I have dinner at his sister’s home, a real Indian feast. Among the
guests was an amazing individual who greeted me as though we were old
friends, and I wondered where in heaven’s name I had ever known him.
Then suddenly I remembered—Carnegie Hall four years earlier, jammed to
the doors, some woman relinquishing her seat because she thought the
subject of the lecture was more important for me than for her, then the
appearance of the thick-set Swami from California, black hair hanging to
his shoulders, and my amazement that in good old America in the days of
the great depression five thousand people could be induced to chorus
after him in unison, “I am love, I am love,” swaying, hypnotized by
their own rhythm, until the lofty hall vibrated and thundered. At the
end of five minutes I had thanked the lady who had given me her place
and tiptoed silently out.
Now here in Calcutta I met again the Swami, clad in his ochre-colored
robe, back in India for the first time in many years. He inquired after
my health, assured me he had been aware of what I had been doing in
America, was so sorry I had not seen his home in Los Angeles. I said I
would visit him when next I went to California.
Instead of being taken to the train in Ankelsaria’s unpretentious car, I
was transported in the Swami’s elegant Rolls-Royce with the top lowered.
As we went swishing through the streets, passers-by jumped on the
running boards, dozens of others followed us, all wanting to touch the
hem of the Swami’s robe. By the time we had reached the station there
were a hundred in our wake. I caught sight of Joseph at the gate, and on
the platform, with one eye out for me, was Anna Jane surrounded by her
formal English friends in evening dress; the train was to depart in a
few minutes. When she saw me approaching with the Swami and his retinue
she dashed into the compartment to compose her features. Then we stood
at the doorway as we pulled out to watch the Englishmen turning away a
little stiffly, and the Swami, one of the incongruous but well-wishing
acquaintances whom birth control attracts, waving a vigorous good-by.
_Chapter Thirty-eight_
DEPTH BUT NOT TUMULT
Of all the cities of India Benares left the worst impression on me; so
many things exaggeratedly extolled do not live up to expectations. I
never encountered more confusion of religious symbols—the Temple of
Gold, the Monkey Temple, the Snake Temple—quite out of place in a holy
city. I did not like temples. They made me feel queer in the middle, so
smelly and such relics of ages gone by. Worshipers bowed low, resting
their foreheads on the wet and slimy floors where thousands of people
were walking in and out. Around the doors were beggars—blind, maimed,
diseased. In the grounds were animals of every kind—monkeys, oxen,
buffaloes, goats for the sacrifice; vultures and crows were flying
overhead.
Most foreigners disliked the Ganges, floating with horrors, but I found
it at dawn comparatively clean, and by far the most attractive thing
there. We had risen early to see the Brahmins, the first-comers, men and
women, old and young, bathing in the holy water. Mourners were sitting
on a hillock some twenty feet away from a burning ghat, still aflame,
waiting until the fire died down and the ashes could be swept into the
river. This seemed to me a more wholesome manner of dealing with the
dead than the Western custom of burial.
Later Joseph, whose cough was increasing, led us through the narrow
streets to the bazaars. Screaming mobs of vendors lured you towards lace
shops or to buy brasses or silks. They came up to offer you cards. If
you took one, competitors shouted and yelled, “He’s a liar, a thief, a
robber, don’t go with him! His goods are fake!” Although some of the
wares were exquisite, this ferocity again did not coincide with my
conception of a holy city.
Allahabad was more like a college town, and there I visited Mrs. Ranjit
Sitaram Pandit, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, whom I had met in
London. Her home was old and spacious, a nucleus of intellectual thought
and activity.
She sponsored a meeting to which about six hundred students came. It was
inspiring to see fine young people attempting to weave together your
philosophy and theirs. They were extremely sensitive—more than most
audiences, I think. But, as was the case with youth elsewhere, they made
light of anything that could be made light of. After the meeting free
literature was announced, and in two minutes it was a regular football
rush. We had to throw the pamphlets over their heads to keep them from
stampeding the platform in their headlong scramble.
At the Purdah Club the audience, of course, was entirely women; many, in
their early twenties, already had large families. They were little
accustomed to frank examination of such subjects, but, on the other
hand, did not want mere theories. By the time questions were in order
they had recovered from their giggling and were ready to talk seriously.
