Banubai’s parents were dead now, the Bombay house was sold, and Banubai lived in Benares in a few rooms rented in the crowded old house on the river. But really it was only outwardly that there was any change. Banubai was old now but only in her body; her spirit remained as it had been. She had lost all her teeth and had never bothered to have a new set fitted, but her smile was as radiant and childlike as before. She was tiny and skinny and her face had puckered itself around the cavern of her toothless mouth; for many years now she had always worn the same rather bizarre costume that she had devised for herself—a pair of men’s wide cotton pajamas, a loose shirt over them, a mass of bead necklaces, and a turban wound around her head. She perched on the edge of a bed, bright as a bird, with bright eyes and a bright, bright voice.
“Oh, you’ll never change!” cried Asha, overcome with admiration of her friend’s ever youthful spirits.
“And you too will never change,” said Banubai.
At that Asha groaned, for she felt it like a stone sitting on her—all the change that had come over her since she and Banubai had first met.
But Banubai insisted, “You are still the same, always the same.” She sucked in her cheeks as if to suppress a smile. “I’m sure you have been having another love affair?”
Asha admitted as much by flinging her hands before her face in shame.
“You see. Always the same. . . . And with a very handsome young man?”
“Oh, Banubai, Banubai!” Asha was in pain but she was also half laughing. How good it was to be known and understood so deeply! She said, “Banubai, what shall I do?”
“What have you come here to do?”
“Just to be with you.”
“That’s enough, then.”
And, for the time being, Asha also found it to be enough. Banubai had a little girl servant to cook her meals but her cooking was not good enough for Asha, who pushed her aside and took over from her. Asha was a marvelous cook and she enjoyed it too. She squatted over the bucket of coal, which constituted Banubai’s kitchen arrangements, and she stirred and stirred in little pots, and sang as she stirred, and took a pinch of this and a little bit more of that, and flung it in and stirred again, and superb smells unfolded throughout the house. Banubai adored these dishes that Asha prepared for her, and she licked everything up and then she licked all her fingers one by one. They also sent food down to the founder-president of the University of Universal Synthesis, or sometimes they had him up to eat with them, which he enjoyed very much, for he was a lonely and frequently hungry old man. When she wasn’t cooking or doing some other little household tasks, Asha listened to Banubai talking to all the people who came to see her with their problems. Sometimes tears came to Asha’s eyes when she heard the terrible troubles that oppressed people; but Banubai was never downcast—she said it was good for people to suffer that way, it helped them to realize more quickly just what sort of stuff this world was made of and consequently to turn away from it into another, better path.
And Asha felt that yes, Banubai was right. What were all her troubles finally—what was the world, what was Gopi or her own advancing years and frequent despair: it was all really nothing. This feeling came over her particularly in the evenings when she sat in the window of Banubai’s house and looked out over the river, where boats went up and down and people dipped and prayed and the setting sun made the river pink and silver: then it was as if that expanse of holy water washed all heavy things away and left her calm and light.
Lee
We’re in the middle of one of our domestic crises because the latest cook has run off again. They’re always running off for some reason or other (usually they say they’re not being paid enough). Swamiji discussed this crisis with Evie and Margaret and me—well, actually he didn’t discuss it so much as dispose of it. Evie said she would do the cooking but Swamiji said no, he needed her, and then he told Margaret that under special decree she was appointed cook for the day. He was twinkling at her ever so humorously. She cried, “Oh, but Swamiji, I can’t!” which was quite true, she can’t. He said why not try and he would be very interested to taste the result of her experiment; he turned to Evie and me and asked wouldn’t we be interested too. Margaret kept on protesting for a while but it didn’t do her any good, in the end she had to go. Swamiji continued to joke with her, but she became quite still and serious and just before she went she did a funny thing: she bent down and touched his feet, sort of prostrating herself as she did this in utter humility. She seemed to like doing it. I was surprised but no one else seemed to be. I also somehow felt uneasy—as if something unpleasant had occurred.
Of course as always (how does he do this?) he knew what I was thinking. He said, “You’ve never done that to me.” When I didn’t answer, he kept on saying, “Have you?”—challenging me—till I had to say no. Then he smiled and looked at me sideways and wrinkled his forehead so that his cap rode up: “I think you’re too proud to do it?”
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t admit I was too proud—I never felt proud with him, never—but it was true that I wouldn’t do what I’d just seen Margaret doing.
“Lee is a very proud girl,” he said to Evie. “Proud and obstinate,” he added and turned again from Evie to me, and there was something different in his eyes now: it was as if he were measuring me, testing me for strength.
I said, “It’s not true, I’m not.”
“No? Then why don’t you do it?”
He waited. But he knew I couldn’t and seemed to be mocking me for this disability. At last he said to Evie: “You do it.”
She got up without one moment’s hesitation and bent down to touch his feet. She did it so beautifully. He patted her head which was bent before him but he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at me over the top of her and even triumphantly, as if he had proved a point against me. And I felt ashamed, I felt he was right and that he had proved a point against me—I was proud, I was obstinate—but I couldn’t help myself, I still couldn’t do what he wanted me to.
