The Cauliflower (29 page)

As luck would have it, I had recently shared lunch with a Mr. and Mrs. Peter Lamb, who are staying at our lodgings and are eager for diversions. Mr. Peter Lamb is fascinated by anything waterborne (aside, of course, from the dreaded cholera), and Mrs. Peter Lamb has a passion for all things horticultural. So it was that we ended up adrift on a barge on the sparkling Hooghly—with Saaras, our trusty Hindoo guide (a Renaissance man who speaks several languages, although it would be difficult to count English among the foremost of his many tongues)—excitedly heading for an encounter with your dear “Sri” Ramakrishna.

Saaras knew Mr. Ramakrishna by reputation alone and seemed rather perplexed and alarmed by my desire to meet up with him, but then Saaras is a very modern-minded Bengalee. His dream is one day to become an engineer. Or a mechanic. Or even possibly a train driver. It was rather difficult (from his profusion of excitable hand signals) to decipher which of all of the above he truly aspired to.

I shall not bother you with my horribly labored and ill-wrought descriptions of the grandeur of the temple, our magnificent approach from the river, the tumult at the ghat as we disembarked, the beggars, the bathers, the profusion of oiled bodies, the flies, the unspeakable heat, the blithely flowering oleanders, the overpowering scent of the roses in the gardens; I shall only trouble you with a description of my meeting with your beloved “guru” himself.

After several lengthy conversations in Bengalee we were directed to Sri Ramakrishna's room, which is not—as you previously described it—in the grand owner's house, but at the northwest corner of the courtyard and adjacent to the river, with a semicircular balcony, two verandahs, and perfectly enviable views on all sides.

Sri Ramakrishna was to be found sitting (cross-legged and perfectly alone) on one of these verandahs, loudly telling his rosary. The legendary charms—the childlike innocence and beaming smile—were not, I must confess, initially to the fore. Fifteen long years have passed since your delightful sojourn here, Dr. Wainwright, and—by my half-baked calculation—the “guru” is approaching his fortieth or so year, and now looks—it would be fair to say—somewhat less than golden; rather, a little jaundiced and world-weary. He has gained some weight. He is no longer “just skin and bone,” as you once described him. First impressions were not propitious. The “guru” was somewhat curt and abrupt to our guide during our initial introductions, but then, on espying my two mangoes (did you not say the “guru” had a well-developed sweet tooth?), was suddenly the very acme of cordiality—palms were firmly pressed together, low bows were executed, etc. etc. The mangoes were then hurriedly snatched from my hands and carefully hidden away—Saaras claimed that they would be offered to the temple goddess during the evening worship and happily distributed among the devotees afterwards. Sri Ramakrishna then took us on a swift tour of the temple and the gardens. He seemed—to all intents and purposes—perfectly focused and sharp-witted, yet, every once in a while—and quite without warning—he would lean against a pillar or a tree or a wall, as if subject to a fit of uncontrollable swooning, then laugh, then talk to himself in what Saaras assured me was pure gibberish.

At one point he formally presented me with a fallen lotus flower (slightly crushed), then prostrated himself at my feet, then stood up again and chanted and danced (again, his dancing was not nearly so perfect or so effortless as you had previously described it), before sitting himself down under the shade of the large portico and proceeding to enthusiastically pray, encouraging myself and the Peter Lambs to follow suit. The Peter Lambs were nonplussed and we quickly beat our hasty retreat.

Sri Ramakrishna waved us off—most cheerily—after asking our guide for some kind of monetary remuneration for his time and his services (which was politely proffered by a tight-lipped Mr. Lamb). And that—or so I thought—was an end to it.… Oh, but it wasn't quite, Dr. Wainwright, because as the barge pulled away from the ghat and I called out, “Goodbye, Mr. Ramakrishna!” a respectable-seeming Bengalee gentleman who was seated nearby shook his head, leaned over, and quietly murmured behind his hand, “That sorry article is not our esteemed Paramahamsa, madam!”