As usual, some came up afterwards to query me personally on matters that
could better and more profitably have been discussed with all.
On reaching Agra we reserved the Taj Mahal for sunset. Fortunately, only
a few people were there, so that the quiet was intensified. Words are
inadequate to describe its dignity and chastity; it seemed to breathe
the essence of beauty. It was not overwhelming, as were some of the
world’s wonders, but it had a perfect simplicity. I stayed until the sun
sank, and in the afterglow the marble shone in a mystic effulgence, like
something in another dimension reflected in the still, translucent pool.
There was not a cloud in the sky, just radiance everywhere. Before
daybreak I climbed again to the top of the gate tower and watched the
rising sun cast its shadow on the dome. With reluctance I turned away to
catch the train for Baroda.
After a long journey we arrived at the capital at three in the morning.
I had been invited as a state guest, and, in spite of the hour, we were
met by the secretary under a handsome hat of red and gold and black.
Immediately you felt a touch of Paris in the way clothes were worn in
Baroda.
Arrangements had been made for my audience with the Gaekwar, who had
been put on the throne by the British Government. He was a most
progressive ruler for his two and a half million subjects, aiming at
compulsory education and the abolition of caste restrictions. In the
immense anteroom of the Palace were ten or fifteen tall Indians with
gorgeous turbans, who must have been more than just ordinary officials.
The Gaekwar, short, vigorous, alert, shook hands and recalled that he
had been President of the World Fellowship of Faith at Chicago, which he
said had been the greatest honor of his life, and that he remembered my
talk there.
“Her Highness wishes to meet you this afternoon. She is beginning to
spend much time on health work and you must get her interested in what
you are doing. She will be a good friend to you.”
At the appointed hour I went to see the Maharani, quite different from
her husband, very grave, only recently out of purdah and still keeping a
separate palace. She knew hardly anything about birth control, but
maintained a welfare center for mothers and infants.
I had heard from many sources that this class, that class, and the other
class would welcome or oppose birth control, none of which statements
had hitherto proved to be accurate. The State Medical Officer, who was
very close to the Maharani, had a further thesis which he stated as he
was taking me to the Maharani’s settlement, a little place where forty
or fifty women, each one with a child, were sitting. “These women have
been brought up to the duty of having children and are so shy and modest
that they would not listen to anything on birth control.”
He sounded as though he were antagonistic, but he was merely indicating
the difficulties as he saw them. I replied that I had never yet
encountered women who, when the subject was put to them in a way they
could understand, were not eager to hear more. I suggested, “There’s a
Mohammedan who has a sickly baby. How old is she?”
“Twenty.”
“How many children has she?”
“Three.”
“Did she have more?”
“Two died.”
“How old is this one?”
“Five or six months.”
“Wouldn’t she prefer to wait until this baby is strong and well before
she has any more?”
The woman had no opportunity to answer. The whole flock moved up. “I do!
We do! Has this lady something like that? That’s what we want!”
The medical officer was genuinely astonished. “I must tell this to her
Highness.” When I myself saw the Maharani for the second time she spoke
far more favorably of birth control.
Eventually I was on my way to Trivandrum, capital of Travancore, to lend
whatever support I could towards the resolution for birth control at the
All-India Women’s Conference. The larger part of the population of this
semi-independent southern state was of Dravidian origin, among whom
child marriage scarcely existed. Here widows were allowed to remarry,
divorce was permissible for either party, and women occupied a unique
position because property descended to the children of a man’s sister
rather than to his own.
Some of the other state guests had already arrived. One charming girl
especially attracted me. She was warm-hearted, kindly, longing to serve
humanity, and prepared to dedicate her life to Gandhi’s teachings. When
I asked her to what she intended to devote herself, she answered, “Show
the depressed classes that women of my type can clean their latrines. If
I can do it, then they will see that it is not such an unworthy
occupation after all.”
Believing this futile, I said, “Don’t you think perhaps you’re wasting
your efforts? Why not do something constructive, teach the mothers to
wash and feed their children properly?”
She was determined, however, to sacrifice herself. “Gandhi wants the
latrines cleaned.”
