SF Notes: #3
The next morning I found out when the flights were, and I did manage to get three first-class reservations. There were only three a week from Madras considered direct, and these changed planes at Singapore, stopped in Tokyo, and then went on to Los Angeles. I came back to report to Krishnaji what the possible dates were, and he selected the seventeenth of January as the day he wanted to go. I tried to persuade Krishnaji to stop along the way someplace, just a couple of nights someplace warm. I thought it would be easier for him, but he didn’t want to stop anywhere. That afternoon, I returned to get all the tickets and finalize the arrangements. Krishnaji had given me his ticket and had told Dr. Parchure to give me his ticket. Luckily, I had an American Express card and I could pay the difference required for their two tickets and purchase myself one. When we were in Rishi Valley, Krishnaji had also invited the Moodys to travel with him, and there was some concern over whether they could alter their flight arrangements.
Krishnaji had begun saying to me, “Sir, can you get me out of India?” and “Can you get me to Ojai?” I always responded positively, but he asked me on enough occasions and with enough concern to show that he was quite worried about being able to leave.
When people found out that Krishnaji had made arrangements through me to leave, they were furious with me, but there was not very much they could do about me directly. (Krishnaji had, previous to our arrival, lambasted them about their treatment of foreigners and, I think, about me in particular, as I was now being treated with a consideration that was really very new and very different to what I had known previously.) Pupul tried to persuade Krishnaji to stay and give at least one talk in Bombay, and then leave early from there if he still wanted to at that time. Pupul also tried to convince me that it was a terrible way to get to California, that she knew all these people who traveled all the time and that going across the Pacific was the worst way of getting to California, and that the flight was much longer (which, of course, it wasn’t), etcetera, etcetera.
Krishnaji was scheduled to give talks on the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of December, to have question-and-answer meetings on the thirty-first of that month and on the second of January, and to give the last two talks on the fourth and fifth of January. Two days after that there were scheduled to be—I believe—six days of meetings with the Indian trustees. Not long after arriving in Madras, this speaking schedule began to be questioned. A doctor was called, who was supposed to be a marvelous doctor, to examine Krishnaji and determine whether Krishnaji could speak. Krishnaji didn’t want to say anything to people, but he didn’t like this doctor at all and didn’t want him touching him. Krishnaji was always extremely sensitive, and the doctor’s contact with him left him shaking for quite some time. The doctor did, however, say that Krishnaji must have at least two days of rest between talks and that the day before a talk he must be absolutely quiet and conserve all his energy. Krishnaji felt that since the advertising had gone out for him to speak, he was obliged to do so. So it was decided that he would start off giving the first talk and would see how he felt, and that if the schedule was to change it could be announced at the talk.
Almost every day, as we waited for the day of the first talk, I would meet Krishnaji very early in the morning. I had the room that was closest to his quarters, and separated only by a veranda that was on top of the portico of the front door. I would watch the sun rise in the most extraordinary colors, with the coconut and tamarind trees in the distance and all the trees a dull, smoky blue, and Krishnaji would appear and come out to join me. There were hoopoe birds, like the one in Rishi Valley, parrots, small owls, others birds of marvelous color, and, of course, crows. There was a very small pond out on the front lawn just below, with water lilies that opened up in the morning, absolutely lovely. It was a marvelous time of the day, and I found myself looking forward to getting up and meeting Krishnaji and looking at the new day with him. On the occasions that he didn’t appear, I would go looking for him, as I knew that if he wasn’t up it was because he wasn’t feeling well.
My access to Krishnaji was a bit troublesome to some people in the Foundation. Krishnaji had asked me to come and see him often, even when other people were there, and if he was busy talking with them about something personal, he would ask me to leave, which he did on a couple of occasions. It is understandable that this was difficult for people who previously had been the only ones in India to have this privilege and who had been responsible for determining who else would see Krishnaji and when.
Usually during the morning, people would come to see Krishnaji in his bedroom. At lunch Nandini would eat with him in his bedroom. After lunch he would take a nap and then he would again see people until his walk in the late afternoon.
Sometimes more than one car would be taken for the walks, but Krishnaji asked me to come with him in the car that took him to the beach where the walks occurred. We would drive through the Theosophical Society grounds to Radha Burnier’s house. Her house is on the beach, almost exactly opposite the place where Krishnaji is purported to have been found as a boy. Nandini, too, was almost always in the same car. There was room for one or, with a squeeze, two others, and they varied from day to day. As we came around the side of the house from the back where the cars were parked, past the flowering trees, Krishnaji would greet the people on the veranda who were waiting there either just to greet him or else to come on the walk. As tired as he was, Krishnaji often found the time and the energy to go into the house for a few minutes and put his hands on the eyes of Radha’s niece, who teaches at the Bangalore school and who was losing her sight. She said that her sight had improved. I don’t know whether it was an improvement that lasted.
