Three Continents

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  While Nina Devi was demonstrating closets and light fixtures to the other two, Maya Devi took me into a space that may have been designed for an office but had become a prayer room. There was a white sheet spread on a mattress on the floor; a little shrine with a fresh flower garland and a stick of incense burning; and a picture of what was presumably Babaji. A blind had been lowered over the only window, so it was dark in there, but Babaji glowed on the wall: Perhaps it was his bright-orange robe that made him luminous, or was it his burning eyes? I guess he was the usual kind of Indian guru, and if you believed in him you could see a mystical light in those eyes, and if you didn’t, it was just cunning and cleverness. Maya Devi sat cross-legged on the mattress, facing the shrine and the picture, and she invited me to do the same. It would have been impolite to refuse, so we both gazed up at the picture, but I’m sure with different feelings. “You may pray, if you wish,” she whispered to me, and did so herself; and when she had finished, she jumped up in a clumsy, coltish way, laughing and looking refreshed.

  We followed the others upstairs, where Nina Devi was showing them the bedrooms. There were many of them, large ones on the second floor and a few little poky ones on the third. Maya and Nina Devi occupied two of the little ones, and the others were empty. Yet they were ready for occupancy, waiting for guests, with fresh sheets and bedspreads and bowls of flowers from the garden. The whole house was like that—empty yet ready for life, alive, with the parquet floors newly polished, the windows washed, the vases filled. The movement may have been dead, the disciples departed, but there was still a vital spark somewhere that kept everything going—including the two women, who, though in their fifties, were jolly as girls. They stopped outside one of the bedroom doors; they looked at each other—“Shall we? Should we?” They giggled, and bent down to call coaxingly, tenderly: “May we come in? May we bring you some guests?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  They giggled again, and enfolded us in their conspiracy, like aunts with a special secret treat. They opened the door, and there was another bedroom with flowers and flowered curtains and a pastel carpet. This was Babaji’s room, and he was lying on the big, double, double-mattressed bed: tiny, shrunken, old, and sick, wearing a saffron nightshirt with saffron nightcap on his head. “Yes,” he said once more, “who is it?” and he scanned us, narrowing his eyes a little, which gave him a very shrewd look—as if those eyes were not shrewd enough already, and bright with the vital spark that lit up his withered form and this room and this house and I guess the hearts of his two women.

  Nina Devi introduced us, and the Rawul stepped forward, with his hands joined together in the Indian salute. But Babaji stretched out his two hands, inviting the Rawul to grasp and shake them; and as the Rawul did so, it was as it had been when he had greeted Grandfather—historic, momentous, a meeting of two world figures. The rest of us stood in the background, an admiring circle of courtiers—that is, Maya and Nina Devi and I did; Crishi was going around the room as he had done around the others, checking up on the fixtures.

  “Well now,” said Babaji after this handshake. “I want to hear all about it: all about your world movement!” His voice was weak but high and shrill, as one used to rallying spirits. The Rawul’s voice in reply was very deep, full of health and strength: and that was the way he appeared too, in contrast to the spent figure on the bed. He was murmuring modestly—praising Babaji’s contribution to the world spirit, deprecating his own. It was a statesman’s courtesy, but Babaji had no time for it—he wasn’t listening, he was looking eagerly past the stout figure of the Rawul, and spying me between Maya and Nina Devi, he cried out “Who have we here!”

  The two women smiled, again like aunts with a treat—but now the treat was for Babaji as well as me. They pushed me forward—they even tugged a little at my clothes to make them fall more prettily. “Closer!” cried Babaji, and gently their hands propelled me toward him. The Rawul stepped aside to make room for me by the bed; I wasn’t sure what was expected of me—everyone murmured at me in encouragement, and even Crishi joined us and he too murmured at me, in fact murmured right into my ear what it was that was expected of me: so then it was difficult for me not to laugh—which would have been terrible, with everyone so reverent.

