A Statue and Two Temples

 On a hilltop in the Indian state of Karnataka about 100 miles due west of Bangalore there stands a 57 foot high monolithic statue of a naked man in deep meditation. He stands upright in an almost military posture with half-closed eyes and a slight smile on his lips. Carved from a single white granite boulder, this colossal figure is one of the largest monolithic statues of the ancient world and represents Bahubali, son of the first tirthankara (enlightened sage) of Jainism who, theoretically, lived millions of years ago in a previous cosmic cycle. How this statue, thought to weigh over 80 tons, was transported to the top of a 480 feet high hill remains a mystery. But taken there it must have been because the type of white granite of which it is formed is not found locally. The statue appears to have suffered no erosion which is rather remarkable, given that its origins go back at least to the 10th century AD, and some speculate it may be even older.

 

Bahubali statue

The story goes that Bahubali meditated in a standing position and motionless for a full 12 years until finally reaching enlightenment. The parallels with the Buddha are obvious, and the peace and detachment that emanate from this figure are also Buddha-like. You can see the vine leaves that have grown up around him over the 12 year period. There is also an anthill by his feet which has not disturbed him, so profound is his state of contemplation. A snake slithers by his feet. There is a remarkable poise and self-possession about this figure as of a man who has fully mastered his physical and mental selves which are now simply vessels for the expression of spiritual realisation with no motivating power of their own. They have become the outward manifestation of a spiritual state, and, such is the sculptor’s skill, the power of this image can connect us to this state if we approach it in a suitably receptive frame of mind. Jain religion teaches renunciation of the world and the self if one is to reach the condition of inner peace and harmony with the universe. This statue is a perfect representation of that doctrine in stone. For us today it may seem a one-sided approach to spiritual reality because withdrawing into oneness leaves out love of God. Nevertheless, detachment, self-control, mental stillness and the relinquishment of material identification remain all-important elements of the spiritual path, and a true love of God must be spiritually coherent, meaning it must know what it purports to love which it can only do when it begins to acquire these virtues and so see beyond this world.

 

A flight of over 650 steps leads to the summit of the hill on which the statue stands as a symbol of spiritual completion as understood in the ancient East. Pilgrims would have ascended these steps to partake in the spiritual power of the site which, being remote, would have meant a journey much more arduous than the one I took when I visited it in the 1980s travelling in (relative) comfort by bus. It is salutary to put oneself in the mindset of these pilgrims of the past to whom the magnificence of temples, cathedrals and statues like this one would have been largely outside their everyday experience, and who would rarely have seen a representation of what they were coming to see before actually seeing it. The impact on them when they finally did arrive must have been tremendous.

 

From Shravanabelagola, the site of this statue, it’s a 2 hour bus trip to Belur and Halebid, two small towns today but once capitals of a royal dynasty. Here are found the Chennakeshava and Hoysaleshwara temples which are among the most splendidly decorated temples in all of India. They were built in the 12th century AD by the Hoysala kings, but there is something about them which speaks of an even earlier time. The mind that created them with its absorption in the mythological world of gods and goddesses derives from a period in the deep past when what is now myth was perceived as living reality. Our modern rational mind in which the ‘I’ has become fully separated from its environment finds it very different to conceive of the ancestral mind that is merged in the natural world and also extends into the supernatural, not yet fully differentiated from the natural. That is the mind on display here.

 

The Belur temple is dedicated to a form of Vishnu known as Kesava, and, according to Sanskrit inscriptions on the walls, took 103 years to complete. It contains a profusion of artwork in the form of sculptures, statues, friezes and reliefs depicting deities, musicians and dancers of 12^th century India, as well as scenes from the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Puranas, that popular collection of stories telling tales of avatars, devas and kings from the past. The interior is a multi-pillared hall with dozens of columns, all individual and all carved in extravagant, geometrically complex shapes and styles that have then been polished to give them an almost metallic sheen. 

 

Interior pillars

The Mohini pillar

 

The mandapa or pillared hall encloses the garbhagriha which means womb chamber and is the heart of the temple where the image of the god is enshrined. Here that image is a 6 foot high statue of Vijayanarayan meaning Victorious Vishnu which features a halo with carvings of his 10 incarnations from Matsya, a giant fish who saved the first man, Manu, from drowning in a Noah’s ark type deluge, to Kalki, the final avatar to come who will appear on a white horse at the end of the Kali Yuga. So maybe not long to wait. Vishnu temples don’t usually have the sense of dark mystery that some Siva temples have but to my mind there is still something slightly uncanny about them, and even though the worshippers would claim they are paying homage to God when they perform their rituals before the idol, the form and nature of that idol expresses a very different sort of God to that represented by the figure of Christ. Possibly that is cultural bias on my part, but these images are very old and may belong to a previous dispensation of human approach to the divine, one that should perhaps be outgrown.

 

The Vishnu shrine

Setting that thought aside for the moment, the outer walls of the temple are as resplendent as the interior. The temple stands on a platform, and there is a wide space around it to allow for circumambulation which is an intrinsic part of temple worship. As the devotee performed this clockwise pradakshina, as it is called, he would see images of the gods with stories of their exploits from the time when they appeared on Earth. The walls are arranged in bands with the bottom band consisting of elephants, all in different postures. Above them are scenes of dancers, musicians and artisans and other examples of secular life, and then more depictions of events from the Hindu epics. This brief run through gives the barest hint of the cornucopia of riches to be found on these walls. All human and divine life is here. When I visited I was with a young Italian I had met on the bus who, unusually, had come to India for sensual rather than spiritual reasons. He was fascinated by how this aspect of life was shown with such enthusiasm on a sacred building, but then Indians have always regarded all aspects of life as valid parts of the whole.

