Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

3

A Schoolgirl's Travel Notes

Mirra saw new countries and peoples, observed everything, and wrote in her Meditations: "Those who live for Thee and in Thee ... no longer do they marvel at the novelty, unexpectedness, picturesque ness of things and countries."

But so few of us are like Mirra I The greater part of humanity loves to marvel. I confess that not only does the picturesque ness of things and countries attract me, but there is also in me a curiosity to know about peoples and their customs. In this jet age or supersonic age of the late twentieth century, very few of us can have any real idea of how people lived or travelled in the beginning of this very century. So when I came across the Travel Notes "of a schoolgirl who has just left high school," I heartily thanked Bharatidi.¹ She was, of course, a very young person when she set out for a tour of India in 1908, six years before Mirra, but her power of observation was already finely honed. She was always ready to learn a little more and to understand a little better. Bharatidi did not take

1. Suzanne Karpeles, see Book Two, p. 77.

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a Japanese liner like Mirra, but the types she met and the sights she saw could not have been much different. She journeyed with her mother and her elder sister, Andree. Here are some excerpts from Bharatidi's notes.

"Tuesday, 17 November, Marseilles — Inside the museum two beautiful frescoes by Puvis de Chavannes. ..." "Wednesday, 18 November, Marseilles —It is today that we are embarking. I haven't yet realized that I shall be leaving France for an unknown world! . . .

A view of Marseilles' harbour early this century

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"I am guided across a crowded street where Blacks throng, glistening and grimy with coal; where the Chinese, with long pigtails and a placid air, arrange their wares of footwear.

"The steamer, Yarra, is black, single-decked and three-funnelled; on the dock a mad bustle: people arriving at the last minute, and trunks that do not arrive! Families weeping. In the middle of all this commotion, a whistle-blast. We are leaving.

"Marseilles is lost in a blue haze, and we are at sea."

She goes on to describe the officers and some of the passengers on board —a Parsi couple, a Muslim family, a few English officers who pace the deck with a determined air, the eye adorned by a monocle.

"Thursday, 19 November, on the high seas-The sea continues to be boisterous, the sadness and regret at having left the motherland grow."

"Friday, 20 November (fifteen days before the Messina earthquake)— 5 A.M. We are on the bridge scanning the horizon with field-glasses; we are crossing the strait of Messina, there is moonlight; the port of Sicily comes into our view with its thousand little flickering lights, while the Calabria is darkly silhouetted against the transparent sky.

"At dusk we get up to see Crete, sad and barren." "Sunday, 22 November — The sea is dark blue, the sky is pure. Gradually everybody makes an appearance on the deck, the face more or less grey or yellow, leaning on the arms of a cabinmaid

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and with just enough energy to sink into a deck-chair. But the English regain their energy for the 'Holy Sunday' and in the saloon a priest celebrates the mass and all intone the songs with zeal."

"Monday, 23 November, Port Said, Egypt — 5 A.M. It is still dark; then suddenly broad daylight. In the port are other vessels flying English and German flags. Our steamer is immediately besieged and surrounded by small boats in which Arabs gesticulate and shout.

"Port Said has nothing attractive or impressive, and resembles a big toy for the Universal Exposition. The men are nothing special; the women, like lost souls, glide along the walls in their mournful black sacks, a black veil covering the lower part of the face and held in place over the nose with a wooden rod; the children are very lively, very dirty, and almost all have their eyes devoured by flies.

"We go and pay homage to the statue of de Lesseps, who, in a welcoming gesture receives us at the end of the jetty. The beach is endless, boring; the sea is beautiful, calm; and far away, vanishing over the skyline, white and salmon-coloured sailing boats fade out of sight.

"The European quarter is made up of high, varicoloured houses from which strange blokes emerge; the native quarter is quite oriental with its narrow alleys and its cafes where some sip their small portion of coffee, and others smoke their hookah.

