Sannyas is far more than taking vows; it’s entering into freedom. While I was out begging with the others this morning, I felt utterly free—as I hope to become increasingly—from the burden of being Oliver. So, for the first time, there were no barriers between us, I wasn’t an alien, and the others seemed to understand this, we kept smiling and laughing for no special reason. I’m not saying this in self-pity but in amazement—up to today I’d lived my life without once knowing what it really meant, to be happy.
I love the begging. We have to do it barefoot. Mahanta Maharaj told me I could wear sandals if I wanted to, but of course I didn’t. My feet hurt a bit, but I’m glad I didn’t toughen them up beforehand, because the slight discomfort keeps reminding me of the significance of what I’m doing.
You don’t beg primarily for yourself, but for the Mahanta as head guru and the senior swamis of the Order. Remembering this made it easier to accept the alms in the right spirit—whole families bowing down with such simple devotion. You mustn’t even say to yourself, I’m not worthy. You mustn’t take it personally at all. I brought back what I’d been given, a mess of runny tepid food in the fold of my cloth, and offered it to Maharaj and the rest of them. Patrick gallantly ate some, though I could see he nearly gagged on it!
When he left for the airport we were quite formal with each other and shook hands and murmured some conventional leave-taking phrases. But that didn’t matter because we’d already had this other wonderful moment together which I shall remember always.
It was when we all came trooping out of the Temple at the end of the sannyas ceremony. That was like returning from the dead—I felt a sort of dazed joyful strangeness. A small crowd was waiting for us to appear, and Patrick was among them. My heart jumped when I saw him, I was so pleased. I’d never dreamed he would trouble to get up that early.
Everybody was watching us, to see how we’d behave. And of course I couldn’t help being just a little bit embarrassed and self-conscious, standing there confronting him in my brand-new gerua. He came towards me smiling, with his camera-case slung around his neck. As he walked he took the camera out of it, and when he was within a few feet of me he stopped and quickly snapped off half a dozen pictures. I felt foolish, but I realized that he had to do this, to show the Family.
Then Patrick put his camera away and suddenly without any warning he dropped to his knees and took the dust of my feet and bowed down before me! He must have been rehearsing this, he did it so smoothly and neatly. In the midst of my astonishment, I was aware of a strong favourable reaction from the audience. Once again, Patrick’s instinct had been absolutely correct, he had done the dramatically perfect thing! So then I hastily grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him to his feet and hugged him. I did this to cover an uncontrollable attack of giggles—I was shaking with it, and as I held him I felt him beginning to laugh, too. His lips just touched my ear in a sort of kiss and he whispered, ‘Well Olly, you’ve really gone and torn it now!’ And I whispered back, ‘Looks like I’m stuck with it, doesn’t it?’
At that moment I seemed to stand outside myself and see the two of us, and Swami, and the onlookers, all involved in this tremendous joke. I felt Swami’s presence with us so intensely that I was afraid I would begin sobbing with joy and tell Patrick everything. So I pushed him away from me and stepped back. The others took this as a sign that it was now all right for them to approach us. And everybody was smiling and murmuring, as much as to say how charming it was of Patrick to play this scene according to our local Hindu rules, and how very right and proper it was that we two brothers should love each other.
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
NOVELS
Down There on a Visit
A Single Man
The World in the Evening
Prater Violet
Goodbye to Berlin
The Last of Mr. Norris
The Memorial
All the Conspirators
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
My Guru and His Disciple
Christopher and His Kind
Kathleen and Frank
Lions and Shadows
BIOGRAPHY
Ramakrishna and His Disciples
PLAYS (WITH W. H. AUDEN)
On the Frontier
The Ascent of F6
The Dog Beneath the Skin
TRAVEL
The Condor and the Cows
Journey to a War (with W. H. Auden)
COLLECTION
Exhumations
TRANSLATIONS
The Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire
(and the following with Swami Prabhavananda)
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination
The Bhagavad-Gita
DIARIES
Diaries: Volume 1, 1939–1960
The Sixties: Diaries 1960–1969
Liberation: Diaries 1970–1983
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 1967 by Christopher Isherwood
All rights reserved
Published in 1988 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This paperback edition, 2013
Library of Congress Control Number: 87017603
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-374-53379-3
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eISBN 9780374711054
First eBook edition: October 2013
A Meeting by the River Page 15