SF Notes #9
Our flight from Madras was to be at about midnight. All that day people were coming to say goodbye. There was a definite sense of things ending. Krishnaji went out for his walk as usual, and he also drove through the grounds of the Madras school to say goodbye to it all. That evening he went to bed at his usual time, and he was going to be awakened and driven to the airport when it was time. Arrangements had been made so that he would not have to check in and go through the normal immigration and security formalities, but that he would be picked up in a car at Vasanta Vihar and driven directly to the stairs of the airplane. I was to go ahead of time with Dr. Parchure and take care of the luggage, immigration, and security procedures. There was also traveling on the same plane a girl from California who was a friend of the Moodys. Asit was going to come later. When Dr. Parchure and I got to the airport and began checking in the bags and checking through, I discovered that the airplane was going to be two hours late. This still gave us forty-five minutes to change planes, but it did cut things rather fine. I couldn’t bear the idea of standing around the airport for an extra two hours, since I was there two hours early in any case, so I left the bags checked in and decided to go back to Vasanta Vihar, which turns out to have been a very lucky decision to have made. When I got back to Vasanta Vihar, all of the senior members of the Foundation were still there, and it seems that Pupul, Asit, and perhaps some others had decided that Krishnaji would not fly on that plane, because with only forty-five minutes for the transfer they felt that he might miss it and that he would have to then spend the night in Singapore, and he had not wanted to spend the night en route anywhere. They had decided that he would take the flight on the twelfth, which was the next plane. They had not woken him up to tell him this, and they had made no moves to inform me or Dr. Parchure in the airport. In the normal course of events, we would have checked in, boarded the flight, and waited for Krishnaji to arrive, and he never would have come on, and we would have not been able to do anything other than continue the journey without him. A certain amount of outrage was probably discernible on my face and in what I said. I insisted that Krishnaji know immediately what the situation was, and have him decide what he wanted to do. He was awakened, and despite the attempts to dissuade him from going, he decided that he wanted to go. Dr. Parchure and I and the girl from California went back to the airport several hours later and continued through the different formalities. The airport officials had not been informed of this special procedure with Krishnaji, and I had no small amount of difficulty explaining why I was taking the baggage and ticket of someone through these formalities without him being present. The security, in fact, having had some difficulty with some terrorists, would not let me through. Asit eventually arrived and went through. Eventually, the security police decided that they would have the car with Krishnaji stop outside the departure lounge, and that when they could determine he was in the car, then I could go. When the car with Krishnaji did arrive, I grabbed Dr. Parchure, got into the car with him and Krishnaji, and the three of us drove to the foot of the plane. There we were, the first three on the plane, and Krishnaji asked me to sit next to him. It was the start of Krishnaji’s long and somewhat difficult final flight.
The flight for Krishnaji was difficult right from the beginning. It wasn’t as though he suffered because of the flight, but he had been driving himself so hard and for so long with all of the nonsense in India, and when he got on the plane, he was so happy to be leaving and said so, and he began to relax and all the consequences of his exertions began to come out.
The flight to Singapore was approximately four hours long and uneventful. Dr. Parchure and Asit were asleep behind, but I don’t think Krishnaji or I slept, although I can’t remember what we did do, but he was very weak and he was cold.
When we got to Singapore, there was a wheelchair waiting for Krishnaji. The departure of the next flight was in forty-five minutes, and I rushed to the check-in desk to book onto the next flight. As it was, there was a transfer check-in desk just at the end of the ramp from our airplane, and the ramp to the next airplane was right next to that, so that our forty-five minutes was more than enough time. We said good-bye to Asit and continued our journey.
We were flying first class on Singapore Airlines, which essentially means that we had wonderful service and extraordinary food almost continuously. Krishnaji ate, what was for him, a lot and he frequently commented on how good it was and on how lovely the service was, although he seemed frequently daunted by yet another meal arriving, having seemingly just finished the last one.
I don’t know why he wanted me to nurse him when Dr. Parchure was there, but he did, and I didn’t really know how to do it well, but I did what I could. Krishnaji said that Dr. Parchure was too Maharashtrian, but I had no idea what that meant. Krishnaji was frequently having to go to the toilet, but he was so weak that he couldn’t get there back and forth by himself, and I had to help him a great deal. He was also extremely cold the whole time, and on the last part of the flight, when he’d pretty much stopped eating, he was lying down tucked under masses of blankets that I had wrapped all around him, and eventually he would get warm. But every time he would have to go to the toilet he would get cold again and he would shake, and I would try to warm him up and stop him from shaking. He began during the flight asking me to do something that he was later to ask for, which was to press down on the base of his liver where the head of the pancreas is and then after a while to move the pressure across his stomach to his left side. There were two other doctors on first class coming from a conference in Japan and asked me if I needed help and whether I thought Krishnaji would make it. They didn’t know who Krishnaji was, but they could see that I was taking care of him.
When we arrived in Tokyo, we decided to have just a little walk around the airport to stretch our legs. Krishnaji couldn’t walk without my holding his elbow and supporting him a bit, but he wanted to walk. As we were walking around the departure lounge, a Japanese man saw us and came up to Krishnaji and said, “Are you Mr. Krishnamurti?” Krishnaji said yes and shook his hand courteously, and this man then explained that he had found out from friends in Madras what flight Krishnaji was on and had booked himself a first-class ticket on the same flight to Los Angeles from Tokyo, just so he could have a chance of meeting Krishnaji. I tried to explain that Krishnaji was quite tired, which this man was sensitive enough to see, and he asked if he might be able to see Krishnaji in Ojai. We gave him a telephone number and said that we would see him on the plane.
The flight continued with Krishnaji becoming increasingly weak and with it becoming increasingly difficult for him to keep warm. Even after Krishnaji stopped eating, he took interest in what I was eating and asked me about everything, but eventually even watching me eat became too much for him and he asked me to stop, but not until I’d eaten far more than was decent.
When we arrived on the eleventh at Los Angeles Airport, Krishnaji was supposed to have a wheelchair waiting for him, but there wasn’t one there, and we had to wait at the end of the ramp to the airplane for a very long time. This was very difficult for Krishnaji because there wasn’t even a place for him to sit down. I made a fuss with several people and even suggested to Krishnaji that we just sit on the floor because his legs were not very strong, he having traveled for twenty-four hours and being quite ill. I could tell from the way he didn’t want to do it that he felt it wouldn’t have been dignified, which indeed it wouldn’t have been, but I was more concerned with his well-being at that point. Eventually, a young girl came with a wheelchair. She was very nice, very good, and very American.
We went quickly through passport control and I insisted that Dr. Parchure be with us, so we all pushed through together. Krishnaji was also making motions and insisting that we all be together, and immigration took us all through quite quickly. As soon as that was done, I told the girl that there would be someone waiting for Krishnaji at the exit and that she should just take him straight out. I wanted Dr. Parchure to go with him, but for some reason that didn’t occur, so Dr. Parchure and I stayed to pick up the bags, and I didn’t see Krishnaji again until we got back to Ojai.
By the time we got there, Krishnaji was already in bed. He was very tired and quite weak but extraordinarily happy to be finally in Ojai. It was quite warm, but he had a fever and was afraid of being cold.