new one.