Maya (25 page)

“That is good. Then you may be knowing that Kalidasa is using the ideas of Mimamsaka, that the sound of a word and the meaning of that word are joined like man and wife, for all time. Mimamsaka also speaks of supreme or ‘self-luminous' knowledge. It is like the flame of a candle, which simultaneously illuminates both itself and the objects around it. It is knowledge that encompasses not only the word and its meaning but the knower himself as well. With supreme knowledge comes
moksha
.”

He paused to catch my eye, then held it in his portentous gaze.

“You understand what I am saying, Mr. Stanley? Liberation. One knows oneself in the sound of the words and in their meaning. One sees oneself as inseparable from words and ideas. Knowing oneself in this way, Mr. Stanley, one is free from samsara. All this is present here in the first shloka of this great poem of Kalidasa. So you see—you may read these lines as poetry or, if you wish, as philosophy. It is your choice. For in India, the greatest of philosophers wrote in verse.”

“Excuse me, Anantacharya-ji.”

“Yes? Please speak up.” He raised both bare feet off the floor and tucked them in under the folds of his dhoti.

“I was taught—maybe I simply assumed—that Indian philosophers wrote in verse to make it easier to memorize the texts. Is that so?”

He studied my face. “And why we should memorize now, when written word is so easy to find?”

“Well,” I began, intensely aware that I was wading into deep waters. Anantacharya had repeatedly lectured me on the value of memorization. “Maybe the custom survives from a time when everything was passed along orally, before things were written.”

“Survives?” He tipped his head to one side, like that dog in the old RCA Victor ads. “You are suggesting our Indian custom of philosophical
poetry is anachronism?” He pronounced the word slowly, as if taking the full measure of its weight on his tongue. “An old tradition we might want to avoid now, in modern world. Is that it? Is that your meaning?”

“No, well not exactly.” I was on the spot. The truth was that I had always more or less taken it for granted that classical Indian philosophy was composed in metered verse. I suppose I thought of it as a form of scholasticism. Anantacharya seemed to be hinting at something more.

Neither of us said anything. For a while he pulled at one earlobe, then switched to massaging the tip of his nose.

“Mr. Stanley,” he said at last, “let us consider
Raghuvamsha. Raghuvamsha
is epic poem,
mahakavya
. You will find only five mahakavya in whole of Sanskrit literature, for there are many strict requirements. An epic poem must begin with salutation, as we are just now reading together. Subject of mahakavya must be some very important event. There must be great councils, messengers and embassies, armies engaged in battle. Mahakavya must include cities and villages, seas, mountains, and change of seasons, sunrise and sunset. And moonlight. Yes, Mr. Stanley,” he smiled knowingly, “moonlight must be there. Moonlight is necessary for scenes of amusement in garden, scenes of drinking sharab and dalliance between man and woman. This is
raga
, Mr. Stanley. What do you say in English? Passion. Love. But not only joy.
Raga
means also sadness and grief, from losing all those things we love. Mahakavya must show us both joy of victory and misery of defeat.”

Here he halted long enough to cough once or twice, catch his breath, and call out for a glass of water. The glass appeared in seconds, delivered by one of the younger boys who handed it to him, hanging back just long enough to smile shyly in my direction. Anantacharya took a long drink and deposited the glass on the floor next to his cane. He cleared his throat with alarming force—I thought for a moment he might be choking—then adjusted himself in the chair and rubbed one palm over his freshly shaven crown.

“Philosophy and poetry—they are having the same subject: life. But not only some abstract idea of life. They speak to me of
my
life, the life I am living, here and now. Is it not so? For if the poet is skillful, then the story he is telling becomes
my
story. I see the meaning of his words in my own life.”

He leaned over, lifted the book from my hands, and demonstrated, holding it stiffly at arms length while he pretended to read. “Not like this,
Mr. Stanley. No indeed! Not like this.” He let his arms relax and drew the book in to where it settled gingerly against his paunch. “You see? I let the words enter into me. I am in
vol
ved.”

He closed the book and folded his hands across its cover.

“Poetry and philosophy cannot be separate from life. What good to have words and ideas, up here”—he thumped his knuckles against his skull—“like rupees locked inside vault. No, no . . . words must
live
in me. When words come into my heart,” he laid a hand on his chest, “their meaning becomes my own.”