The Maharani of Travancore, Sethu Parvathi Bai, was titular head of the
Conference, but the guiding spirit was a Parsee from Hyderabad, Mrs.
Rustomji Feridoonji, a woman in her fifties, hair almost white, a
scholar with command of English, German, and French, with the polish of
India and the West as well, alert and aware of everything going on in
the world. She and several like her were an inspiration to others of the
East and could put to shame many Westerners in their courage and vision.
They had seen immediately the necessity of having the movement under the
control of public health. In what was virtually a form of socialized
medicine municipalities were already sending out midwives, nurses, and
doctors to the poor classes. Wherever vaccination went, the birth
control advocates planned to follow with contraceptive information. With
Mrs. Feridoonji and the rest of the committee I helped to draw up a
resolution to this effect.
The second afternoon the Maharani entertained at a garden party.
Fountains were splashing, lakes and pools were lustrous in the sunlight.
The dancing was executed by children and older girls, the couples moving
round and round, precise little steps this way and that and up to each
other without apparently lifting their feet from the ground.
The Maharani and I took a short stroll together and she asked me
particularly to come to her palace the next morning at seven o’clock. I
had really no idea why she wanted to see me, and was uneasy, because the
debate over our resolution was to begin at nine. Nevertheless, I obeyed
her behest. We started our conversation with a pleasant chat about
bringing up children, especially when they were alone in the family
without playmates. I realized she was hesitating over coming to the
point. All the time the minutes were slipping by.
Eventually she took the plunge; her situation as President of the
Congress was very delicate. She had been warned that the Catholics would
withdraw from the Conference if the resolution were passed, and hoped,
therefore, I would not find it necessary to speak for it.
“But,” I protested, “I’ve been invited especially to present this
question.”
“You could substitute another subject which might be of greater
importance to India.”
“But what?” I asked.
“Well,” she suggested, “why not brothels? It’s a disgrace to have
brothels in India—mind you, there are none in Travancore. Indian women
won’t mention them, but you’re an American—you can. What we need most is
to do away with brothels.”
I could readily see the Maharani’s position. Her social secretary was a
Catholic, and large numbers of her Eurasian subjects were of the same
faith. But I said the needs of millions of women in India were more
urgent than the demands of a few Catholic missionaries. She took it
beautifully and agreed. “I shall stay here because I feel the discussion
ought to be full and free,” she said. “I only want you to tell Mrs.
Feridoonji to give your opponents two speakers for every one on your
side.”
There was considerable heat. No Indian women were against it, only
converted Eurasians; all mothers were for it and all those against it
were unmarried. Never had I heard so much talk of the lusts and passions
of men as from the latter. They put forth the same old arguments,
absolutely as though a phonograph record had been sent around the world.
Nothing could have been more monotonous, repeated as they were from
press, platform, and books. You might challenge them, break them down,
correct them, but to no avail. The greater the vehemence, the more
brilliant the opposition thought it had been. You had to ask yourself,
“How did I phrase that answer twenty years ago?” We were utterly tired
out when the vote was at last counted; we had won by eighty-four to
twenty-five. The Catholics kept their word. None came back that
afternoon. But, since it was the end of the Conference, this also did
not matter.
The following day I was off to lecture in Madras, Anna Jane to visit in
Ceylon. The solicitous Joseph intimated he was needed more to pick up
after her than after me. “All right,” I agreed. “But you don’t have to
take the luggage with you. Put it in my compartment.” Joseph, however,
made a mistake and established me on the wrong train; it went no further
than Madura. The next morning about eleven everybody was told to get
out, and there I was with seventeen pieces of luggage of my own and as
many more of Anna Jane’s.
It so happened that a young doctor of Calicut, Manjeri Sundaram, had at
Trivandrum invited me to speak in his city. When I had replied that I
could not at this juncture, he had pleaded, “I’ll go wherever you go. I
must talk to you lots and lots and lots. Whenever you’re not sleeping if
you’ll allow me please to come with you and talk to you.” I had
discouraged him in a most thorough manner, but now he came up to help
with my luggage and secured coolies to sit on it while we saw some
thirty acres of temple.