"We leave Port Said, and slowly enter the canal, its waters calm and grey; salt marshes on one side and on the other, the

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Port Said: an overview of the harbour early this century

desert, where a poor, hairless camel can be glimpsed now and then led by two or three men; here and there a thin feather palm that seems quite surprised at having come up amid this sea of sand. We pass big sailing boats of antique shapes, with long pointed sails listing gently and seeming to skim the water's surface, while the Arabs hoist or lower shorter sails.

"A tiny train runs between a row of thin greenery and, with a trail of smoke, breaks the monotony of the horizon. Several big vessels stop to let us pass and the passengers greet us.

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"In the evening, a superb sunset: a ball of fire sinking into the sea of golden sands.

"The young Parsi woman takes us into her cabin, and there she shows us dozens of 'saris': some embroidered all over with peach flowers, others spangled, yet others of soft silk bordered with a pretty Indian braid."

"Tuesday, 24 November, Red Sea —We sail along the coast and the Sinai mountains; the sea is calm and all the passengers friendly with each other. The sun, setting the whole horizon ablaze, disappears slowly behind a rocky island. In the evening, the sky is marvellously starry, the sea all luminescent; the breeze that accompanied us till now has died out and a languid heat is beginning to be felt."

"Friday, 27 November-The sea is rough and it is raining. Towards evening, the weather clears and a whole colony of white seagulls follows the ship. A superb moon illuminates us, before setting slowly; at one point all that can be seen is a crescent that looks like a golden boat floating on the dark blue water.

"The young Muslim woman is interesting; she tells us that she and her sisters are the first women from the Muslim society to have gone to study in London. They were the talk of the whole of Bombay, censured by newspapers, and for some time scorned by their friends and relatives. She has been engaged since the age of thirteen, she knows her future husband and has often talked with him. When she marries, she will don the red dress that symbolizes happiness and the green veil that symbolizes hope."

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"Saturday, 28 November, Aden-We reach Aden early, surrounded with huge tormented rocks. Strapping fellows row our boat; they are Somalis, their heads reddened by lime, with flat noses and thick Negroid lips. Glanders is raging among horses, so all the carriages are drawn by hairless camels that hold their head aloft impertinently. We ride across a rocky and sad part that looks like the remnant of an ancient crater, in which long caravans of camels, each one's head tied to another's tail, slowly file past, laden with cane and big bundles. We pass a few women, some completely veiled, others wrapped in large, bright-coloured shawls, carrying big pitchers on their heads, their babies on their hips.

"Round the corner of a narrow road, carved in the pink rock, the entire old town comes into view, flat, multicoloured and swarming. The British town lies at the bottom of a crater, well isolated.

"At last we reach the famous reservoirs located in a gorge; a few wretched trees, growing laboriously, bear a sign, 'Touching plant is forbidden.' The reservoirs are formed by deep cement tanks in which green water stagnates. Above a well circled with frail shrubs, three bare-chested men pull up a bucket made of cowhide.

"On our way back, we meet a troop of British soldiers, as yellow as their khaki uniforms.

"A handsome blond young man, a British police officer, is delighted to have an opportunity of airing with us a few French phrases. He is sorry to be going to India as he detests Indians and would rather not know them: 'They are just good

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enough to be got money out of,' he says, and very kindly gives us the sound piece of advice not to mix with those people, and this winter to come to Luck now during the season, for there are races and balls every day and it is really worthwhile.

"A young Englishwoman, who is going to meet her husband again, curses India and the Indians for, she says, she has to be separated either from her little daughter in England or from her husband who works in India.

"A Frenchman, whose white cap cocked over his ear goes to rejoin his enterprising Gallic moustache, is bound for Suze, where for six months he will direct the excavations with two other Frenchmen. They have the workmen believe that their finds are stones without much value, and so the Shah pays scant attention to their work."

"Thursday, 3 December — Today is the first time in my life that I have seen such a sunset: the sky took on successively all hues, from purple to orange.

"In the distance, a blurred and misty line announces Bombay."