His lungs rattled into another coughing fit. He thumped on his chest and finished off the last of the water, which restored him enough to continue.

“And so we have cities and seas, mountains, passing of seasons, sunrise and sunset, moonlight and dark of night. Passion, hatred, war, and all the rest of it! Suffering, sadness, despair, and death. Yes,” his voice softened, “we must have death.”

I wanted to say something—if only to show him I was paying attention—but I didn't know what. Anantacharya often spoke at length about the texts we read, but never like this. Never from such a personal point of view. I knew he was ill. His son Krishna and I frequently sat together after the Sanskrit lessons, speaking of this or that, and he had alluded to concerns about his father's health.

“Now, Mr. Stanley, let us try to understand what Kalidasa is saying in this shloka.” He leaned forward slightly. “Life and death, you know? They too are only words. But they are words we have taken deeply into our heart. This world is here with us because we have made these and so many other words our own.” He sighed.

“Words can not be avoided. We are human. This is as it should be. This is not a problem. At Bank of India, for example, we have two very serious words: peon and
malik
.” He smiled at this use of the Hindi word for “boss.” “So it is among Indians, you know? One is peon, another is malik. The difference is very real. We need not pretend otherwise. This is our modern world.”

His voice modulated when pronouncing the word “modern,” as if he weren't entirely reconciled to its use, as if he would much prefer not to let this particular word enter into his heart.

“It is true, some ugly words we must use. Fortunately these are not the only words we have, and this modern world is not our only world. There is also the world of Kalidasa, a world that he gives to us in his
Raghuvamsha
. Nevertheless,” he seemed to be considering how best to proceed, “even beautiful words reveal their deepest meaning only when we do not allow ourselves to be fooled.” He paused. “What is it to be fooled? I will tell you.”

“Our life and our death are inseparably bound together with words and ideas. All of this,” he swung his arm in a wide arc, “is made of words:
shabda-mayi
. Words, and only words:
shabda-matra
. This is Kalidasa's meaning. This world of words—this life and death—it is nothing but
bara tamasha
.” He examined my face, as if unsure whether I was familiar with the Hindi expression. “Big drama. You know? Theater.”

He raised his fist and let it hang in the air like a knot at the end of a rope, nails pressed tightly against the flesh of his palm. “
Ma-ya
.”

As if chanting a mantra, he lingered over each syllable of the Sanskrit word. One by one the fingers relaxed and fell away, his hand turned slowly at the wrist and drifted gently down to his lap, leaving the space between us empty.

“We bind our hearts to this illusion—this big drama—and for that we must suffer. But when there is supreme knowledge of word and meaning, then at last we are free. Words may be a tool for doing business, or an incantation for casting of spells. But in the end—in the end, Mr. Stanley . . .”

Once again his voice grew hushed, as if he intended to share with me some intimacy, some piece of wisdom ordinarily gained only at great personal expense.

“Words are a burden, to be set aside.”

This Vedantic perspective was astonishing, coming from a man who had immersed himself in the world of Sanskrit poetics. A man who had seemed—until this moment—totally identified with the language and literature of classical India. We sat together in silence. I waited to make sure he was finished. I did not wish to appear impertinent. At last I spoke.

“A burden, Anantacharya-ji?”

He responded without the faintest hint of irony. “Oh, yes. Most certainly. Words can become a great burden. Just as a philosopher may eventually tire of the endless search for reasons, similarly a poet may grow weary of the constant repetition of victory and defeat.”

He closed the book and handed it back to me.

“And so it is, Mr. Stanley. So it is. But you are young. And you have Kalidasa. Such beautiful words.”

20

I
T WAS A GOOD TIME
to get out of town—and not only because of the heat. During the previous nine months of Indira Gandhi's Emergency, some 140,000 people had been arrested and sentenced without trial. The press was heavily censored, but even so, in the last several months, newspapers had begun self-consciously joking that India had become “the land of the rising son.” The reference was to Sanjay Gandhi, the youngest of Indira's two adult children, and despite the clever journalistic humor, no one was laughing.