I left him so quickly that it was like running away. At that moment I wanted to run fast and far. But in fact I only got as far as the kitchen. The kitchen is at the outskirts of the ashram and it isn’t a new hutment like the other buildings but an old brick shed that had been left standing on the land when Swamiji took it over. As I passed, I heard a groan from inside, so I knew Margaret was in trouble.
She was sitting on the floor with her knees hunched up and her head resting on them. She was making retching sounds. I told her to go outside and she ran and I heard her throwing up. I began to feel sick myself. The kitchen didn’t have any windows, only a hole just under the roof; the walls had heated up like an oven, and there were a lot of flies buzzing about. I looked around for what could be done about cooking. There were three rusty bins, which I opened, and found lentils in one, rice in another; the third was empty except for a cockroach enjoying some bits of dried flour stuck in a corner. The only vegetables were some onions in a basket. Out of these materials a meal had somehow to be cooked for the whole ashram.
I went out and started lighting the fire in the cooking range, which consisted of some bricks placed on the ground against the outside wall. I vigorously waved a bit of bamboo fan to get the sparks alight; it was terribly hot, with the sun and the fire. Perspiration ran into my eyes so that I had to keep wiping it away.
Just then Evie came up and said, “He’s calling you.”
I got irritated; I said, “Well, I can’t come now, can I?”
“Where’s Margaret?”
“Can’t you hear her?”
Evie clicked her tongue in that gentle, pitying way she has. She stood there, watching me, so I told her to help me. She hesitated—I could see she was thinking how Swamiji would be cross if we didn’t come, so I said, “He’s going to be a lot more cross if there’s no lunch.” Then she pitched in. I must say, she was quick and efficient. We got the fire going, we cleaned the lentils and washed the rice and cut up the
onions. After a while Margaret joined us, looking like death. I gave her some cauldrons to take to the pump to see what she could do about getting the dirt out of them. She came back after a time, looking rather hopeless, and with the cauldrons wet but no cleaner. Evie said, “Never mind,” and snatched them from her and poured oil into them out of an old tin she had found. We slid the onions in and the oil splashed up high and a drop of it fell on Margaret’s hand so that she cried out in pain. She put her hand to her mouth and sucked the sore spot but she said, “Okay, thanks, I’ll carry on now.”
We ignored her.
“He told me I had to cook today.” She said it as if we were taking a privilege away from her and she wasn’t going to let us. She tried to take the ladle with which I was stirring out of my hand but I said, “Watch it, you’ll get burned again.” She quickly jumped back. She stood watching us, not knowing what to do, and then she went round to the other side of the shed and started throwing up again.
I said to Evie, “You know, I think there’s something wrong with her. . . . I often hear her at night being sick like this.”
“It’s the heat,” Evie said.
I didn’t think it was only the heat but there was no time to argue. We kept on working till we got things going. Then we slacked off a bit and looked at each other. We both laughed—she looked terrible and I must have looked the same with my face red and wet and blackened with soot. We could still hear Margaret.
I said, “Why did he tell her that? He knows she can’t cook.”
Evie turned away from me as if she thought I’d said something that shouldn’t have been said. I knew how sensitive she was about any word of criticism uttered against Swamiji; usually I’m sensitive in the same way but now I felt different. I said, “She should have said no.”
Evie pretended to be very busy stirring. I could see her wince, as if really I had hurt her, physically hurt her. But I kept on. “Why didn’t she say no? She should have. Why not?”
Evie blushed painfully and bent her face over the cooking. She stirred and stirred. At last she said, “The least we can do is obey.”
“Why?” I cried. As if I didn’t know the answer—usually I would have known it, I would have said myself, “in return for everything he gives us”—but now I was in a rebellious mood. And the strange thing was, it wasn’t him so much I felt rebellious against but against myself, my own feelings.
Asha Writes Two Letters
Asha and Banubai often gossiped about old times. Together they recalled many incidents of Asha’s past and they laughed a lot—especially Banubai, who was always bubbling over with laughter even at things that were not funny at all but sad.
“Why are you sad?” she asked one day when she and Asha had been recalling incidents from Asha’s married life. “Those were happy, happy days. No? They were not good? Then you should be glad they are over. But to be sad—for what?”
“It was my fault. I was to blame. Everyone warned me—Rao Sahib pleaded with me on his knees—”
“Rao Sahib is a fool,” Banubai said. She had been the only person to encourage Asha to get married. She had liked Asha’s husband very much and said that, in spite of his faults, he had a pure and beautiful soul. Later, when the troubles had started, she had always taken his side against Asha.
“You only liked him because he was handsome,” Asha accused her.
That made Banubai laugh a lot. It was true, she was fond of handsome men and liked to make a fuss of them. “What about the new one?” she asked. “Is he nice-looking?”
Asha shut her eyes, as if unable to encompass Gopi’s beauty in thought or words.
“Tall?”
Asha shook her head.
“Slim?”
Asha nodded, trying to suppress her smiles.
“Big eyes?”
Asha showed how big. Banubai drummed her knee and opened her mouth wide with pleasure. Then Asha took a sweetmeat and popped it into Banubai’s laughing mouth to silence her. Banubai chewed gaily. She loved sweets as much as nice-looking boys, and Asha often bought her soft crumbly milk-sweets, which she could easily mash between her gums.