At Madras, in the Tamil country, the turban-less natives were much
darker, the costumes white and uninteresting. Sir Vepa Ramasan took me
in charge. He was a retired judge of the High Court, a very imposing man
of means who had devoted much of his wealth to a little Malthusian
magazine and stirred things up ever since 1930. As was customary, the
meeting he had arranged was from five to six, a period which by
Occidentals is spent ordinarily over tea, cocktails, or apéritifs, but
put by the Indians to good use. The men had left their offices by that
time; it was cooler and still they could get home for dinner.
Sir Vepa, handsome, dominant, erect in bearing, not at all appearing his
age, was chairman. Once my forty-minute talk was over, he called for
questions in his rich, clear voice. A man produced one I thought was
simple, but Sir Vepa eyed him severely, “That is not allowed!”
“I’ll ask it in a different way.” And he did so.
“I still say it is not allowed!”
“May I ask another?”
“Let me hear it.”
Sir Vepa heard it, and dismissed it. “That’s in the same
category—argument!”
The man jumped up and protested loudly. “Sit down!” roared Sir Vepa, and
the man sat as though he had been hit on the head.
Someone else, five or six seats off, brought up a new question, which
also seemed easy enough to answer. But again Sir Vepa ruled, “That does
not belong to the subject!”
The man wilted.
Now the first questioner was passing a paper over his shoulder to a
third Indian who shook his head violently; he declined to be mixed up in
it.
Query after query was disallowed. Finally a weak voice on the side asked
about the French birth rate. Sir Vepa turned on him and said, “You look
like an intelligent person, but if you have sat for forty minutes
listening to this address, and you have not understood it, then you are
not intelligent enough to warrant a lady’s coming ten thousand miles and
wasting her breath!”
The audience was laughing at Sir Vepa’s judicial sternness. I, on the
other hand, was rather depressed. As we were leaving I said to him, “I
wish you had let me reply to them.”
His expression held surprise: “I’ve been answering them and battling
with these same people for twenty-five years. They only come to confuse.
They are enemies of the cause and I give them no quarter!”
That settled the situation in Madras.
Since I was no more than an hour by motor from Adyar, the former home of
Annie Besant, who had been such an influence in the movement, I made a
pilgrimage there. As I walked down winding pathways under huge banyans,
cocoanuts, and bananas, ever and again glimpsing the lovely water of the
Bay in the distance, I imagined I caught an echo of her words reaching
across the decade since I had heard her explain the philosophy of
reincarnation: the more you have evolved here on earth, the less certain
it is that you will have to return to undo your mistakes—best clear them
up as you go along.
Annie Besant, as soon as she had become a Theosophist, had withdrawn her
books on population. I was interested to find out the attitude of
present Theosophists towards birth control, and discovered that those at
Adyar were persuaded of its importance. Among their beliefs was that
great souls did not reincarnate unless the bodies of parents, their
vehicles for birth, were perfect. If they were to perform their
missions, they must wait for purity in their physical vestures.
I had determined to take advantage of Paul Brunton’s offer and visit Sri
Ramana Maharshi, the sage of Arunachala, the quondam Hermit of the Hill
of the Holy Beacon, and one of the last of Hindustan’s race of noble
rishis. Consequently, one evening a little after six, the train came
around the bend and I beheld the sacred mountain, according to ancient
lore the heart center of the god Siva and, therefore, of the world. I
knew it must be _the_ mountain even without being told so. The sun had
just set, and the afterglow gave a lovely, serene effect.
The Maharshi’s secretary, Shastri, met me, and we walked through the
gathering dusk to the guest house about a half-mile away, a simple room
with veranda in front. Paul Brunton had not been able to come because it
was the Maharshi’s birthday and thousands of devotees had to be fed.
Shastri was very loquacious, and wanted me to realize that the apparent
success I was having was only with the educated classes; the masses knew
nothing of it. This, I said, would come in time.
After breakfast I looked out at the great tamarind trees on the lawn, up
and down which monkeys ran. Often twenty, from babies up to
grandparents, were in sight all at once. The windows had to be
barricaded at night to shut them out of your room; they especially loved
bananas but did not disdain cakes of soap.