The Prime Minister's son was an aggressive, ambitious man who appeared to be universally despised. Before the Emergency, Sanjay had been in England training to be a Rolls-Royce mechanic, but Indira had summoned him back to India to assume leadership of the party's youth wing. Much of his time was apparently spent at a local garage, where he fiddled with cars and honed his macho image among a growing band of hoodlums. They were recruited to the party as his loyal followers and were anxious to prove themselves in his service. Sanjay wanted to make himself known as a man of action—someone who knew how to get things done—and high on his agenda was a campaign to rein in India's formidable and steadily growing population. Under Sanjay's new programs, lower-level government employees were not paid unless they motivated a prescribed number of Indian males to sign up for vasectomies. Reports of abuse were rampant, especially toward Muslims and low-caste Hindus; stories circulated about men in rural Bihar being offered transistor radios and watches in return for submitting to “the operation,” or men in Delhi who were dragged from a cinema and forcibly subjected to surgery.

It was difficult to know what to believe, but the public's fear and hatred of Sanjay was palpable. Most recently, his name had been associated with a government-sponsored initiative to clean up Old Delhi's infamous
bastis
—the slums associated in particular with the area south of Jamma Masjid, where the pianist in Penny's story had lost his pants. Residents in
the crowded neighborhood of Turkman Gate were ordered to evacuate their homes and resettle a considerable distance away, across the Yamuna on the outskirts of the city. The entire area was scheduled for demolition. Most of the people affected were Muslims who had been living in the narrow lanes for centuries, running tailor shops, chai stalls, and other small businesses. They objected that the relocation would not only destroy their homes and their means of their livelihood but also force them to commute by bus into the city every day at a cost that was prohibitive. When they refused to comply with the evacuation order, Sanjay called in the police.

On April 18 a phalanx of armed militia faced off against thousands of people who had gathered to protest. When the crowd did not disperse, the soldiers opened fire, killing six protestors and wounding scores of others. News of the massacre was censored from the Indian press, but because it was reported over BBC and other international news agencies, it didn't take long for word to spread, and then all hell broke loose. Nevertheless, in the end, the Turkman Gate neighborhood was bulldozed as scheduled, and Sanjay rolled on.

The Fulbright people were distinctly on edge. Still jittery about Indira's well-known paranoia of the CIA, they once again cautioned Americans to stay clear of any kind of political gathering. But it was increasingly difficult to avoid the demonstrations that seemed to be everywhere. It was, as I say, a good time to get out of Delhi, and—at Ed River's suggestion—I had already decided where to go. I carefully packed up my things and left them in storage at the Fulbright office; I wanted to travel light, to leave behind everything that weighed me down.

For most of the years he lived in India, Ed had maintained a small cabin in Himachal Pradesh, at the northernmost end of the Kullu Valley. There, near the town of Manali, he had escaped not only the extreme heat of the summer but also the pyrotechnic insanity of the autumn holiday season—a time when everyone who can scrape together a few rupees invests in bombs and rockets powerful enough to blow small craters in the road. I had already experienced Durga Puja and Diwali in Agra, and once was enough. The state of Himachal, with its relatively sparse population, offered the possibility of a respite. From the forested hills of the Terai up into the remote hinterlands of Lahaul and Spiti, the landscape is staggering. Ever since the visit to Corbett, I had wanted to return to the mountains.

There is an ancient Chinese legend recounted by the fifth-century
poet T'ao Ch'ien in an essay titled
Peach Blossom Spring
. The story tells of an isolated community where people live in simplicity, in harmony with the natural order. The Tibetans, as well, have their own tales of
beyul
—“hidden worlds”—said to be nestled in the most remote and treacherous peaks of the Himalayas. These stories have entered European and American culture through the mythology of the kingdom of Shangri-La popularized by the novel
Lost Horizon
. Both the paperback and the Hollywood film tell the story of a group of Europeans attempting to flee China during the early days of the revolution. Caught in a blizzard, their plane goes down somewhere high in the mountains of central Asia. The pilot is killed, and the survivors are eventually rescued by a mysterious party of Tibetans, who escort them through snow and wind, finally arriving at the cramped entrance to a cave. Passing through the cave, they emerge in a lush, temperate valley inhabited by a community of immortals who have no desire to re-establish contact with the outside world.