  But it was Babaji who burst out laughing: “Yes! I see!” he cried in such high glee that everyone else laughed with him, including me. “Closer,” he cried again, and I stepped up fearlessly, and sat where he patted the side of his bed. And he was so gentle and sweet with me, talking to me as if there were no one else in the room, only him and me. He asked me many questions, the sort one child might ask another—what’s your name? how old are you? where do you live? any brothers or sisters? When I told him I came from America, he exclaimed: “America!” as though it were truly a newfound land; but he was that way with all my answers—everything I told him was new, unexpected, unprecedented, exciting. And those bright eyes roved over my face, reading everything there was to read, taking me in, drinking me in; and in the end he said “Those two were like you once: When they first came to me, they were like you.” And his eyes wandered from me to Maya and Nina Devi, who stood there beaming (but were there tears in Maya Devi’s eyes?). Babaji’s glance fell on Crishi, he pointed his finger, he said “Who’s that?” I told him—“My husband,” I said—whereupon Babaji’s mood changed, and again like a child, or a very old man, he made no attempt to disguise it. “I’m tired,” he sulked. “You’d better go.”

  Nina Devi turned out to be a tough businesswoman—well, she had to be; she was in charge of whatever funds were left and had to meet their expenses out of them and see to Babaji’s comforts. She wasn’t going to let the house go below its market price, although Crishi tried every way to make a deal. But since he couldn’t for the moment meet her price—and wouldn’t be able to do so till our birthday next June—they came to a compromise: that for the next few months they would move up to the top story, while we took over the rest of the house and its expenses. The Rawul began to give his weekend courses there, and we usually moved to the house on Fridays to be ready to receive the twenty or so students who would be arriving the next morning. Renée came with us, to help Crishi with the practical arrangements for the weekend, but she would depart as soon as possible because she couldn’t stand the suburban atmosphere, she said. When she left, Crishi and I stayed in one of the three attic rooms, next to Babaji and the women in the other two. The Rawul slept in what had been Babaji’s room—that is, the principal bedroom—and when she consented to stay, Renée would be there with him and so would Crishi for at least part of the night. I always hoped she would leave, though usually there was a fight because she wanted Crishi to go with her. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. Of course I was very happy when he stayed; I loved those nights with him in the little attic room, shushing each other so that Babaji wouldn’t hear us.

  But Renée was passionately angry when she had to go off on her own, and she stayed angry through the week when we rejoined her in the London flat. She would quarrel with me and say I was keeping Crishi away from his work, and when I pointed out to her that on the contrary his work was with the weekend course, not here with her in London, she would flare up tempestuously. Then she appeared very Oriental, with those flashing eyes full of dark feelings, and I thought of the stories of intrigue and poison and other hidden deeds taking place in the harem. But invariably, after one of her outbursts of hate, she became extra sweet to me, coaxing and loving and giving me little presents—though as she slipped one of her bangles on my arm, I thought of those stories even more. The Bari Rani was constantly warning me against her, hinting at things she knew and I didn’t, and working me up to assert my rights; and there were the tensions between her and Renée, older and more intense than those between Renée and me, and these too alternated with periods of affection too cloying to be sincere, and with periods of a sort of relaxed harmony that was sincere, born of the mutual interests that keep a family together.

>   When Crishi did go back with Renée, I was left upstairs with Babaji and Maya and Nina Devi. I was amazed by their cheerfulness—I mean, here they were reduced to living in the attic, after having been the center of a movement much larger than ours. But far from resenting our usurpation, they took an intense interest in everything that went on in the house. When the weekend students arrived on Saturday mornings, Nina and Maya Devi would be hanging over the top banister to watch them. They kept Babaji’s door open so that they could report to him everything that was happening, and if they were too slow in doing so, he called out to them impatiently. They thought it a great privilege to attend the Rawul’s lectures and discussion groups, and without feeling entitled to join in, they sat there attentively with their hands folded in their laps. Nina Devi was always very polite when she commented on what she had heard. “So interesting,” she would say, and added “Fascinating,” in case anyone felt she hadn’t said enough. Yet I knew she had her reservations about the Rawul’s movement, which was so different from their own. It was Maya Devi who sometimes voiced these reservations—“Yes,” she would say, “but there has to be something more; something else.” Nina Devi wouldn’t allow her to say anything further—she didn’t feel they had the right to criticize—but Maya Devi was too impetuous to be able to keep her strong ideas to herself. She would come into my room—this was when Crishi had left with Renée—and sit cross-legged on my bed and talk about the old days, and Babaji, and everything he had meant to them.