 

                                        

Bands of images on the outer walls

                                                             

A temple dancer

The Hoysaleswara Temple at Halebid is similar to the Belur temple except it is dedicated to Siva. This similarity only means that the style and conception behind it are the same for it has a different kind of quality to it. There is a dark element that exists in Siva worship due to the archaic nature of this god who seems to take one back to a primeval time or even a time before time when darkness was upon the face of the deep. This is why Siva is represented by the linga, the most basic of shapes that can be conceived of as the first form emerging from formlessness. Vishnu has an almost Apollonian quality about him and is more manageable. He is like a solar deity whereas Siva is associated with primal being and the state in which darkness and light are not yet fully separate. He undoubtedly harks back to a pre-Aryan India. In the Vedas he is known as Rudra who, according to Mircea Eliade, symbolises all that is chaotic, dangerous and unforeseeable. Things that are part of life and therefore must have a spiritual explanation.

 

Halebid means ruined city and refers to its sacking by Muslim invaders in the 14^th century. Many local temples were destroyed but this one survives. It houses over 20,000 carvings, a truly mind-boggling sum and the detail displayed on these carvings is equally stupendous, aided by the fact that it is made of soapstone which is soft when mined so can be relatively easily worked but then hardens over time when exposed to the air. Like Belur, the outer walls here are built up in bands with elephants symbolising a stable foundation at the base. This level is followed by one with royal lions and then a band of horses and horsemen before we reach the fourth band positioned at head height with scenes from the epics and the Puranas. Between these are thinner layers decorated with flowers and designs from nature. There are several more bands with animals, real and mythical, and scenes from court life, and then at the top we encounter the god and goddesses engaged in their legendary activities.

 

Outer wall at Hoysaleswara Temple

Hoysaleswara temple is unusual in that it contains two sanctuaries, one for the king and one for the queen, so masculine and feminine polarities with each sanctum connected by a corridor and having its own linga and mandapa, and each with an enormous Nandi bull positioned outside facing into the shrine. That to the north is polished to an extraordinary granite-like finish, and both are decorated with garlands and jewellery. The temple is raised on a star-shaped platform several feet high known as a jagati and, as at Belur, there is a wide span for walking round. Inside we again find the polished and lathe-turned pillars, all unique and with wheel and bell designs. It’s like a forest of stone with strange geometric-patterned trees supporting a ceiling covered in carvings of celestial beings. 

 

A Nandi Bull

Ceiling carvings

It’s hard to do justice to the astonishing level of artistry and craftsmanship of the Hoysala temples in a short post like this. I visited them over 40 years ago and can still remember a feeling of awe and mystery when I went round as though something more than human lay behind their construction, something that was at one time present and, though now departed, remained as a kind of echo. Both temples had this quality but it is the inner sanctum that is the source from whence it arose. The sanctum is like a connection point between this world and the next, and that is especially so in temples dedicated to Siva.

 

In fact, the meaning behind the Siva sanctum may go beyond even that. For an explanation we can turn to the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling whose Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom from 1809 provides a clue as to what Siva ultimately is. Schelling wanted to find out how human freedom, which includes potential for evil, is compatible with an all-powerful God. He came up with the idea, probably influenced by Jakob Boehme, that God emerges from the ‘Ungrund’ or Unground, a primal abyss of absolute freedom and infinite potential which exists beyond reason and order, and to which these are subsidiary. The Unground is pure potency containing with it both light/order and dark/chaos. Thus, God is light but there is an element of being or, as we might call it, pre-being, which, though not evil in itself, contains the potential for evil. God as Creator organises the Unground, but he cannot eliminate the dark/chaos element unless he eliminates freedom. It might even be that it is the interaction of dark/chaos with light/order that produces becoming and growth. Order should certainly dominate chaos if there is to be creativity, organisation and growth, but it also needs chaos to grow.

 

This is why Siva can seem unnerving and an ambiguous god at the best of times. If he represents the Unground then there is potential for good and evil within him, and in that respect he is a metaphysical principle rather than a being. In his Philosophical Investigations Schelling asked if creation had a final goal and concluded that it did because God was not merely Being but Life. In this sense, Siva is a god of Being but not, I would suggest, of Life. The spiritual task, however, is to grow from being into life so while we should acknowledge the former because it exists, we need to focus our spiritual attention on the latter, and the God of Life is Christ.

It is important to see the truths in ancient Eastern religion and not dismiss them for they are truths. But we should also recognise that Christ as a pattern and exemplar is the higher reality and greater truth.

Ramana Maharishi

Yercaud is only 100 miles from Tiruvannamalai and it was inevitable that at one time we would visit the ashram of Ramana Maharishi who is generally regarded as the greatest Indian holy man or saint, or whatever he might be called as he really escapes categorisation, of the 20^th century. Michael respected him but was not especially interested in going to the ashram, having been to enough ashrams in the early ‘70s when he had spent some time in India. But I wanted to visit the place where the Maharishi had lived as he exemplified the ancient rishis of the Upanishads like no one else. He seems to represent a genuine conduit back to ancient India with a spirit uncontaminated by modernity or egotism. Just as one can see the falseness is some of the other religious figures I have mentioned, one can see the truth in him. 

I first came across him in the same way I imagine many people did, through Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India. When I read this book in 1978 it served as an excellent spiritual guide and travelogue and I’m sure it still does even though it is almost 100 years old. We may see further than Brunton in some respects now but that is because we stand on his shoulders and on the shoulders of people like him, those early writers who introduced the spiritual teachings of the East to the West. He combined a practical common sense with well-developed spiritual instincts and even today when so much more has been written and explored he remains a good bridge between Orient and Occident, cutting through the superstition of the one and the scepticism of the other. There is some minor controversy surrounding him but it only seems to come from one source and he has been dead for 40 years anyway, so we can overlook it. Meanwhile, his books, possibly outmoded in certain ways, remain a testament to his pioneering research and insights.

