journey to the east
The India Notebooks provide a daily account of the first journey to India and the beginning of my time there. Originally there were those two books, two from Nepal, and a final one from India, but only the first two India notebooks survive. There are few things in my life which I regret no longer having, but those Nepal books are at the top of the list.I had long dreamed of going to India but it took me years to work up the nerve to step into such a different world and it was only after seven or eight months of an extremely boring and seemingly useless life on my own in London that I finally decided to make the journey. As the notebooks relate, the journey began in New Delhi as a very straight tourist type who soon began to chill out, slow down, get rid of the excess baggage, turn on and drop out. I always smile when I read the first mention of my venturing into Mohan Singh Place and fleeing out because of the "horrendous odor"; not many weeks later, it became one of my main hangouts and stayed so for all the time I was in Delhi. And certainly it played a pivotal role in my life, since it was there I met Deepak Rattani after the months in Nepal.
That initial stay in Delhi was much longer than intended. It was a difficult choice, deciding between Mussoorie and Naini Tal, the two most convenient "hill stations" to reach. Years later, when I experienced the extraordinarily bizarre nature of Naini Tal, I was grateful I opted for Mussoorie on that first visit. It is a combination of several small communities, perched on top of the Himalayan foothills, with a splendid view of the plains below and an even more magnificent view of the white-capped mountains which tower over it in the distance. The main part of the town is like an English seaside resort; indeed the Savoy Hotel, its one-time "first class" establishment, looks as if it had been picked up from Brighton and dropped on an Indian mountain. At a higher elevation is Landour Bazar, more like India as one expects it to be, and on the outskirts is Happy Valley, a large and well-appointed Tibetan colony often visited by the Dalai Lama. Even further out is the Woodstock School, a boarding school primarily for Western children whose parents are working in India.
I feel most fortunate to have spent so many months there and at so many levels of affluence and thus variations of interaction with the community and its people. On the first visit, I began on a relatively affluent level, sank to extreme poverty; when I returned years later, it was as a comparatively wealthy man. It doesn't surprise me at all that, in many ways, the poorest time there was the best time.
As the notebooks tell, when I did finally leave Mussoorie and returned to Delhi, it was with the intention of immediately leaving for the West. I had been sent a ticket and money specifically for that purpose. Something inexplicable happened to me on that journey back to the plains. I did not understand it then, and still do not. In the space of time between morning and nightfall, I lost all interest whatever in returning to the West and was more determined than ever to stay and to travel to Nepal.
Kathmandu, the capitol city of Nepal, is my favorite place in the world. I loved it immediately and my love for it has never wavered. I have never willingly left it, even risked prison the first visit by well overstaying my maximum visa limit. Cat Stevens' beautiful song about that magical valley speaks aptly of its strange sense of time. They have their own time, their own calendar, they have never been conquered and they never allowed Christian influence into the country. Some years ago, the King's astrologers advised the entire royal family to abandon their palaces and build new ones. Many of the old ones were turned into hotels and it was in the former Prime Minister's palace, the Hotel Manaslu, where I took up residence, then and on subsequent visits to the city. In later years, I was fortunate to be the last resident in the old hotel before it was finally, sadly, demolished and a new one built beside it.
Within a very short time, the staff treated me as a member of their
families. The ever delightful Sri Krishna Acharya, my first and favorite
room boy, took great pains to arrive at work early so as to make sure I
never had to wait for my very early morning tea, arranged his schedule to
clean my room while I enjoyed the earliest morning sun from the
third-floor terrace outside my room, and even brought me plates of food
from the family who lived in a small adjoining house and prepared food for
the staff. Departing guests would give him whatever smoking prerequisites
they had left and we kept a large box of the materials under my bed
(indulged in far more often by me). I rented a bicycle for a day or two,
got into far too much trouble trying to negotiate the bicycle and rickshaw
crowded streets of the city (there was only one traffic light in the
city in 1973), but kept the bicycle for the entire time I was there
so Sri Krishna could use it.One of my favorite memories is the day I and an old Nepali gentleman collided on our bicyles right in the middle of the largest intersection. Traffic stopped while we sorted ourselves out and he scolded the bicycles at great length for so misbehaving themselves.
There were wonderful materials to work with there as an artist. Unlike India, with all its import restrictions, the best of the world was available in Nepal and at incredibly low prices. As winter approached, I spent more and more time in my room working on drawings and several large bound books of both drawings and collage, work which Sri Krishna would often contribute to. Everything I wanted was brought to me, there was never any real need to venture out. But I loved the Bahai lady who ran the Unity Restaurant and the wonderful bookstores, so went once or twice a week just to say hello and enjoy a cup of tea and make small purchases. The bookstore allowed me to buy books and return them for credit at almost full price, and I went through everything they had available by Krishnamurti as my main reading material. On sunny afternoons I would sit on the steps of the ancient temples in the heart of the city and watch the incredible, beautiful panorama of people and activities, enjoy the sounds and the smells and the sheer magic of those venerable stones.
Now and then, as Jung wrote of his time in Africa, I would get an eerie feeling that I was being swallowed up by it and I would go to the USIA Library and read The New Yorker or other American magazines to touch base with my former existence, or I would stop in the luxury tourist hotels and have some strange lunch, like the hamburger I had at the Annapurna for Christmas, 1973.
It was not until I had been there for some months that I discovered one of the main reasons I was being treated so well by many total strangers, some of whom utterly bewildered me by addressing me as Guru Dev. Evidently I have a very unusual palm, with the head and heart lines completely intertwined, and that was a sign of a very high birth. For my part, I felt very much more embarrassed by Guru Dev than Sahib and certainly didn't think the title was deserved.
I tried to get permission to visit the then-forbidden remote valley of Mustang. Several LSD trips were almost possessed by the belief that there was a "terma" there I was supposed to find, a treasured hidden text which had been concealed there long ago, possibly even by myself in a previous existence. Although I went about trying to get permission using absolutely straight diplomatic methods, and with some high level endorsements, it was not granted. I might have done better if I had told them the truth.
After meeting some excellent young Nepali artists, I briefly tried to open a small gallery off the New Road, rented the premises, but then got bogged down in all the bureaucratic red tape and abandoned the plan, returned to my life as the eccentric hermit of the Hotel Manaslu.
I delayed my return to the visa office for an attempt at yet another renewal for several months and the officials were not at all pleased. Only the intervention of the hotel's owner and, I think, Sri Krishna's family stopped them from escorting me directly to the airport under guard. Instead, I was given two weeks to leave the country.
I've never more regretted getting onto an airplane, losing touch with ground that was more dear to me than any other. I returned to Delhi, but the time there is for another tale.
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