August 15, 1875

Under Oriental Skies

I have just been woken up by a most horrid dream. I look at the silver clock on the frozen mantelpiece and see the hands stand still at thirty minutes past eleven.

But I must first narrate, even if only to myself, some of the events of a most happening day.

I spent the greater part of the morning before breakfast reading the Gospel according to St John just as the church bells were cheerfully ringing out in joy. I have often returned to the Bible for solace in my moments of deep despair, and like a soothing balm its most heavenly words sink into my tired bones, they smoothen out the creases in my curved heart and raise me to realms to describe which I possess no words adequate to the task. I opened the Bible at John 8 : 32, 'You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free', and as I closed my eyes, I could see in my mind's most inward eye a heavenly golden finger patiently etching out these words onto the immense vastness of the vacant spaces that lie untouched and unperturbed within myself.

Towards lunch, David brought in an aspiring lawyer at the Simla Lower Court, Mr. Mohesh Chunder Bose, who immediately after entering the parlour and seeing me reading at the other end made a move as if he was about to bow to me. I was about to stand up, not used to meeting a Native at such close quarters, when David's smooth voice, crisp as ever with its thick irony, rang out clearly though the morning calm.

'Oh, come on, Mr. Bose, having mastered our English tongue, with all its delicate intricacies, you do not now pretend to have picked up our British chivalry as well? Chivalry! Oh, what a most wondrous term with which an Englishman hides his contempt for the womenfolk! Every Englishman harbours a secret wish in the dark depths of his heart that he shall someday come across a damsel in distress so that her misery will give him the opportunity to establish his chivalry before his fellow-men!'

Startled by this sudden outburst, I sat down once again on my chair and returned to my St. John as David took Mr. Bose to a polished brown table beside the window overlooking the garden. For a moment he looked in my direction, and I looked back at him understandingly. I must not tell James that he had invited Mr. Bose into the Englishman's castle, that was what the glance meant. Oh, sometimes I do feel that I need not even use words when talking to David. Why the merest of a glance says it all!

Mr. Bose was hesitant at first, and words were slow in coming forth from him. But soon his voice rose in intensity : 'Some day this country that you have enslaved will become free. We shall be united once again, just the way we were before until a few hundred years ago. We shall govern ourselves by our own laws laid down in the laws of Manu, read once again the sacred texts of our Vedic religion destroyed by the Muhammedan bigots, replace Urdu with Hindi in the United Provinces, strive for the emancipation of our women who have become corrupted by trying to imitate their Western sisters, protect the Cow, our sacred mother, and finally enter into the land of milk and honey which will descend here from the heavens very soon. Why, this very day, August 15 today, I have this strange thought that some day in the future August 15 shall indeed be the very day that a vibrant India, shaking off the British yoke, shall become free!'

I fervently drank in every word that Mr. Bose spoke with his deep voice resonating with a quivering emotion. What would James say, I thought to myself, if he were to know that such opinions were being expressed under his very roof?

As for David himself, he did not sound very pleased though with Mr. Bose's rousing speech.

'So Mr. Elphinstone, what do you have to say about our vision of a new India?'

'Well.'

'Yes?'

'All that is fine, Mr. Bose, what you have said just now. But what about the fakirs in your India?'

'Fakirs? What do you mean by fakirs? Listen Mr. Elphinstone, listen to me very carefully, ok? We have no fakirs in this country! Yes, get that very clear in your mind. I challenge you to travel throughout the length and the breadth of this country, from Cashmere to Ceylon, from Calcutta to Bombay, and fetch me a single fakir. India is a modern country marching every day into the world of science, progress, technology, and rationality, and we are becoming the best, East or West. We have no fakirs here. Fakirdom is a mass of superstition, and if any fakirs are indeed left over, they shall immediately be banished from independent India.'

'But that cannot be possible, Mr. Bose. I have come all the way from England, fed up with its stupidity, searching for the fakirs of India. Why, next Spring, I am going to Afghanistan on a tour with some fakirs from the North West Frontier Province.'

At this stage, Mr. Bose stood up. He gathered his breath and I could feel, even from my distant seat, the blood rushing to his head.

'Mr. Elphinstone, this is the most vile calumny that you have levelled against us Indians. We are a scientific people proud of our traditions of rationality going back to the times of the Vedas. Did you know that the ancient text of our forefathers, the Mahabharata, teaches you how to make aeroplanes? But of course you did not. How would you, believing that India has nothing better to offer than some fakirs! And that when Ravana abducted Sita he took her away on a celestial machine just like the ones your German scientists are struggling to make even today? Am I right, am I right? Did you know that the text of the Vaisesikas, written several thousands of years before John Dalton was born, explains the details of atomic theory whose intricacies you are hardly able to grasp with all the much vaunted sophistication of your so-called Western science?Yes, yes? Tell me, Mr. Elphinstone, let Truth be my judge, and let Her render me speechless if I utter a single word of untruth! And here you come to me all the way from your England to tell me that you are looking for fakirs? Good Heavens, if I may borrow an expression so beloved of your people, Mr. Elphinstone, I think you are no better than your brother, if you will pardon me for saying so. Englishmen like you come to India in the guise of a friend, but in truth you are a wolf in sheep's clothing.'

Mr. Bose rushed out, leaving David staring at the blooming crocuses in the garden outside. He did not speak much for the rest of the day. I could feel that something was churning round and round in the gigantic caverns of his labyrinth-like mind.

I must now recount the fearful dream that shook me to the very bone. I saw Mr. Bose standing in front of a flag surrounded by hundreds and thousands of the Natives who were wildly cheering him.

'Today, August 15, 1947, my dear countrymen, we have finally become free. Let there be rejoicing before we embark on our long task of nation building. We had made a tryst with destiny, and today we are ready to redeem the most ancient pledge.'

And then I saw Mr. Bose entering into our forsaken house, dusty and dilapidated with years of neglect, come into my room, sit down at my desk and start writing on my diary. Yes, on this very diary to which I am confiding my thoughts to now.

'Ah, that English lady thinks that it is she who is writing all these words. Little does she know that it is in fact me who is writing her thoughts on these papers.'

I am still quivering with a most cold dread as I hear those words echo and reecho in my hears. Who am I then, the writer of my diary? Am I simply reflecting the views and the voices of people around me, or are these thoughts genuinely my own? Am I free to pen the words that emerge from the deepest recesses of my heart, or have even those most inward parts of mine come under the gaze of a man's eyes?

What is the truth that St John promises me, and which way lies the freedom that I seek?

Ah, my eyes and my hands are now weary, and such mortal questions I must postpone till another day.