 

We wrote to the ashram asking if they could put us up for a few days, and they replied offering us a room for a date about a month away. There were regular buses from Salem to Tiruvannamalai which took about 3 hours and so, at the due date, we boarded one and off we went. The ashram was situated a short distance out of town at the foot of the famous Mount Arunachala where Ramana went when he was aged about 20 shortly after his ‘death experience’ at 16. This was when he became convinced he was going to die and lay down in preparation. While waiting for death he realised that it is only the body that dies, and his consciousness became absorbed in Brahman where it remained ever after. Put like that, it seems almost mundane but the transformation in him was profound for this was not just an intellectual realisation such as anyone might have but the actual experience of spiritual deathlessness and destruction of the idea of a separate self. I will have more to say about this later. Suffice it to say here that Ramana’s experience does seem rather different to that of many people who have mystical experiences in that his ego self did not lay claim to the experience afterwards as is often the case in such instances. I would suggest his experience was more profound and his level of spiritual maturity much greater than the norm. The self exists whether we accept that or not. The experience of self-transcendence can come to anyone at any stage of the mystical life but only one in whom the self has become almost transparent can process this experience in the complete sense, untarnished by ego. Ramana was one of the very rare examples of such a person. To use a Sufi expression, he was able to convert a state into a station meaning he truly became what he experienced.

 

After arriving at Arunachala Ramana lived in various caves in the foothills of the mountain eventually settling in Virupaksha Cave where he stayed for 17 years. When he had first arrived in Tiruvannamalai he had remained sunken in deep meditation oblivious to the outer world but gradually he returned to normal consciousness to the degree that he could interact with the world and the devotees that his advanced state inevitably attracted.  

 

In 1922 following the death of his mother who, after initial disapproval, had joined him and become his disciple, he moved to her tomb at the base of the hill and the ashram began to form around him. One indication of the authenticity of his realisation is that as his fame increased and many more people came to see him, literally to sit at his feet in many cases, this had no effect on him whatsoever. He led a simple and spartan life with barely any possessions and there was no hint of scandal of any kind. He remained in service to his devotees and, such was his innate modesty, resisted any attempt to deify him which is something Indians love to do with their holy men. His purpose was to be accessible to anyone who wished to see him, and I cannot think of a better example of someone who taught by “silence and the rays you give out” (see Meeting the Masters, p. 255).

 

Ramana died in 1950 and his body was buried on site in accordance with tradition in India for a holy person. The ashram developed as a spiritual centre to perpetuate his memory and teachings, and now includes samadhi shrines, a meditation hall and a library amongst other facilities. I don’t recall the library being very large when I went in the early 1980s but there seems to be a big building there now so perhaps a new one has been built. When we went, we spoke to the librarian there, an Englishman slightly older than me who has written extensively about Ramana and some of his disciples. He was rather reserved in his manner but possibly that was because he saw us, as we were, as sympathetic observers rather than true devotees.

 

At that time the ashram still carried something of the peace of Ramana’s presence. It wasn’t crowded and when we walked up the hill to Skandashram, the cave where Ramana lived from 1915 to 1922, there was not a soul to be seen. I went back some 20 years later for a brief visit and it had become busier and more, one has to say, institutional in feeling, but that is inevitable as the further something gets from its source, the more the energy from that original inspiration will be diluted.

 

Ramana was an almost unique religious personage. But does he serve as an example of the way to follow, especially for Westerners? I would say definitely not. He left no lineage and those who came after him and claim to manifest his realisation are, at best, several rungs below him in attainment. It must be remembered how his realisation came to him. It did not come as the result of any spiritual practice. He equated his realisation with what was in the Hindu scriptures some time after his experience as they seemed to describe it, and so he adopted their terminology to explain it, but they were not what brought it about, at least not in this life. I am not questioning his spiritual achievement and status, but I would base that more on his personality and the obvious aura of saintliness about him than the state of consciousness he attained. For what reveals Ramana to be on the upper tiers of spiritual development is not his impersonal realisation but the quality of his personal response to it.

And yet, what exactly was the point of his spiritual realisation? For true believers he had reached the pinnacle of enlightenment but is that really all there is? To become one with the universe and have no self left? It seems a waste of effort. God's effort in creating, that is. Why go to all the trouble of creating if the end is the same as the beginning? Of course, for those who believe that the ground of reality is impersonal being or pure consciousness there is no problem. But if that really were the case then how did anything ever happen? 

I'll tell you how. It happened because God willed it so. There is no other possible answer unless you fall back on the complete fluke response but that is just question begging. God willed it and he had a purpose in doing so. That purpose was to make the universe a universe of many beings in loving communion rather than just one being by himself. It sounds naive perhaps, but why shouldn't the answer be simple? In fact, it should be simple.

Ramana had reached a high state by tracing consciousness back to its source but he had retracted his being into pure oneness. This might be the foundation of existence but it is not the building and it does not negate the reality and meaning and purpose of the building. The building is creation which is real. Your self and my self are real and God gave us these selves so that we might bring them to a state in which they could be divinised not discarded, though the separative element in them should be outgrown. Ramana was a saintly man, though not I repeat because of his realisation but because of his character. Even so, he does not indicate the way of Christ which is the greater way because it includes the whole of life not just part of it. Life is not just one. It is one and many, both together, and that gives it its unending richness and beauty.

A Dark Guru

  Previously in this series about my life in India during the 1980s I've written about Europeans we knew but not much about Indians except in passing. But, of course, we knew many and were friends with several. There was Krishnamurti the tailor who always wore a crisp white shirt and sharply pressed khaki trousers. Then there was Ali who ran the Yercaud Club and who looked (I thought) like a benevolent crocodile. Dilip and Ashok were two brothers who, with their father, had a geranium plantation that produced an essential oil used for perfume and skincare. Subramaniam was one of many coffee planters in the area and Ramalingam lived in the bungalow next to ours. He fell on financial hard times so leased the front of his house to the Bank of India and moved to the back. It seemed to work for him.