Although Banubai lived on a spiritual plane, she had retained a lively interest in the world and all its passing show. “Leila,” she called it, or “God’s play.” She said that we owed it to Him to be fascinated by Him in all His divine moods and aspects. So she wanted to hear every detail of Asha’s life—about her apartment in Bombay, and the parties she went to, and all her friends. She was particularly interested in Lee, and often urged Asha to ask Lee to come and visit them. She didn’t like it that Lee was staying with Swamiji.
“Is he a dangerous person?” Asha asked.
Banubai wouldn’t commit herself, though she made it clear that, if she had a mind to, there was much she could tell about him, and all to his disadvantage. Asha became worried. She knew how much harm these sorts of people could do once they got a hold over someone. She decided to write to Lee and went up on the roof where she could sit undisturbed. Even when she had finished writing, she did not go down again. It was evening time and the steps leading down to the river were getting crowded. Boats went up and down and the people sitting in them chanted to the setting sun, and some of them floated little paper boats loaded with candles and flowers. On the steps just below Banubai’s house there was the usual concourse of widows. They all looked alike, for they had all shaved their heads and were so thin and old that not much was left of their bodies; they wore white cotton saris with nothing underneath, so that their emaciated arms and shriveled, hanging breasts were visible. They had come to the holy city to purify themselves of all the desires of the senses, and now they lived only to pray and die.
They were splashing about in the water, and their voices came faintly floating up to Asha. They were cackling and singing. They were happy. To want nothing except to pray—that was indeed happiness! Asha herself felt heavy with bad thoughts and desires. The lively festive scene moving up and down on the river and the bright orange sun setting into it and flushing the sky with colors that were reflected back from the water—all this did not lead her to anything higher but increased her worldly longings. It was Banubai’s fault. Banubai should not have asked her all those questions about Gopi. Now Asha could not stop thinking of him—and to think of him was to desire him unbearably. The pad of writing paper on which she had written to Lee was still balanced on her knees, the pen still in her hand. It trembled in her hand. But she knew she had no right to write to him. The only thing she still had a right to in life was to be like those widows splashing in the holy water below. She shut her eyes and begged for help to overcome her temptations. But that day her prayer was not granted, and when later she went down to the post office, she was carrying two letters to post.
Lee and Swamiji
Swamiji smiled and said, “You’re angry with me, I can see.”
He had sent everyone away. They were alone together under the tree. There was only one full-grown tree inside the ashram, a huge banyan with ancient gray roots spreading in all directions. It was shady here and quite cool; there was even a little breeze rustling about among the leaves. He had never done this before—sent everyone away so that they could be alone together. In fact, they had never been alone together.
“Tell me why,” he said, “so that I can try and improve.”
Lee hardened herself against him. She said, “You know Margaret can’t cook.”
He laughed: “Is that all?”
“You made her do it. You bullied her.”
“Bullied . . . bullied . . . I like that word. Do I do it to you also? Tell me.”
He leaned forward; his eyes were screwed up and the tip of his tongue protruded mischievously from between his teeth. Lee didn’t like the way he looked at that moment—there was something in his expression that made her turn her face away from him.
“Look at me,” he said lightly. When she remained with her face averted, he said it again, in the same light tone, but when
still she did not turn, he put out his hand and grasped her chin and turned her face toward himself. She cried out at the touch of his hand.
He compelled her to look into his eyes. She was aware of nothing but his eyes. They were quite different from usual—no longer narrow and shrewd, they appeared enormous and glowed and burned with a supernatural power. Looking into them was more than she could bear, but he would not let her look away. He raised one forefinger and slowly, slowly he brought it forward and while she watched it, in fear and fascination, he finally brought the tip of it to rest between her eyes. Again she cried out. There was something like an explosion in her mind and circles of light sparked and revolved within its pitch-black night; all the time she remained aware of his eyes. “Lee, Lee!” a voice called as if from far away, but it was his voice.
He took his forefinger away again. “Why are you crying?” he asked.
She said, “I’m not.” But when she put her hand to her eyes she found she was. She felt amazed and ashamed; she hadn’t cried in years.
“Now you will say that I’m bullying you also.” He smiled gently. “But you like it when I bully you. Isn’t it?”
He laid his hand on her small breast. He did this quite casually and as if it didn’t mean anything to him. But what a lot it meant to her! She trembled and shuddered as she had never done before for anyone. He said, “How small you are. Like a child, a tiny girl.” But he took his hand away again and said, in quite a different voice, “I have a letter for you.”
He took it out of his orange robe and held it before her eyes. “Who is it from?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know, and she didn’t care. At that moment she couldn’t care for anything.
“It’s from Asha,” he said. He drew it from its envelope, which had already been opened, and showed it to her. She put out her hand to take it but he drew it back again. “She is quite near to us,” he informed her. “She is staying with a lady called Banubai. Quite a famous lady,” he said, smiling in a way that suggested he knew more about Banubai than she might like him to know. “Now I think you’re angry that I opened your letter.”
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