  Although theirs had been a religious and transcendent movement—I guess ours was political and immanent—-they had had a lot of worldly fun. There had always been something to celebrate, like Babaji’s birthday or some great date either in the Hindu calendar or in the history of the movement, which had given them an excuse to perform great feats of vegetarian cooking and put up banners and garlands and strings of lights; and always there was music and singing—such singing! Here Babaji, who was listening from his room next door, would burst into a sample for my benefit: in his cracked old high voice but with leaps and jumps of joy in it, and Maya Devi would clutch my arm and whisper “There—that’s what I mean.” God knows what he was singing, but it was uplifting—I mean, it did seem to ascend to some strange heights I hadn’t known about. And perhaps it was an echo from those heights, or some fragrance of whatever it was that grew up there, that lingered on in the house and insinuated itself into the Rawul’s teaching.

  The Rawul’s audience here was different from what it had been under the tree at Propinquity. For one thing, it was a paying audience, and the fees were high. I had heard Crishi and Renée arguing about how high they should be—Renée protesting that they wouldn’t sign up for so much and Crishi overruling her, saying “They’ll pay, they’ll pay.” He had been right, but it did mean that the students were eager to get everything they could out of their weekend, by way of food for thought. In any case, they were very serious people, educated and thoughtful. Most of them were English—it’s strange that the largest conglomeration of English people I met in London was in this suburban house that the Rawul had taken over from Babaji. At Propinquity, after the Rawul’s lectures, everyone sat silent and inspired, or if any questions were asked, it was usually Lindsay who asked, or Sonya when she had been there, and they hadn’t been difficult for the Rawul to answer. But here they were often too technical for him—about forms of government and economic tariffs and that sort of thing, which he didn’t know too much about. It was from this time on that we began to have academic types around—Crishi found them, and attracted them to the movement. That was his way—when he needed someone he attracted them, by charming and I guess inspiring them, even people you wouldn’t think could be charmed and inspired. Anyway, these experts were there on the dais with the Rawul—an economist, a sociologist, a professor of political science—and after the Rawul had given his address and the questions began, they were there to answer them in a professional way.

  This left the Rawul free to concentrate on his own ideas and philosophy, which as I’ve said were beginning to change. It was now that he first used the term transcendental internationalism, and when asked if this had any religious or metaphysical connotation, he would answer something like this:

  “No! No, my dear friends! Not that ‘other world’ the theologians have been fooling us with but another world! We too aim to transcend the world—this sorry wanting place of separate nationalities, countries, and continents—but transcending in the sense of transforming it into a new, a stateless, casteless, countryless one: not to leave this earth for heaven but to make heaven on earth, if you’ll pardon my use of fairytale lingo.”

  Up to this point, he was more or less saying the same thing as before; but from here on, he lowered his voice, became more questioning, even diffident, as he continued:

  “And why is it—I ask myself, I ask you—why is it that men have always used this language? Why have there always been terms like heaven, like gods, like God? What have we men been seeking beyond being men? Is it to be something better than men? To transcend ourselves as we are—to reach new heights within as well as outside ourselves?”

  Crishi was usually too busy to be present at these lectures; but once when he happened to come in when the Rawul was talking about being better than men, Crishi asked Renée: “What’s he on about?” She shrugged. I had noticed this about both of them, Crishi and Renée—they didn’t care what the Rawul said as long as he had an audience to say it to. That was their business—getting the audience; getting houses and money; getting the movement going. The actual content of the movement was left to the Rawul, and he was completely free to think it out for himself. Although he was surrounded by so many people—all of us, and the followers, and the professors, and the students, and Anna and other journalists, and members of other political groups—there was an aura of aloneness about him, as though he were still by himself in the rocky desert of his kingdom, his eyes absorbing the color of the sky as he looked up at it for inspiration. Maybe it is so with all world leaders—that ultimately, at the center of their movement, they are alone and lonely.