But our main friends, apart from the Matthews whom I have previously mentioned, were Mr and Mrs Neelakantan. He was a Brahmin and had been well off, but he was persuaded to invest his money in a film studio which went bust and lost the lot as a result of which he had come to Yercaud where his wife Prema found work at one of the private schools in the town, enabling their sons, Kumar and Prakash, and daughter, Sudha, to get decent educations. They were all very bright and took full advantage of the opportunities offered. Neelakantan was probably in his mid to late 40s but retired or, at any rate, no longer working, considering himself to be in the Vanaprastha stage of life which, according to Hindu teaching, is the third stage when one starts to withdraw from the world and focus one’s energies more on Moksha or liberation. He sought us out because he heard we were interested in spiritual matters, and we had many conversations, even debates, about Indian philosophy. He was a disciple of Swami Muktananda who was a prominent guru of the day teaching something called Siddha Yoga which claimed to be able to awaken the kundalini in its practitioners. Traditionally, this was a secret path only open to a dedicated few after years of spiritual discipline, but Muktananda offered the awakening to anyone, and Neelakantan said he had experienced it. It did not seem to have changed him in any significant way for the better though, and he admitted as much which was more than many others who have undergone this experience are willing to do.  

Neelakantan gave me Muktananda’s autobiography to read, and I could see that the man did have power of some sort, but it was also obvious that it was not true spiritual power. Like many Indian sannyasis he had tapped into a form of occult energy through his guru, but this energy appeared more demonic than divine. And rather like Sai Baba, you only had to look at a photo of Muktananda to see a darkness in his soul. When the stories of his sexual misdemeanours came out, as almost inevitably they did, I was not surprised.

 

There was a misconception of spirituality common at the time which many of the gurus flooding the West took advantage of as they preyed on the naive. They may even have been victims of it themselves. It saw the spiritual in terms of consciousness, experience and power, and believed that the self could be transformed before it had been fully purified, and that what was required to do this was technique regardless of motivation. They would have spoken of proper motivation as one must to be taken seriously, but it was not put front and centre as it should be and was often confused with aspiration. It was the old spiritual problem of the desire for heaven, even the greed for it, taking precedence over the love of God.

 

It could not be denied that Muktananda had been through some extraordinary psychic experiences under his guru, but these cannot be regarded as spiritual in the proper sense because in cases of genuine spiritual transcendence the self is not splintered and shattered as happened to him. It is more a case of the ego falling away as it is outgrown, or melting in the light of the spiritual sun. There may be an initial pain and sense of loss, but there is not the violence and terror described by Muktananda which indicate that something other than divine forces is in play. Many Indian gurus mistake the occult for the spiritual, and Muktananda certainly did. 

 

Neelakantan admitted he had not been changed by his experiences, but others were not so lucky. A commenter on this blog a few years ago wrote that he had followed an Indian guru (unspecified but obviously Muktananda) who gave shaktipat which is a supposed infusion of grace that opens the kundalini and sends the energy upward through the chakras. He said he had had many amazing experiences but even now long after he could not sit to meditate without being taken over by spontaneous pranayama and mudras, as well as the occurrence of strange mantras. He had left the guru’s organization years before when the stories of scandal and abuse surfaced, but the psychic experiences persisted. He thought they could be the result of astral forces and wondered what to do. My opinion was that they were undoubtedly caused by the premature opening of psychic centres in the body which, it cannot be emphasised enough, is an occult procedure not a spiritual one. The remedy is prayer and focus on Christ. This is the best way to cleanse the soul of the unhealthy psychic residues it picks up through these techniques. 

 

The moral of this story is that one should not be deceived by the spurious glamours, antinomian delusions and false promises of the lefthand path. The road to God is through purity and love, not magic in any form.

 

I would not have suggested focus on Christ to Neelakantan who was a proud Brahmin and not going to abandon his heritage for a Western religion, but fortunately he had not gone too deep so not suffered adverse consequences. He reverted to his traditional path and turned for inspiration to the Jagadguru of Kanchipuram, a genuine holy man who lived for nearly 100 years (1894-1994), spending his life travelling round India teaching the sanatana dharma or ancient religion of the Vedas. The Kanchi Sankaracharya was a traditional guru who was the 68^th in line from the famous advaita philosopher Sankara, and exemplified the best of his religion in contradistinction to most 20^th century gurus, obvious exceptions like Ramana Maharishi aside, who seemed to be promoting themselves. He made no grandiose promises but simply taught love of the divine for its own sake.

 

An amusing postscript to this story comes in the form of two young evangelical Christian missionaries who stayed at our guesthouse. They were sincere and enthusiastic but didn’t fully appreciate the richness and depth of the Indian spiritual tradition. On one occasion they were with us when Neelakantan came round for morning coffee as he sometimes did, and we introduced them before they left to visit a local church. A couple of days later we heard they had gone round to his house to try to convert him and his family, no doubt with the best of intentions, but you don’t convert a Brahmin to Christianity. Neelakantan, normally a very courteous man, had lost his temper and thrown them out. I tried to explain to them that it was very bad form to tell a Brahmin that he worships demons, especially when you are a guest in his house, but they were fired by missionary zeal and didn’t understand that Christ may be universal but Christianity, especially the desacralised 18th century form they promoted, is probably not which is why it will never catch on in India except in a limited form. It is too foreign.

 

The Last Europeans in India

 Michael and I were not the only Europeans living in Yercaud. I mentioned Sofie de Mello from Germany in a previous Indian Story post but there were a few other European residents there as well. One, an Englishman, Vic Tate by name, had been born in India around 1915. I say he was an Englishman because all his ancestors had come from England but he had only visited the country once, for a short holiday in the 1950s. Otherwise, he had lived his entire life in India, having stayed on as a coffee planter after Independence in 1947. He was an Indian citizen but thought of himself, as he was, as an Englishman. Vic was a widower when I knew him and a hale and jolly fellow with a bungalow stuffed full of Victoriana. He was more English than most English people because his Englishness was defined by the Englishness of the 1940s and was unaffected by the internationalism of the following decades. He may have lived through those decades but he remained culturally where he had been in 1947 because although he mixed with Indians on perfectly friendly terms he did not regard himself as Indian so the normal societal influences and changes a person experiences as time goes by had no impact on him.