To cut a long story short, Dr. Wainwright, we had been duped! The Bengalee gentleman, it quickly transpired, was an ardent devotee of the “guru,” and the individual we had recently spent our time with was merely his nephew, a man by the name of Harryday. I struggle to recall any mention of him in your many stories—but wasn't he perhaps the handsome but somewhat hapless character who followed the “guru” around, preserving him from harm and dutifully cleaning up his various messes?

Our new friend, a Mr. Ghatak (a matchmaker by trade—which, under the circumstances, seemed extremely appropriate, nay, propitious), then proceeded to tell us all about his “guru's” countless virtues. He told several funny stories. He said that while the “guru” had the spirit of a child he was in fact a genius, that every sentence he uttered in conversation would be weighted with great gems of spiritual enlightenment. He also claimed that he was a brilliant mimic and a joker and that his singing voice, once heard, could never be forgotten. He said that there was never a man on earth in whose presence you could feel more loved, or seen, or cherished.

Well, the Peter Lambs were perfectly captivated by Mr. Ghatak's descriptions, and resolved, on the spot, to visit this adorable “guru” with Mr. Ghatak, by hired carriage, the following afternoon. I had already promised my services as typist to Papa and so was regretfully—most regretfully, I must confess—unable to accompany them. Of course, you can well imagine how intrigued I was (after several hours of pummeling the keys) to find out all the gory details of the Peter Lambs' second visit.

And goodness me—it transpired that the second visit was still more perplexing than the first! When the Peter Lambs climbed into their hired carriage, Mr. Ghatak was already comfortably seated within, and on his capacious lap he proudly held a magnificent cauliflower as a gift for his precious “guru.” Ah, Dr. Wainwright, this innocent vegetable was shortly to be the unwitting subject of the most horrendous and embarrassing of scenes.

But first, the “guru” himself …

The Peter Lambs were utterly charmed by him. When they arrived at his room (yes, the same room as the day before) the door was open and the “guru” was sitting on his bed—or cot (he'd been suffering, I'm told, from a slight fever)—deep in conversation with a small group of pilgrims who were lounging on grass mats liberally spread across the floor. Of course, he doesn't speak a word of English (and even his Bengalee, I am told, is of the roughest hue) but the Peter Lambs found him captivating. At any given moment, they said, he would chuckle and break into song. And he was so graceful in all of his movements. Mrs. Peter Lamb found him delightfully gentle and feminine. Mr. Peter Lamb found him to be a pinnacle of uncompromised machismo. The “guru” is, it seems, all things to all people.

I shall not waste your precious time by extemporizing about his golden skin and his heavenly trances (all of which you are familiar with to the point of tedium), but I must tell you about the reception of that most fateful of vegetables, the cauliflower. On arriving at the “guru's” room the cauliflower was presented to him, much to his very evident delight. He took the cauliflower from Mr. Ghatak and held it in his hands, simply marveling at it, then he passed his palm over the top of it and murmured something, looking up, his eyes all aglow. Mr. Ghatak happily interpreted (and I dare say he may have got his translations slightly confused), “God is everywhere. God is in all of us. God is here—even here—in this humble cauliflower.” His eyes momentarily filled with tears. He pressed his cheek against the cauliflower's yellow crown. Then an intense anxiety suddenly gripped him and, glancing worriedly over his shoulder, he exclaimed, “We must hide it! Quickly! Quickly! Before my nephew, Harryday, comes.”

Yet no sooner had he uttered these words than the aforementioned nephew strode into the room. His eyes scanned the scene and settled, almost immediately, upon the cauliflower. The “guru” gasped, as if in terror, and tried to hide the cauliflower behind his back. The nephew pointed, his face darkening with fury. “What is that?” he demanded. (These are mere approximations of the exchanges, obviously.)

“Please don't be angry!” the “guru” whispered, cradling the contested vegetable to his chest. “It was a gift!”

But the nephew was not remotely satisfied with this explanation. He leaped forward and tried to snatch the offending cauliflower from the “guru's” terrified embrace. All the time he was harshly remonstrating with him: “You know that you cannot digest it, Uncle! How many times do I have to tell you? Your stomach will not tolerate such foods!”

