A Centenary Tribute

Coming to the Turnstile

WHEN my dear friend Sachidananda Mohanty asked me, without preamble, whether I would write some-thing in tribute to K.D. Sethna, most appropriately known as Amal Kiran, I foolishly agreed. For I had once reviewed a book of his, and thought that sufficient justification for paying an honest tribute to him. It is always an honour to praise a doyen of any walk of human life. However, it took me only a few minutes' reflection to admit that the better Amal Kiran's qualifications were for a tribute, the worse mine appeared to render it. For I have had an ordinarily small life, can boast only of ordinary and small achievements, while he seems extraordinary and his achievements extraordinary likewise. Besides, he is a hundred! And although I am now the 'old man' of the place where I work, Amal Kiran has shown wisdom, and knowledge and courage in leaving one world to enter another without contemptuously renouncing either.

My 'acquaintance' with him, the excuse to pay him tribute, began to appear flimsier by the minute. Anything I thought of saying began to assume increasing degrees of triviality vis-à-vis a man who had passed down so many paths before us, and was now "at the turnstile". Therefore, I realised, he was above picky distinctions about his 'place' in the scholarly domain, 'fine' analyses of his written works, and nifty phrases in praise. As Rudyard Kipling says in his preface to Life's Handicap, "When man has come to the turn-stile of Night all the creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colourless."

What, then, should I do? Amal Kiran would deserve any praise he received. Everyone about him was obviously right

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in wishing to praise and honour him. Yet one fact seemed to press itself forward, again and again, and with greatest ease - that long decades ago he had left 'this' world to enter another in a manner I would neither apprehend nor find it possible to write about, because I had not experienced it; and I did not wish to use Kalibanese.

Therefore, I came to two conclusions - that pretended tribute constitutes the worst offence from man to man, and that I did know another man just like him, but described with all the power of language a man could wield. So if present-ing this other man in tribute to Amal Kiran was acceptable, I would let a better writer present a character that might neither diminish nor offend him. Here it is -

*

THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT*

The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling, 1894-95

The night we felt the Earth move

We stole and plucked him by the hand,

Because we loved him with the love

That knows but cannot understand.

And when the roaring hillside broke,

And all our world fell down in rain,

We saved him, we the Little-Folk;

 But lo! He will not come again!

Mourn now, we saved him for the sake

Of such poor love as wild ones may

. Mourn ye! Our brother does not wake

 And his own kind drive us away!

Dirge of the Langurs

THERE was once a man in India who was Prime Minister of one of the semi-independent native states in the north-western

* Abridged version

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part of the country. He was a Brahmin, so high-caste that caste ceased to have any particular meaning for him, and his father had been an important official in the gay-coloured tag-rag and bob-tail of an old-fashioned Hindu Court. But as Purun Dass grew up he realised that the ancient order of things was changing, and that if any one wished to get on he must stand well with the English, and imitate all the English believed to be good. At the same time a native official must keep his own master's favour. This was a difficult game, but the quiet, close-mouthed young Brahmin, helped by a good English education at a Bombay university, played it coolly, and rose, step by step, to be Prime Minister of the kingdom. That is to say, he held more real power than his master, the Maharajah.

When the old king - who was suspicious of the English, their railways and telegraphs - died, Purun Dass stood high with his young successor, who had been tutored by an Englishman. And between them, though he always took care that his master should have the credit, they established schools for little girls, made roads, and started State dispensaries and shows of agricultural implements, and published a yearly blue-book on the "Moral and Material Progress of the State", and the Foreign Office and the Government of India were delighted. The Prime Minister became the honoured friend of viceroys and governors, and lieutenant-governors, and medical missionaries, and common missionaries, and hard-riding English officers who came to shoot in the State preserves, as well as of whole hosts of tourists who travelled up and down India in the cold weather, showing how things ought to be managed.

At last he went to England on a visit, and had to pay enormous sums to the priests when he came back, for even so high-caste a Brahmin as Purun Dass lost caste by cross-ing the black sea. He was given honorary degrees by learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of Hindu social reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all Lon-don cried, "This is the most fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since cloths were first laid!'

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When he returned to India there was a blaze of glory, for the Viceroy himself made a special visit to confer upon the Maharajah the Grand Cross of the Star of India - all diamonds and ribbons and enamel. And at the same ceremony, while the cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire, so that his name stood Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E.

That evening at dinner in the big Viceregal tent he stood up with the badge and the collar of the order on his breast, and replying to the toast of his master's health, made a speech that few Englishmen could have surpassed.

Next month, when the city had returned to its sunbaked quiet, he did a thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing, for, so far as the world's affairs went, he died. The jewelled order of his knighthood returned to the Indian Government, and a new Prime Minister was appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of General Post began in all the subordinate appointments. The priests knew what had happened and the people guessed, but India is-the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why. And the fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging bowl and ochre-coloured dress of a Sannyasi or holy man, was considered nothing extraordinary. He had been, as the Old Law recommends, twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter - though he had never carried a weapon in his life - and twenty years head of a household. He had used his wealth and his power for what he knew both to be worth; he had taken honour when it came his way; and he had seen men and cities far and near, and men and cities had stood up and honoured him. Now he would let these things go, as a man drops the cloak he needs no longer.

Behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished brown coco de mer in his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on the ground - behind him

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they were firing salutes from the bastions in honour of his happy successor. Purun Dass nodded. All that life was ended, and he bore it no more ill-will or good-will than a man bears to a colourless dream of the night. He was a Sannyasi - a houseless, wandering mendicant, depending on his neighbours for his daily bread, and so long as there is a morsel to divide in India neither priest nor beggar starves. Even when he was being lionised in London he had held before him his dream of peace and quiet - the long, white, dusty Indian road, printed all over with bare feet, the incessant, slow-moving traffic, and the sharp-smelling wood-smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twilight, where the wayfarers sat at their evening meal.

When the time came to make that dream true the Prime Minister took the proper steps, and in three days you might more easily find a bubble in the trough of the long Atlantic seas than Purun Dass among the roving, gathering, separating millions of India.

One evening he crossed the highest pass he had met till then - it had been a two days' climb - and came out on a line of snow-peaks that belted all the horizon - mountains from fifteen to twenty thousand feet high, looking almost near enough to hit with a stone, though they were fifty or sixty miles away. The pass was crowned with dense, dark forest -deodar, walnut, wild cherry, wild olive, and wild pear, but mostly deodar, which is the Himalayan cedar; and under the shadow of the deodars stood a deserted shrine to Kali -who is Durga, who is Sitala, who is sometimes worshipped against the smallpox.

Purun Dass swept the stone floor clean, and sat down to rest.

Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, to where a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. All round it tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of the mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the smooth stone circles of the tlueshing-floors. Looking across the valley the eye was deceived by the size of things, and could not at first realise

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that what seemed to be low scrub, on the opposite mountain-flank, was in truth a forest of hundred-foot pines. Purun Bhagat saw an eagle swoop across the enormous hollow, but the great bird dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. A few bands of scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, catching on a shoulder of the hills, or rising up and dying out when they were level with the head of the pass. And, 'Here shall I find peace,' said Purun Bhagat.

Now, a hill-man makes nothing of a few hundred feet up or down, and as soon as the villagers saw the smoke in the deserted shrine, the village priest climbed up the terraced hillside to welcome the stranger.

When he met Purun Bhagat's eyes - the eyes of a man used to control thousands - he bowed to the earth, took the begging-bowl without a word, and returned to the village, saying: 'We have at last a holy man. Never have I seen such a man. He is of the plains - but pale coloured - a Brahmin of the Brahmins.' Then all the housewives of the village said: 'Think you he will stay with us?' And each did her best to cook the most savoury meal for the Bhagat. Hill-food is very simple, but with the buckwheat and Indian corn, and rice and red pepper, and little fish out of the stream in the little valley, and honey from the flue-like hives built in the stone walls, and dried apricots, and turmeric, and wild ginger, and bannocks of flour, a devout woman can make good things. And it was a full bowl that the priest carried to the Bhagat. Was he going to stay? Asked the priest. Would he need a chela - a disciple - to beg for him? Had he a blanket against the cold weather? Was the food good?

Purun Bhagat ate, and thanked the giver. It was in his mind to stay. That was sufficient, said the priest. Let the begging-bowl be placed outside the shrine, in the hollow made by those two twisted roots, and daily should the Bhagat be fed, for the village felt honoured that such a man - he looked timidly into the Bhagat's face - should tarry among them.

That day saw the end of Purun Bhagat's wanderings. He had come to the place appointed for him - the silence and the space. After this, time stopped, and he, sitting at the

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mouth of the shrine, could not tell whether he were alive or dead: a man with control of his limbs, or a part of the hills, and the clouds, and the shifting rain, and sunlight. He would repeat a Name softly to himself a hundred hundred times, till, at each repetition, he seemed to move more and more out of his body, sweeping up to the doors of some tremendous discovery. But, just as the door was opening, his body would drag him back, and, with grief, he felt he was locked up again in the flesh and bones of Purun Bhagat.

Then came such summer rains as had not been known in the hills for many seasons. Through three good months the valley was wrapped in cloud and soaking mist - steady, unrelenting downfall, breaking off into thunder-shower after thunder-shower. Kali's shrine stood above the clouds, for the most part, and there was a whole month in which the Bhagat never caught a glimpse of his village. It was packed away under a white floor of cloud that swayed and shifted and rolled on itself and bulged upwards, but never broke from its piers - the streaming flanks of the valley.

At that time he heard nothing but the sound of a million little waters, overhead from the trees, and underfoot along the ground, soaking through the pine-needles, dripping from the tongues of draggled fern, and spouting in newly torn muddy channels down the slopes. Then the sun came out, and drew forth the good incense of the deodars and the rhododendrons, and that far-off clean smell the Hill-People call "the smell of the snows". The hot sunshine lasted for a week, and then the rains gathered together for their last downpour, and the water fell in sheets that flayed off the skin of the ground and leaped back in mud. Purun Bhagat heaped his fire high that night, for he was sure his brothers would need warmth, but never a beast came to the shrine, though he called and called till he dropped asleep, wonder-ing what had happened in the woods.