Another resident was an Italian of about the same age as Vic. He was as Italian as Vic was English though he too had spent all his life in India.  His name was Tito Simonelli and his father had been chauffeur to the Maharajah of Mysore before Independence. Thus, Tito had grown up in India. He was an engineer and took great pride in his Alfa Romeo as well he might, given every other car in Yercaud at the time (and there weren't many) was an Ambassador, the ubiquitous Indian car of the period based on the Morris Oxford. Tito upheld the romantic reputation of his nation by having an Indian mistress over 30 years younger than him though whenever we went to his house she was presented as his housekeeper, a fiction everyone politely observed.

Both these men were Indian citizens who had been born in India and lived there throughout their entire lives, but they thought of themselves, and were regarded by everyone else, as English and Italian respectively. They knew what people nowadays seem to forget that blood and ancestry count for more than your passport and where you happen to live.

Me, Tito and Vic in front of Vic's bungalow after church

There was one other European from pre-independence days who lived in Yercaud at this time and this was a very old English lady called Connie-Mae. I forget her surname. Ostensibly, she ran the Yercaud Club, a colonial era establishment where planters gathered to drink, play cards and snooker and generally relax back in the day and still did although now they were Indian rather than British planters. Connie-Mae had been the daughter of an English planter and she had stayed on after 1947 but never married. She had come to the point at which she had had to give up her bungalow, and the club committee said she could live out her days at the club where she was given a small bedroom. For appearance's sake, she was described as the secretary but she didn't do anything. She still had a devoted servant called Walter, almost as old as she was, and he and his wife looked after her even though she couldn't pay them much. Michael and I visited Connie-Mae at the club quite regularly where she would give us a cup of tea and talk of the old days. 

At one time we had a guest in our establishment who was called Samir or Sammy for short. He was a well-spoken and apparently well-educated Muslim in his mid thirties  He said he had come up to Yercaud to convalesce after a car accident. He was witty and entertaining and as he was with us for several weeks we got to know him quite well. He would come up to our bungalow for coffee and conversation and all went normally until one week when it was time for him to pay us he said that his brother hadn't sent through his money for that week and would we mind waiting. We didn't mind but then it stretched over to the next week and he said his money had still not arrived. Could we lend him something until it did? Again, we didn't mind but when the same thing happened the following week we said no. Then his money seemingly did arrive and he paid us.

We had introduced Sammy to Connie-Mae and he became a regular visitor at her club, the two of them apparently getting on well. But then Sammy vanished, owing us a couple of weeks' rent. It was a disappointment but not too serious. However, the next time we went to Connie-Mae and told her of Sammy's disappearance she began to look alarmed and then burst into tears. It turned out that she too had lent Sammy money and not just some money but the entirety of her remaining savings. He had charmed the lot out of her and what in a way was worse she had even borrowed a large sum from her servant's savings to lend to him. Such was his devotion he had given it to her without question. We had actually warned Connie-Mae to be careful of Sammy after our earlier experience but she had ignored us because of his smooth reassurances that his brother was just about to send the money. 

A couple of weeks after this Michael and I were down in Salem, the town in the plains about 20 miles from Yercaud where we did occasional shopping for luxury goods such as tinned cheese. We had gone there because Muthu our gardener had fallen down and broken his leg while drunk on bootleg arrack laced with battery acid and strychnine, apparently added because in low doses they are stimulants. There was no proper hospital in Yercaud so he had been taken down to Salem. We were in an auto rickshaw on our way to the hospital to visit him when suddenly we saw Sammy walking along the roadside. We shouted at the driver to stop and jumped out. Michael grabbed Sammy by the arm and told him to turn out his pockets. He protested and said he didn't have much but Michael took his wallet and emptied it. It wasn't much. We then told him we would call the police unless he gave us some more money at which he said he had some back at his hotel. So we marched him back there and went up to his room where he had a briefcase with some money in it. A reasonable sum but nowhere near the amount he had stolen from Connie-Mae. We took it and he swore he was going to pay Connie-Mae back but we knew he was lying. So we left and did report him to the police but by the time they got to the hotel which was a few days later, of course, he had absconded as we knew he would.  Michael gave the money to Connie-Mae and she gave it to her servant though it wasn't enough to reimburse him fully but it was something. I still feel angry when I think of this. To steal an old woman's entire life savings, which may not have been much but was all she had, and then get her to borrow from an old and trusting servant with seemingly not a twinge of conscience is inexplicable. He wasn't starving. He dressed well and was quite chubby as in well-fed chubby. He was simply bad. 

The only good thing to come out of this was that the club members made up the deficit to Connie-Mae's servant and told her that she could live there, board and lodging free, for the rest of her life. She was still alive when we left Yercaud, but I heard that she died shortly afterwards. 

I call these three people, Vic, Tito and Connie-Mae, the last Europeans because they were among the final generation of people born in India, probably in the 1910s, who were too settled to leave at Independence in 1947 and had stayed on. There were never that many British people in India. Even at the height of the Raj they only numbered around 150,000, civil and military, for the whole country, present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh included. Most of them left in 1947 or shortly afterwards. But a few remained, people who had been born in India and made their lives there. By 1980 when I arrived in Yercaud the great majority of these people had died and with them a human type and way of life that was unique. They were not especially imaginative and it's easy for the modern sophisticate to make fun of them, but they were honest, decent people who believed in doing the right thing.

A Walk in the Jungle

  During the five years Michael Lord and I spent in Yercaud we met many people, both Indians and Western travellers, some through our guest house and some just chance encounters. There was Arati, a Parsee lady in her 60s from Bombay who stayed with us for a couple of months, supposedly for health reasons. Her husband delivered her, or that's what it seemed like, and then asked us to look after her telling us that she could be a handful at times, before disappearing for several weeks. She was rather demanding but we did our best. 

Then there was Evelyn. She has been living in the Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry but needed a break from ashram life which is not surprising since you get all sorts in that kind of environment, ranging from sincere seekers to lost souls and the occasional deranged person. For most people staying there for long is exhausting because you go in as an idealist expecting some kind of enlightenment but then find all the backbiting and petty jealousies you get everywhere else, magnified by the sometimes unbalanced types who end up in ashrams. Evelyn was in some ways typical of Western female spiritual seekers, a middle-aged unmarried woman searching for Oriental light, but, though she was a spiritual seeker, she was a practical one and had a lot of common sense. She stayed with us for 3 months or so, having a break before going back into the often chaotic world of the seeker after truth in India.

