India: A Million Mutinies Now by Naipaul V. S

Author:Naipaul, V. S. [Naipaul, V. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447209386
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2012-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

That was where the story should have ended, with the flight to Delhi, the cutting off of the tresses at the back of the head, and the start of a new life. But Kakusthan had returned for good to the colony from which he had fled. His story was of a double transformation; and it was of the second transformation that he told me on another day.

Kakusthan said, ‘In New Delhi I found myself, and for the next 16 years I lived there. I did a small job for the American firm for which my cousin worked. I also worked as a stenographer for a trade union journal.’

Stenography: the old South Indian brahmin vocation, the vocation that followed on from the doing of rituals, and was the other side of the talent for mathematics and physics.

‘I got 50 rupees a month from my cousin’s American firm. I got 200 rupees from the trade union paper. And it was during my time on the trade union paper that the second transformation began to take place.

‘The trade union movement in India based itself on the principles of Gandhian philosophy: truth and non-violence, duty before right: you produce before you make demands. That is precisely what the Gita tells us, and those were the principles of the Indian National Trade Union Congress. Our day’s work at the paper was started with a prayer meeting. That had an effect on me. So did the daily religious column on the back page of the Hindu newspaper of Madras. And I also read the writings of Mahatma Gandhi, especially his autobiography.

‘In the office there was this religious and spiritual atmosphere. Outside, there was the allurement of Delhi life, the life of money, beauty, everything. For some time it attracted me, that Delhi life. And it worried me – because I didn’t have the money. But then the religious books I was reading began to have more pull. So over a period of time I changed again, and I embraced the religious life.

‘In this period I took a degree from Delhi University; and I married. I had been attracted by my sister’s daughter in Vellore, and I had determined to marry her as soon as I could. The family agreed, but I told them that she should graduate first. I met her educational expenses, and on the last day of her final examination the marriage process started.

‘Other editorial jobs with papers and magazines followed after I left the union paper. One such job took me to the town of Ahmedabad in 1980. I was thirty-seven. My father came to see me there, for the birthday of my second son. He was extremely pleased that I was in a good position at last – even though I was minus my churki. He would have been doubly delighted if I had still had the churki.

‘The first morning he was there he saw me doing the morning puja. It was something I routinely did, but he was taken aback. We talked for a while about the puja I had done that morning, and the texts connected with the puja.

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