While I was watching them scamper about, Paul Brunton pedaled up on a
bicycle accompanied by a tonga for me. The driver cried out continually,
“Haiee! Haiee!” which seemed to mean both for people to get out of the
road and for the white bullock to move faster; he shouted himself hoarse
at other drivers, who went higglety-pigglety this way and that through
the streets. We stopped at the market for a few bananas as a gift for
the Maharshi; he preferred food to flowers, because this he could give
away. Then we trotted along through the thickly settled village, always
hearing far and near the rumbling of the carts and the screeching of the
drivers, “Haiee! Haiee!”
At last we reached the _ashram_ at the bottom of the Hill. Shastri
gathered up the bananas in his hands, but no sooner had he turned to
help me out of the tonga than a temple monkey leaped from a neighboring
tree, snatched two of them, and as quick as a flash had the skins off
and had gobbled them down with no concern whatsoever as to the ethics of
his conduct. Instead, he peered around for another grab.
Shoes and sandals were left outside the _ashram_, and Shastri went ahead
to announce my arrival. I bowed in the entrance and took my place on the
floor just within, crossed my legs under my skirt, and looked about me
to feel and sense the atmosphere. The Maharshi, naked save for a loin
cloth, was sitting cross-legged on a silk-covered couch, pillows behind
him and a leopard skin thrown over the foot. A small charcoal fire and
incense, which attendants kept burning all day, sweetened and made heavy
the air. The Maharshi’s luminous eyes were fixed in a trance, although
sometimes his fan lifted a bit and his stare widened.
At first it was nicely quiet; then some women began to sing in a
high-pitched tone, much through the nose and head, doubtless good for
the pineal gland, once supposed to be the seat of the soul. The men
chanted aloud and someone played a stringed instrument.
Towards eleven the Maharshi shared his gifts among those who sat in
reflection, and shortly afterwards a man from Kashmir, six feet tall and
massively built, entered, prostrated himself as hundreds had done
already, falling full length, hands outspread above him on the floor,
touching his brow three times. As he rose again his whole body shook,
tears streamed down his cheeks. To see women cry from excess of emotion
did not bother me, but when a man of such a type as this, in no sense a
weakling, went into paroxysms of ecstasy, it was beyond my
comprehension. With no critical intent, but curious to know why he had
been so moved, we asked what had happened to him.
“When I came into the Maharshi’s presence it was as though electricity
had passed through my body. I felt when I bowed I would be calmed, yet
when I looked into those eyes, he was like a flame.”
This pilgrim had come with financial problems, illness in his family,
and other troubles, but two or three hours of contemplation had wiped
them out; he knew they were insignificant and trivial in contrast to his
regeneration. In faith, the people in the _ashram_ were comparable to
those who cast away their crutches at some miracle-working shrine,
except that they had come for inner illumination rather than healing for
bodily ailments. They visited the Maharshi to receive the radiance of
his soul, just as we sought the sun to be warmed.
Only when children or babies were made to prostrate themselves did the
Maharshi smile, somewhat skeptically it seemed to me. He appeared amused
when a boy of three or four began a prayer in Tamil but forgot the rest.
Otherwise he remained apart from it all. He was gradually withdrawing
himself and letting go material things. He wanted spiritually to fade
away, leaving the shell behind.
The second day the Maharshi slept; nothing save an occasional singer
broke into the hush, or a monkey had the temerity to dash in and seize
an orange.
For the third day I attended the _ashram_. Now the meditation was like a
linking up of mind and emotion, where even breathing was stilled. I
could understand why the yogis went into the silence. Even the noises
next door, the clatter of dishes, sounded remote and very far away. It
was a state of consciousness rather like that which precedes sleep.
I regretted that I did not feel the Maharshi’s power. His utter
indifference—sitting all day in a semi-trance, engaging in no
activity—seemed to me a waste. Nevertheless, I was most grateful to Paul
Brunton for the experience, and understood the Indians better
thereafter. They saw within and beyond the external appearance; this was
at the very basis of their character, akin to the sensitivity of the
grapevine telegraph. All people in the Orient spoke of it. Something
happened to you or to me and before you could get to another place by
the fastest conveyance it was known. Perhaps it was a primitive function
of mind, this form of thought transference, but it existed there.