Someone who had been on that trail but had now retired from it was Sofie de Mello, a German lady in her late 50s who had come to the East in the post-Beatles hippie pilgrimage time, first married and then been deserted by an Indian and who now lived quietly in a bungalow in Yercaud making ends meet as a schoolmistress. There was something a little sad about Sofie as though nothing had worked out quite as it should but she was a caring and enthusiastic person, always positive. She was a firm believer in the all religions are one idea and for her that religion boiled down to love. That's not a bad code to live by even if it can descend into the bland and sentimental without something more solid to give it substance and depth. At one time it seemed she was setting her cap at Michael but that was never going to work which she realised after a while. We remained friendly though, and were occasionally invited to tea at her house where she gave us freshly baked cakes and little homilies about the universality of all religions. I recently found a note she sent us in an old book and I reproduce it here as it's just the sort of thing she was always saying. I must have cut it down to fit as a bookmaker which is why some of it is missing but it carried on in the same vein. By the way, I am sure that Sofie is long since dead so I don't suppose she will mind me doing this. It may seem I am slightly poking fun at her here, but I am not. She was a good, sincere and kind-hearted person though she had her eccentricities.

This is the front of the card showing Ramakrishna with his disciple Vivekananda on his right and his wife Sarada Devi on his left.

Some of Sofie's sayings. 
She got my name wrong here but not as badly as someone who once called me Mr Wheelbarrow.

On one of the occasions when Sofie was entertaining us for tea she and I formed the resolve to walk down the hills through the jungle to Salem. Michael declined to accompany us. Yercaud was 5,000 feet above the plains and only accessed by the loop road along which buses and cars travelled in order to reach the town. However, we had heard talk of a path that descended to the plains and which was used by travellers on foot back in the day. We couldn't find anyone who had used it more recently but apparently it still existed. We made some enquiries but everyone we spoke to about it looked at us in amazement. "Why would you want to walk down when there's a bus?" was the attitude. I wonder if what makes Westerners want to do this sort of thing is one of the factors that caused them to change the world. For the better in some ways and the worse in others. 

We eventually found someone who told us where the path started, and he said it was occasionally used but only to go to and from a couple of smaller settlements lower down the hillside. No one went all the way to the bottom by that route these days. One must remember that at this time hiking was not really a thing in most parts of India other than perhaps the foothills of the Himalayas. But elsewhere travelling on foot was probably too recent to be thought of as something potentially pleasurable. Nothing daunted, we made our preparations though as that only involved some water and a sandwich it did not take long, and early next morning the two of us set off.

This shows a similar looking path to the one where we started out.

The path started in a reasonable state of repair, just a track as in the picture above really but easily navigable, and it was delightful to walk in the coolness of the day before the sun had climbed high with the birds singing and the forest green and sparkling in the morning light. We were in good spirits and optimistic for the journey ahead even though we had no map and no certainty that the path we were on really would take us where we wanted to go. We passed a few little shacks and attracted some attention from giggling children playing outside to whom white people would have been an unusual and strange sight, and then the trail began to degrade quite quickly. I calculated that we had descended about 1,000 feet which meant there was still a long way to go. The sun was now higher in the sky and it was getting hotter. We had hats but there was no shade on the path. Still, it was there and still going down so we knew we were on the right track. To make things slightly confusing there had been turn offs but these were even rougher than the main path so easy to identify. But then, inevitably, we came to a point at which the path split in two and there was no indication as to which one we should take. We had passed the end of the settlements some time before so there was no one to ask. We deliberated a while and then took one of them hoping for the best.

We carried on along this path but it became progressively worse and then split into several smaller paths. We chose one because we had to and continued but after a while we were no longer descending and then the path, by now almost non-existent, simply petered out in some bushes. We went back and followed another path only to find that did the same thing. Retracing our steps again with the hope of finding the main track didn't work because we had followed too many false trails to know what was what. We appeared to be lost.

This is the kind of scrub jungle in which we got lost though the plains were not visible in our situation.

I well remember the feeling of being lost in the jungle. It was not pleasant. At this point we had descended enough for the more temperate vegetation of the higher elevation to give way to scrub jungle (compare and contrast the two pictures above) so there were no large trees but there were thick bushes, many of human height. It was now getting very hot and we only had about half a bottle of water left each. Sofie was becoming nervous and I had no idea what to do except keep walking in hope. The sun was too high for me to be able to tell which way was south west, that being roughly the direction we should be going, but I made a guess and we took one of the crude tracks that seemed to go that way. Of course it only did so for a short distance, and then it too ended. In that part of the world, what with the tropical heat and monsoon rains, the vegetation grows very quickly so any path that is not constantly renewed soon becomes overgrown. That was obviously what had happened to most of these. I wondered why these paths had existed in the first place since, crude as they were, they were something. We had not seen any people for well over an hour and I didn't think there was anyone living in these parts of the hills. Luckily we found out the reason for their existence.

It was probably only around half an hour after we had realised we were lost, though it seemed longer, when we saw two men coming towards us. I felt a wave of relief but Sofie actually gave a little scream. The men were carrying a long pole over their shoulders on which was strung an obviously freshly killed, since the blood was still dripping, wild boar. They were carrying long knives with curved blades and wearing simple loin cloths with nothing on the upper part of their body or their feet. They were obviously tribals of some sort as it was clear from their manner and appearance that their contact with civilisation was minimal, even compared to the villagers and coffee plantation workers around Yercaud which was at least a town of some description. These men were certainly not town dwellers of any description. Their eyes had a kind of wildness to them which was midway between human and animal, and their responses were strangely emotionless. I realise that it is not the sort of thing we say nowadays but it's how it seemed to me and Sofie was definitely  alarmed by them. They weren't threatening but nor were they unthreatening if that makes any sense. Subsequent research revealed that there was indeed an indigenous tribal community living in the Shevaroy Hills from long before Yercaud was established in the 19th century. They were called the Malaiyalis which means mountain men and they have their own customs and religious practices separate from regular Hindu society. They are regarded as socially and economically backward but, like other Scheduled Tribes of which India has many, given certain protection by the government though what that amounts to in reality is hard to tell.

