“No, I’m a doctor.”
“What are you taking down? I’ll not have it!” Then, turning to me as though I had been guilty of treachery, “My conversation with you was personal and confidential.”
I was profoundly embarrassed and, as severely as I knew how, requested Dr. Ankelsaria to stop his writing immediately.
The night I was leaving Calcutta for Benares, the worthy doctor insisted 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.