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Yes, I say to myself: “I must leave this world, I must leave, leave this world.” But, Lord, where shall I go, where? How can one go anywhere? How can one go from oneself ?
I walk up and down this mansard, and say: “There must be something that exalts and explains why we are here, what is it we seek.” And suddenly, as though I’ve forgotten where I am, I begin to sing out aloud, “Shivoham, Shivoham,” as if I were in Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, sitting on Harishchandra Ghat and singing away. In Benares, it may still sound true—but here against the dull sky of Paris, this yellow wallpaper, with its curved and curling clematis, going back and forth, and all about my room ... I say, “Clematis is the truth, must be in the truth.” I count, one, two, three, simply like that, and count 177 clematis in my room. “If I add a zero,” I say to myself, “it will make 1,770 and they would cover ten mansard rooms.” I look out and count the number of windows in the Lycée St Louis. It has eighteen windows: one, two, three, five, eleven, eighteen windows. And I say, “If they had clematis on their walls, how many would there be? Each room there is about three times the width of my room.” My arithmetic goes all wrong, for I must subtract one wall out of every three, and that’s too complicated. I roll back into my bed. “Hara-Hara, Shiva-Shiva,” I say to myself, as if I were in Benares again, then “Chidananda rupah, Shivoham, Shivoham.”
I began to clap hands and sing. The Romanian lady next door again knocks to remind me I am in Paris. I go out, with my overcoat on, wander round and round the Luxembourg Gardens by the Rue d’ Assas, feeling that three times round anything you love must give you meaning, must give you peace. Buses still go on the streets, and students are still there chez shining, mirrored Dupont. I wish I could drink: “It must be wonderful to drink,” I say to myself. The students get drunk and are so gay. That Dutch boy, the other day, was quite drunk; he sat in the hotel lounge, with his mouth on one side, and started singing songs. If you don’t feel too warm at heart, you can always warm yourself in the Quartier Latin. You never saw more generous girls in the world. Existentialism has cleared the libido out of the knots of hair. Wherever you go, girls have rich bosoms, fiery red lips. They don’t need cards—not because the gendarme does not ask for them, but because girls have grown too pure. Purity is not in the act but in the meaning of the act. Had I been less of a Brahmin, I might have known more of “love.”
I go down the Boulevard St Michel, stand before the lit fountain and come back. I am sure I am much better. I go round the “100,000 Chemises” shop, who know their arithmetic. I see that a cravat costs 1,990 francs, the good ones—shoes cost twice as much; the best one four times in the next shop. There is a brawl on the corner of my street, and I look at everyone, thinking as if I am not looking at them, but I am counting them. “One, two, three, four, five,” I say, and one threatens to beat four and four threatens to beat me. Fear is such a spontaneous experience—I slink away, I run and run till I reach my hotel. I think it was a political battle of some sort. A group of Moroccan and Indo-Chinese students were having a brawl with some elderly Frenchman. Then I understood. They thought—the fat, threatening Frenchman thought—that I must be a Tunisian. You must fight for something. You cannot flow like the Rhone, dividing Avignon into the Avignon of the Popes and Petit Avignon.
I get my key from the concierge and come up to my room. I feel the room to be so spacious, so kind; I could touch the sky with my fingers. You can have 177 clematis in your room and yet touch the sky of Paris. A Brahmin can touch anything, he is so high—the higher the freer. I look at the carefully arranged manuscript of my thesis. It has 278 pages. It has been finished for over a week. Dr Robin-Bessaignac said it is very interesting, very very interesting indeed, but blue-pencilled several passages. One in particular, in my preface, made him laugh. “History is not a straight line, it is not even a curved line,” I had written. “History is a straight line turned into a round circle. It has no beginning, it has no end—it is movement without itself moving. History is an act to deny fact. History, truly speaking, is seminal.”