It did not take him long to wrestle the cauliflower from his desperate Uncle's arms. In that moment, Mrs. Peter Lamb explained, almost tearfully, the “guru” looked so tiny and defenseless that it quite literally broke her heart in two (Mr. Peter Lamb, of course, wholly disagreed—the “guru” was, he opined, the perfect example of masculine restraint and affronted dignity). Either way, Dr. Wainwright, the startled Peter Lambs—and the assembled devotees—were not best placed to know how to react. Perhaps sensing his embarrassment at his extraordinary treatment at his own dear relative's hands, one of the pilgrims asked the “guru” a lengthy question of a spiritual nature. The “guru,” after a brief pause, began to answer him. The nephew, meanwhile, stood in the doorway, holding his trophy, taking every opportunity to roll his eyes, boredly, at each of his Uncle's intelligent pronouncements. Finally he left. The “guru” smiled mournfully upon his departure, and—his cheeks streaking with childlike tears—confessed that he didn't understand why, if God had released him from all earthly ties, he still allowed his nephew to humiliate him so monstrously. Then, in the very next instant, he was cheerfully singing the nephew's praises again. Extraordinary!

When the Peter Lambs finally took their leave of the “guru” (both now utterly besotted—Mr. Peter Lamb is even considering learning “a few choice phrases of the old Bengaleese” which he felt, on the “guru's” tongue, sounded like a “damnably fine language”) the nephew approached the Lambs and asked them for money. He explained that his Uncle could not ask for himself (the “guru” despises money, it seems) but that he (the nephew) was solely in charge of his upkeep (although Mr. Ghatak insists that there are others responsible for his day-to-day expenses, and that he also receives the minor privileges of a temple priest). The “guru” was a child, his nephew maintained, and could do absolutely nothing for himself. And he had a poor wife to support. He also explained (and quite cordially) that his Uncle had destroyed his stomach during years of spiritual training and so now could hardly eat a thing other than boiled rice and boiled milk and barely seasoned bitter squash soup. Cauliflower, it seems, made him subject to the most horrendous trapped wind. Mr. Peter Lamb failed to specify whether money finally changed hands. But it certainly may have. Mr. Ghatak was very upset about the trouble his cauliflower had generated. He claimed that the nephew guarded the “guru” like a jailor and was constantly impersonating and undermining him. But he also admitted, in almost the same breath (just as the “guru” himself had), that the “guru” needed constant support and attention, which the nephew offered unstintingly.

So that is where you currently find us, Dr. Wainwright. Of course, I am terribly eager to return to Dakshineswar to meet this captivating “guru” for myself (although, what's an uncontentious gift to take … a kilo of rice, perhaps?).

Oh, I am late for tea! Please offer my copious love to Beatrice and Henry and do forgive this unforgivably abrupt finishing off.

With all good wishes,

or

“Namaste!”

Ms. Laura Bartholemew

P.S. Papa, ever the natural scientist, wants me to be sure to assure you, for reasons of authenticity, that all the most important details of this curious little anecdote are absolutely true—the argument, the cauliflower etc., but for some perverse reason (known only to herself) the author of The Cauliflower™            (can we even truly call her “the author”? The collagist…? The vampire…? The colonizer…? The architect…? The plagiarizer…? The skid mark…?) has chosen to fictionalize this account.

x

LB

Girish Chandra Ghosh puts his beloved guru on the spot:

Girish, laughing, asked:

“Sir, are you man or woman?”

But he could not say.

Early autumn 1882. Jadu Mallick's garden house

The
guru
(who will not be called a
guru
) is in the sitting room, weeping copiously, having become perfectly demented with love for Narendra Nath Datta.

Late December 1883. The Dakshineswar Kali Temple

The Master (who will not be called Master) is in his room, collapsed on his bed, weeping copiously, still perfectly demented with love for Narendra Nath Datta. A bemused devotee, Bholanath, is holding his hand and trying to calm him:

Bholanath (
concerned
):
“But is this appropriate behavior, Master? To become so distressed because of a simple
Kayastha
boy?”

Sri Ramakrishna (
briefly staunches his tears for a moment, thinks intently, hiccups, and then, at full volume
):
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”