  I noticed that he often came up to Babaji’s little attic room next to mine. Whenever he had a free moment between lectures and other activities, he would tap timidly on Babaji’s door. He wasn’t always admitted. Babaji would cry out: “Who is it?” and when the Rawul identified himself, he might say: “I’m sleeping! Go away!” The Rawul wouldn’t argue but would humbly leave, though often Nina Devi took pity on him and let him come in her room. There she made cocoa for him on the little portable stove on which they did all their cooking, and she explained to him about Babaji, how he could understand and help you even without actually admitting you into his presence. But sometimes Babaji did admit the Rawul, and I heard them talking—or rather, Babaji talking: He used strange terms, like Adhibhautika, which he said was the cosmological dimension, and Adhyatmika, the anthropological dimension; and later I would hear the Rawul use these terms in his lectures and give his explanations of them.

  I have to admit that Babaji was more interested in me than in the Rawul. He liked it that I was next door to him and often called through the wall to make sure I was there. When Crishi was with me, it was no use trying to keep our sex low-key because Babaji heard every sound—avidly listened for it—and was not above shouting encouragement to us. Often he sang, some pure song of joy, which made Crishi laugh but at the same time grind his teeth. Babaji never called Crishi in to see him the way he did me; when I asked him why not, Babaji said “Oh, I’ve seen plenty like him.” I said “But you’ve seen plenty like me too.” “Oh yes! Plenty!” he cried. “But never enough.” He loved nothing better than to tell me about all the girls who had come flocking to him; leaving behind their parents, friends, lovers, husbands, they had followed him around the world, clad in orange saris, sandals, and with his picture on a medal around their necks. And it had been so easy for him, fatally easy. Sitting cross-legged on his bed in his nightshirt and nightca
p, he described to me how he had sat on his throne in his audience chamber while new girls were led up to him, one by one. All he had to do was look at them, into them, and at once they threw themselves, literally, at his feet; and he touched them ever so lightly with his peacock fan on their bowed backs, and from that moment on they were his. “It doesn’t work anymore,” he said, ruefully though not regretfully. “How do you know?” I asked. “It’s not working with you,” he said; he shut one eye in a roguish way and said “You want to try?” I agreed, and he looked what I guess was deep into me—and he was right—it didn’t work. Once he called Maya Devi in to give a demonstration: He asked for his peacock fan and she brought it, and then she prostrated herself by his bed and he touched her with it the way he had described to me. He winked at me over her back, and he and I both laughed; and when she got up, Maya Devi laughed with us but there was such radiance in her face—well, I wondered, would that still be there on my face after Crishi and I had been married for thirty years?

  Michael didn’t come for the weekend courses but was there during the week, when the rest of us had gone back to the London flat. I had never in my life seen so little of him, or perhaps I mean been so far from him, although we belonged to the same organization and were closest to the same person—that is, Crishi. We no longer looked alike either. In the past, people had often commented on our resemblance, but Nina Devi said to me, “Your brother doesn’t look like you at all.” Maya Devi confirmed this. They saw Michael quite often when he and the other followers came there during the week for the martial exercises, which they held in this house, it being less conspicuous than the Earl’s Court one. They shut the doors and windows and drew the curtains and asked Maya and Nina Devi to stay up in the attic with Babaji and not come out to watch. “We don’t want to watch,” Maya Devi said with a hint of complaint in her voice, which made Nina Devi say “No dear, we must let them do what they think right.” “But in this house,” Maya Devi said in a more complaining way, “with Babaji here—who would never even wear violent shoes.” They explained to me that violent shoes were made from animals killed for their hide, whereas Babaji would wear only those made from animals who had died a natural death. “And do you know where they keep their guns and things?” Maya Devi said. “In the prayer room,” she said, choking back her outrage. “No,” said Nina Devi, “it’s not our prayer room anymore. We pray upstairs.” “But it used to be! A sacred place.” “Oh—sacred,” said Nina Devi. “Any place can be made that if you do something good in it.” She smiled to reassure me that the matter was not serious enough for me to worry about it.