“You don’t know our professors,” Dr Robin said. “They would hide behind their notes if they saw a girl with too much rouge on her lips. Besides, my friend, there is an ancient tradition in this country: Beware of too much truth. We French live on heresies. If only poor Abelard had ended with a question mark and not with a ‘Scito Teipsum,’ he might have walked Paris un-castrate, and be canonized a saint by now. You must go to the end of philosophy, go near enough to truth—but you must end with a question mark. The question mark is, I repeat, the sign of French intelligence; it is the tradition of Descartes, that great successor of Abelard. And as for anything imaginative... There’s a famous story about Sylvain Lévi, the orientalist, you know. He had said, and that was seventy good years ago, something about Kalidasa’s plays. His books ended, as all good literature ended in those days, with a noble sentence, rounded like one of Mallarmé’s. Would you believe it, the thesis was refused: he had to write it again. I do not want to see your thesis refused. I knew what they will say. This is supposed to be a thesis on the philosophical origins, mainly oriental, primarily Hindu, of the Cathar philosophy. But it is too poetic. It lacks historical discipline! Get someone—preferably a professor—to help you to remove everything that does not end in a question.”
“Can you find one?” he asked me. Of course I know one. Who could be more helpful to me than good Georges? I often discuss my thesis with him, and I have read him bits of it. He does not say whether it would be suitable or not as a thesis: he is happy at my defence of Catholicism, and finds my logic inescapable. Here and there, however, he has suggested a few corrections. And then, somebody has to translate the whole text into French. I wonder whether Georges would do. Good Georges, of course, agrees. I must give it to him tomorrow.
I roll and roll in my bed. Not that I am ill; no, I am not so ill. In fact the doctors are very satisfied with the state of my lungs; hardly any complications with my ribs or my chest, they say. I could, in fact, stay in Europe if I cared. But why should I? What is there to do? I think of Saroja. She is not happy, but she is settled. I think of Little Mother going and dipping in the Ganges every morning. And now, this year, with the Kumbha Méla and the sun in Capricorn, she must be very happy. Could I give Little Mother such joy if I were back? What can a poor Professor in Hyderabad do? At best I could take her on a pilgrimage once in two years. There is nobody to go to now: no home, no temple, no city, no climate, no age.
Kashwam koham kutha āyatha ka mē janani ko mē tātah? Who are you and whose; whence have you come?
Wheresoever I am is my country, and I weep into my bed. I am ashamed to say I weep a lot these days. I go to bed reading something, and some thought comes, I know not what—thoughts have no names—or have they?—and I lie on my bed and sob. Sometimes singing some chant of Sankara, I burst into sobs. Grandfather Kittanna used to say that sometimes the longing for ... becomes so great, so acute, you weep and that weeping has no name. Do I long for ...? ... is an object and I cannot long for him. I cannot long for a round, red thing, that one calls ..., and he becomes .... It would be like that statue down the road. I asked someone there, “What is this statue, Monsieur?” He was surprised and said, “Why, it’s St Michel!” Since then I have known why this road here is called St Michel and that St Michel kills a dragon. Being a Brahmin I know about Indra and Prajapathi, but not about St Michel or St Denis. I will have to look into the Encyclopédie des religions. And that’s not too helpful either. ..., in this Encyclopédie, has sixty-two pages, and they do not illuminate my need.
No, not a ... but a guru is what I need. “Oh Lord, my guru, my Lord,” I cried, in the middle of this dreadful winter night. It was last night; the winds of April had arisen, the trees of the Luxembourg were crying till you could hear them like the triple oceans of the ... at Cape Comorin. “Lord, Lord, my guru, come to me, tell me; give me thy touch, vouch-safe,” I cried, “the vision of Truth. Lord, my Lord.”
I do not know where I went, but I was happy there, for it was free and broad like a sunny day and like a single broad white river it was. I had reached Benares—Benares. I had risen from the Ganges, and saw the luminous world, my home. I saw the silvery boat, and the boatman had a face I knew.
I knew His face, as one knows one’s face in deep sleep. He called me, and said: “It is so long, so long my son. I have awaited you. Come, we go.” I went, and man, I tell you, my brother, my friend, I will not return. I have gone whence there is no returning. To return you must not be. For if you are, where can you return? Do you, my brother, my friend, need a candle to show the light of the sun? Such a Sun I have seen, it is more splendid than a million suns. It sits on a river bank, it sits as the formless form of Truth; it walks without walking, speaks without talking, moves without gesticulating, shows without naming, reveals what is Known. To such a Truth was I taken, and I became its servant, I kissed the perfume of its Holy Feet, and called myself a disciple.