 I have found a picture of members of this tribe and include it here to give an idea of how they looked. It dates from the 1860s but our two were very similar to the fellow on the right.

The two men stopped and stared at us as well they might since we did not belong in that world. They knew no English but between us Sofie and I could muster enough Tamil to ask if they knew the way to Salem. They understood and indicated that we should follow them which we did for about half a mile and then they pointed to a track which evidently was the path down to the plains. We gave them a few rupees in gratitude which they took without response which again was slightly unnerving. Normally in India if you gave anyone money they would either react with fervent thanks or exaggerated disappointment because you had not given them enough. These men didn't react at all.

However, they had rescued us and we were lucky to have found them. The path they had put us on was well marked and we had no more problems in our descent though it did take another 2-3 hours making the whole trip around 5-6 hours in total. Sofie was going on into Salem so we split up and I got a bus back to Yercaud where I arrived just as dusk was setting in. I felt fine then but the next day the backs of my calf muscles were very sore. I discovered later that poor Sofie who was in her late 50s had been laid up in bed for a couple of days.  I have walked down mountains and up them and going down is always harder on the legs.

A Trip to Ootacamund

After Saroja and Krishna, our first maid and gardener, left we employed Muthu as a new gardener but didn't bother with a maid as there really wasn't enough work to warrant one. The only reason we had one in the first place was because it was expected of us. However, when the guesthouse was ready to open we did need a cleaner and general house servant and so we hired Jane, a spinster in her forties. Jane had the advantage of speaking English but the disadvantage of being very bossy though she was also kind-hearted. She regarded it as her job to make sure no one took advantage of us, and many people tried. She herself was honest but had a low opinion of most of the rest of humanity whom she regarded all to be on the make in one way or another. When Michael's cousin came to visit us in 1981 he described her as a female cockerel which was a little cruel but not inaccurate. Even so, I liked her and she liked me. She called me Chinna Durai which means little master in Tamil, Michael being Periya Durai or big master. Here is a picture of Jane and me. It was taken when I returned to Yercaud briefly at the end of 2003. I was just walking through the bazaar and she came up and greeted me. She hadn't changed much in 18 years. I was pleased to see her even if we had eventually had to sack her for reasons I will come to at some point.

I look like a giant here but that's because Jane and the woman behind us were very short.

Here is a picture of Muthu on the top lawn with what I called his snake charmer's basket, actually to collect grass cuttings. We had no mower and he cut the grass with what was effectively a pair of scissors. Those were the days.

I mentioned Michael's cousin. This was Hugh Christie, a retired army colonel 12 years older than Michael so aged 73 when he came out to visit. Michael and Hugh were both only children of two sisters, one of whom, Hugh's mother, had left her husband, while the other, Michael's mother, had been abandoned by her husband after he had an affair with the actress Gladys Cooper when Michael was only about a year old. Neither of these two cousins had known their fathers, and because there were no other family members they were closer than cousins normally are. I liked Michael's cousin but he was unsure what to make of me at first which was understandable. Once we got to know each other he was friendly enough even if he clearly could not comprehend what Michael and I were doing together. But then nor could most people, and even I found it odd on occasion. On the face of it, it made no sense. The Masters told me it was intended for a while in my life but they only said this after I had made the decision to do it and it had become a settled thing. There was no coercion. I could not expect anyone else to understand the rationale behind it, and although I tried to explain it to my family they didn't believe my explanation that there was a spiritual justification for it and I couldn't blame them for that. In the context of a human life being about worldly achievement and success it seemed a terrible waste. Meeting the Masters goes into this in greater detail.

Colonel Christie, as I first called him or Hugh as I was permitted to call him after a while (he was, after all, 15 years older than my own father), came out to India to visit us in the spring of 1981. He had been in India for several years during and just after the war, but when we met him in Madras it had been 34 years since he was last in the country. It had still been a British colony then though was about to gain independence. To put it mildly, he was not comfortable with the changes. The noise, the smells, the dirt, the chaos, all the usual things. These had been there before but, according to him and I'm sure it's true, they were controlled by the British presence. Now they had been let loose. While we were in Madras you could see he was questioning the wisdom of his visit, but once we left the big city and went to our bungalow in the hills he could relax as the assault on his mind and senses abated somewhat. Here is a picture of him in our garden in Yercaud.

And here's one of Michael and a bit of me taken at the same time. Michael is in a planter's chair which has extendable arms on which you can put your feet which might seem a good idea but is actually very uncomfortable.

Here is one of Hugh, Muthu, Jane and me.

There was no point in Hugh coming all the way to India just to sit in our bungalow for a couple of weeks so we planned a trip to Ootacamund as it was then known. Now it's been renamed Udagamandalam but everyone calls it by its traditional abbreviated name of Ooty. Ooty was one of those hill stations developed by the British as an escape from the heat of the plains. It had a racecourse, a golf course, an artificial lake and there was even a hunt with imported hounds chasing local jackals. The cream of Indian society visited it in the season which would have been during the hot weather, and it is still popular though down on its luck from its British heyday. Situated in the Nilgiri Hills (Nilgiri means Blue Hills) and around 7,000 feet above sea level, it is also known for its extensive tea plantations as well as eucalyptus and pine, all introduced by the British.

Hugh hired a car and a driver and we drove the 150 miles to Ooty. The climb up the hills was similar to the one from the plains up to Yercaud though grander with 36 hairpin bends as opposed to a mere 21 and with tamer monkeys who would come to be fed bananas when we stopped at one of the rudimentary halts along the way. As always when ascending, the air became fresher, the temperature dropped and the light acquired an intellectually invigorating clarity. Michael and I had been to Ooty before so knew what to expect when we arrived at the town but poor Hugh was once again disappointed, having been raised on the idea of Ooty as the Queen of the Hills and a shining light of civilised elegance. Now much of it was little more than a shanty town but there were bright spots such as the Ooty Botanical Gardens, still beautiful. However, our hotel, a recently built government tourist affair, clean but basic, was not to Hugh's taste, and on the first morning immediately after breakfast he went off on his own without informing us where he was going. He came back just before lunch with a triumphant look on this face. He had managed to get a room at the exclusive Ooty club. This was a members only place but he had talked his way in by flaunting his colonial antecedents which seemingly still carried some weight. He graciously invited Michael and me to dinner at his club that evening, and we grateful accepted.