*

* *

No, Bharatidi did not go to Luck now, although she toured North India extensively: Bombay was her first impact with the country; Ahmedabad was the next stop. It was followed by a tour of Rajputana. Her first visit was to Mount Abu: "How to describe the impression one gets, the enchantment that transports us when we find ourselves in the midst of a jewel in marble, yellowed by seven centuries?" These were the

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five Jain temples at Dilwara. Some were built in the thirteenth century while others as far back as the eleventh. The temple complex is an attraction to all with its marble carvings for, indeed, it is considered an apogee of refinement in Indian art. This is a pilgrimage centre for the Jains as the temples are dedicated to a few of their Tirthankars. Notable is a 2500-year-old image of Adinath, the first Jain Tirthankar. Then there is the legendary agni Rund (fire hole). It is from the Fire there that four great Rajput clans —known as the agni kulas — rose. Our family tradition has it that we, the Nahars, are descended from Parmar, the first to emerge from the flames.

Ajmer was the next halt, from where Bharatidi went to see the Pushkar lakes. There still exists a temple dedicated to Brahma the Creator— extremely rare! A myth has grown up around these three lakes. Brahma was once thinking of finding a nice place on the Earth for performing a sacred rite in order to make a new creation. The lotus he always holds in one of his four hands suddenly dropped to the Earth. Brahma came down and saw that the lotus had bounced and touched the ground in three places, and from each place water had sprung up and formed lakes. So he named the place Pushkar, which can mean a lotus or a lake.

From Ajmer Bharatidi went to Udaipur, the city of lakes, which many call the Venice of the East. Then to the pink city of Jaipur. Through her travels and meetings with all types of people Bharatidi came to know the history and the lore of the valorous Rajputs.

Then on to Delhi and its sights. TajMahal beckoned;

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in Agra she spent the last day of 1908, and saw the child 1909 enter the arena of the world.

After Agra she went to Gwalior, to Kanpur, and on to the sacred city of Benares where Vishwanath, the Lord of the Universe, resides. If you die there you go straight to heaven! whatever sins you may have committed. She spent one whole week there. From there to Calcutta. A hop to Darjeeling to watch the splendour of sunrise —the play of colours on Kan-chenjunga. Back to Calcutta to take a train to Puri of Lord Jagannath on the eastern seaboard, in Orissa. That completed her tour of the North and the East. Bharatidi then went down south: Hyderabad in Deccan, Madras on the Coromandel shore, and finally to Pondicherry.

Her recital stops there apruptly as the rest of her notes got lost. What a shame, really! I thought. For her descriptions are lively and detailed: the sights she saw, the people she met — in a word, India as it then was, which even the Indians of today do not know.

However, we know that Alexandra David-Neel met the threesome in Benares in March 1913 on her own journey through India, as she recorded their meeting in her letters to her husband. She wrote: "The event of the week was the eclipse of the moon on last Saturday, March 22. According to popular belief, an eclipse is a fearsome thing, an ominous sign of some public misfortune. The gods must therefore be propitiated, pious ceremonies redoubled. In other parts of India, one must bathe in a holy river precisely at moonrise, as a result of which all of one's sins are erased. The French ladies I told

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you about [Bharatidi, her mother and sister] rented a boat, and we picnicked on it for dinner, remaining on the river from 5 to 8 at night. The crowd on the ghats was huge. There were a hundred thousand people there, perhaps more. Whole villages had come. Special trains had been disgorging pilgrims for the past three days. It was worth the sight! At nightfall, under the moon, the setting became magical with the red glow of the burning ghat. . . ."

But Bharatidi did not meet Sri Aurobindo either in Pondicherry, where he was to come only in 1910, a year after her, or in Calcutta because Sri Aurobindo was still in prison, as the Alipore Bomb Case trial was going on. By nature she was not a politician, but she was a keen enough observer of human nature to notice the young Bengalis. "These young Romans, svelte of form, with chiselled profiles, such distinguished air and a flaming look, make us sense that Bengal is awakening, and it is among them that India will find young heroes who will sacrifice themselves for 'Mother India'. ..."

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