It was in the black heart of the night, the rain drumming like a thousand drums, that he was roused by a plucking at his blanket, and, stretching out, felt the little hand of a langur.

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It is better here than in the trees,' he said sleepily, loosening a fold of the blanket. 'Take it and be warm.' The monkey caught his hand and pulled hard. 'Is it food, then?' said Purun Bhagat. 'Wait a while, and I will prepare some.' As he kneeled to throw fuel on the fire the langur ran to the door of the shrine, crooned, and ran back again, plucking at the man's knee.

'What is it? What is thy trouble, Brother?' said Purun Bhagat, for the langur's eyes were full of things that he could not tell. 'Unless one of thy caste be in a trap - and none sets traps here - I will not go into that weather. Look, Brother, even the barasingha comes for shelter.'

The deer's antlers clashed as he strode into the shrine, clashed against the grinning statue of Kali. He lowered them in Purun Bhagat's direction and stamped uneasily, hissing through his half-shut nostrils.

'Hai!Hai!Hai! said the Bhagat, snapping his fingers. 'Is this payment for a night's lodging?' But the deer pushed him towards the door, and as he did so Purun Bhagat heard the sound of something opening with a sigh, and saw two slabs of the floor draw away from each other, while the sticky earth below smacked its lips.

'Now I see,' said Purun Bhagat. 'No blame to my brothers that they did not sit by the fire to-night. The mountain is falling. And yet—why should I go?' His eye fell on the empty begging-bowl, and his face changed. 'They have given me good food daily since - since I came, and, if I am not swift, to-morrow there will not be one mouth in the valley. Indeed, I must go and warn them below. Back there, Brother! Let me get to the fire.'

The barasingha backed unwillingly as Purun Bhagat drove a torch deep into the flame, twirling it till it was well lit. 'Ah! Ye came to warn me,' he said, rising. 'Better than that we shall do, better than that. Out, now, and lend me thy neck, Brother, for I have but two feet.'

He clutched the bristling withers of the barasingha with his right hand, held the torch away with his left, and stepped

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out of the shrine into the desperate night. There was no breath of wind, but the rain nearly drowned the torch as the great deer hurried down the slope, sliding on his haunches. As soon as they were clear of the forest more of the Bhagat's brothers joined them. He heard, though he could not see, the langurs pressing about him, and behind them the uhh! uhh! of Sona. The rain matted his long white hair into ropes; the water splashed beneath his bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his frail old body, but he stepped down steadily, leaning against the barasingha. He was no longer a holy man, but Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., Prime Minister of no small State, a man accustomed to command, going out to save life. Down the steep plashy path they poured all together, the Bhagat and his brothers, down and down till the deer clicked and stumbled on the wall of a threshing-floor, and snorted be-cause he smelled Man. Now they were at the head of the one crooked village street, and the Bhagat beat with his crutch at the barred windows of the blacksmith's house as his torch blazed up in the shelter of the eaves. 'Up and out!' cried Purun Bhagat, and he did not know his own voice, for it was years since he had spoken aloud to a man. 'The hill falls! The hill is falling! Up and out, oh, you within!'

'It is our Bhagat,' said the blacksmith's wife. 'He stands among his beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call.'

It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow way, surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently.

The people hurried into the street.

'Across the valley and up the next hill!' shouted Purun Bhagat. 'Leave none behind! We follow!'

Then the people ran as only Hill-Folk can run, for they knew that in a landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. They fled, splashing through the little river at the bottom, and panted up the terraced fields on the far side, while the Bhagat and his brethren followed. Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to

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each other by name - the roll-call of the village - and at their heels toiled the big barasingha, weighted by the fall-ing strength of Purun Bhagat. At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pine-wood, five hundred feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him of the coming slide, told him he would be safe here.

Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain and that fierce climb were killing him. But first he called to the scattered torches ahead: 'Stay and count your numbers.' Then, whispering to the deer as he saw the lights gather in a cluster: 'Stay with me, Brother. Stay - till -I- go!'

There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of the rain falling on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled drums of water on soft earth. That told its own tale.

Never a villager - not even the priest - was bold enough to speak to the Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the pines and waited till the day. When it came they looked across the valley, and saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees flung head-down on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of their refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into a brick-coloured lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the shrine itself, and the forest be-hind, there was no trace. For one mile in width and two thou-sand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.

And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before their Bhagat. They saw the barasingha stand-ing over him, who fled when they came near, and they heard

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the langurs wailing in the branches, and Sona moaning up the hill. But their Bhagat was dead, sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the north-east.

The priest said: 'Behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this very attitude must all Sannyasis be buried! Therefore, where he now is we will build the temple of our holy man.'

They built the temple before a year was ended, a little stone and earth shrine, and they called the hill the Bhagat's Hill, and they worship there with lights and flowers and offerings to this day.

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