The Ootacamund Club was founded in 1841 for the planters and convalescing soldiers who came to the more salubrious climate of Ooty to recover from whatever might have been ailing them and there was a lot to do that for Europeans in the tropics in those days. It's been described as a relic of the Raj and certainly was that in 1981. You still had to wear a jacket and tie at the bar which Hugh, being an English gentleman of a certain era, had no trouble in doing. Michael had a tie but no jacket and I had neither. But they let me into the restaurant which looked exactly then as it does in this recent picture from their website.

Below is a picture of the Club lounge, also unchanged since I was there and no doubt from long before then also.

The most famous story relating to the Ooty Club is that this was where the game of snooker was invented, and the Club Secretary kindly let me knock a few balls about on the very table it was born or so he said. Perhaps he was persuaded to let me do this by the fact that Michael too had been a Club Secretary, in his case of the Carlton Club in London between 1960-1969, and they could swap notes about difficult members.

I also remember visiting the old church of St Stephen's, now rather forlorn as though the tide had gone out and wasn't ever going to come back. It was heart-breaking to see the number of tombstones in the cemetery marking the graves of children who had died young, often very young. One forgets how illness and disease laid low the Europeans of those times who are now denigrated as exploiting colonisers but who made many sacrifices, including of their lives and those of their women and children.

Ooty is famous for its tribal communities. These were the original inhabitants and their remoteness left them untouched by general Indian culture from far back, never mind the more recent British incursion. The main tribe is that of the Toda for whom the buffalo is sacred. We went to a Toda village and Hugh chatted to an elder who spoke basic English. It was funny to see the two men together, chalk and cheese in terms of their human types but bonding by being of a similar vintage and getting on well. I wish I had a photo of the two of them but I don't.

I do, however, have one of me and Hugh on the steps of the Ooty Club.

and another of just me.

and one more of Hugh and the club servant who was assigned to him during his stay.

I think they appreciated having someone from the old days there.

After a few days we left Ooty to go to a nearby national park called Mudumalai which was (and still is) a wildlife sanctuary covering about 120 square miles, and home to a wide range of flora and fauna. There were leopards and tigers, elephants, gaur (Indian bison), chital and sambar deer with sloth bears and wild boar among the larger species. Then there were dhole (wild dog) and jackal as well as mongoose, pangolin and porcupine. Various types of monkey were also present, including langur and macaque. The list of birds is even longer, 266 according to Wikipedia. Having had a bird-watching grandfather these interested me as much as the animals. After a bumpy ride we arrived at the visitors' camp in the early afternoon, and at sunset did the first of our two trips into the jungle. For this excursion we went out in a jeep and saw mainly deer and monkeys, with hornbills and eagles among the birds I can remember.

The next day at sunrise we went out again but this time on an elephant which was much better. The three of us sat on a howdah with the mahout perched just behind the elephant's head guiding the animal by pushing on its ears with his bare feet. Hugh sat on one side of the howdah with Michael and me on the other and off we went moving in a slow and stately fashion through the forest. This was a far superior way to experience the jungle as you became part of it. With no engine noise you could hear the sounds of the forest undisturbed, and sitting on the back of an animal that was a natural product of this environment you too became attuned to it in a way that wasn't possible in the artificial confines of a motor vehicle. You didn't even need to see any animals to feel a sense of participation in the natural world around you.

Luckily though we did see some animals, and the first we saw after more deer and monkeys was a male gaur, a magnificent beast packed with muscle that paid no attention to us as it grazed on a mouthful of some vegetable substance. Looking at it you could understand why primitive peoples might have worshipped such an animal as a god. It exuded an imperturbable calm and grave dignity, as if it were an incarnation of archetypal male power and authority from the time when the bull was regarded as a divine being. Many early religions worshipped animals in some form which we now regard as superstitious nonsense, but we don't understand that both the world and the mind of man were different in the past. There may well have been some basis to this approach to the immaterial worlds on some level. Who, even now, would deny that certain animals carry a spiritual force of some kind, the lion, the eagle and the bull to name three of the most eminent?

As we proceeded into the jungle I noticed I was getting a better view of the canopy than the floor. There was a reason for this. Hugh was a big man. I was 6 foot 2 back then (less now), and Hugh was an inch or two taller than me. He was also quite a burly fellow whereas I was already slim and had lost quite a few pounds since arriving in India. Look at the photo of the two of us on the club steps. Michael was of average height and build but Hugh's weight had been more than enough to pull the howdah down on his side to the point where what should have been lying flat had tipped over to a sharp angle. The mahout jumped off the elephant and tugged it back into position before Hugh fell out and we carried on with him leaning back and Michael and me bending forward to balance the thing. I have to say if it had been attached properly in the first place this wouldn't have happened but that's the charm of India.

We didn't see any tigers but we did see elephants, lots of birds and more deer but the most exciting part of the trip was when a wild boar came crashing through the undergrowth heading straight towards us at speed and changing course only at the last moment. Even the elephant was alarmed by it and had to be calmed by the mahout. It was much bigger than any pig I had ever seen and its coarse hair, fierce eyes and prominent tusks gave it a savage appearance. British army officers in India used to hunt these animals on horseback with lances in the sport known as pig-sticking and, though it's easy to disapprove of such practices now, the fact is the wild boar is a ferocious and dangerous animal and the sport requires both great skill and courage. If you came off your horse you would be in trouble.

Pictures from Wikipedia which has a good article on the wild boar

Fortunately, despite the loose howdah, we stayed on the elephant and made it safely back to camp.