As the Madras talks were scheduled at the same time as the Theosophical convention, there were thousands of Theosophists on and around the Theosophical grounds. Many of them would wait on the beach for Krishnaji just in order to greet him and say namaskaram or perhaps shake his hand. Usually we went out to the small tarmac path on the beach and turned right, walking down as far as the edge of the fishermen’s village, and then turned around and walked the other way north out onto the broken bridge over the Adyar River. The sun was usually setting and the extraordinary colors, the smell of the sea air, and the sound of the waves produced quite a lovely effect.
On one walk along the beach, Krishnaji and Radha were talking and Radha made a remark about the modern Indian having no sensitivity at all toward nature, and Krishnaji said yes. Radha went on to say that that indicated a civilization in decay, and Krishnaji said yes, absolutely. At one point I went to Mahabalipuram, a lovely place along the beach, where there are extraordinary carvings in the granite around the temples there made in the sixth or seventh century that showed such affection and love of nature. Thirteen or fourteen centuries later, they were still extraordinary and moving and unusual. Something had indeed been lost in the ensuing time.
There was an old man from Argentina who was a Theosophist and who would do namaskaram to Krishnaji every time he would see him on a walk. On one such walk he stopped Krishnaji and said in faltering English that he had heard Krishnaji speaking in Argentina. Krishnaji responded to him by saying, “Oh, poor chap,” which the man didn’t understand, but he was delighted to have had a word from Krishnaji. I said, “Krishnaji, really, how can you say that kind of thing to someone?” and Krishnaji said, “Well, I don’t think he understood it, so it was all right.” Then Krishnaji said, “Do you think he did understand?” but it was fairly clear that the man hadn’t. It was really quite humorous, but Krishnaji then said that perhaps he shouldn’t joke.
Several times when the wind was strong and while walking on this broken bridge, which in effect formed a jetty out over the river, Krishnaji held onto my shoulder as we walked. After one such occasion, he told me that sometime before, when the wind had been particularly strong, he had had to crawl back on his hands and knees. He said that he was afraid that if he fell he’d hurt his watch.
The walk then concluded by returning to Radha’s house and the waiting cars. On one of these walks the sun was setting as the full moon, immense and silver, came out of the sea. It was quite breathtaking and quite special.
Krishnaji insisted that I get a lot of shirts and trousers made, and so I was frequently out shopping, and Krishnaji always wanted to see what I had bought. Often he would say to me with the most hesitant, boyish expression something like, did I think I could get some more of this or that, and off I would go to get enough for another shirt or another pair of trousers.
I had a small radio, which Mary had lent me, and on which I could hear the BBC World Service. Since Krishnaji regularly asked me what the news was, I was able to tell him, thanks to this. I would also get Time and Newsweek magazines, which Krishnaji would read through quickly.
Sometime—I believe it was before this first talk—Krishnaji said to me that he didn’t want to have so many trustees’ talks, that he wanted to resign from the Foundation, and that he wanted to settle the publication and copyright business once and for all, and then leave. He suggested that we leave on the twelfth of January, which was the flight closest to the seventeenth but prior to it and direct to Los Angeles.
Krishnaji had obviously mentioned this to people, and as I was on my way out to arrange this, Sunanda came to me, pulled me aside, and wanted to talk, saying that perhaps I should wait until Pupul returned (she had left for several days to do her business). Obviously, there was a sense that Pupul would talk Krishnaji out of it, and that I shouldn’t do anything because it would only be more difficult. I thought that this was quite a dirty trick that was being played on Krishnaji, because it was a kind of conspiracy not to listen to or give Krishnaji what he wanted, and because I was there and not playing this game, Krishnaji was getting what he wanted.
I went upstairs to put to Krishnaji, as objectively and neutrally as I could, that people wanted Pupul to return before his travel plans were changed. Pama was there when I spoke with him, and I tried to present it as an even and reasonable suggestion, but Krishnaji got angry and said, “What does Pupul have to do with this? I can make my own plans and I can leave on the twelfth.” So, of course, everyone completely agreed that, if that’s when Krishnaji wanted to leave, then that’s when he could leave, and that it was really up to Krishnaji when he came and went. When Pupul returned, she was upset and I began to hear stories about my persuading Krishnaji to go and that his leaving was all my doing. Since then I have heard stories about my taking Krishnaji out of India against his will. But I can still hear Krishnaji asking me, “Can you get me out of here? Can you get me to Ojai?”
When Pupul learned that Krishnaji wanted to resign from the Indian Foundation, she said to him that if he didn’t resign from the other Foundations as well, then she herself would resign. Krishnaji told me about this with a little laugh, saying that when she said this he didn’t say a thing; he didn’t discourage her from resigning, he didn’t do a thing. She quickly withdrew the threat when she saw that Krishnaji was not going to buy it.