In2-MeC

Sridhama Mayapur, West Bengal
6 March 2003

In January's In2-MeC I mentioned a piece of magazine fiction published in Harper's in 1951. It was titled "Grandma and the Hindu Monk" and written by Seymour Freedgood. I keep a photocopy in my Mayapur library. Here are some quotations.

I still remember the shock I had when I first saw him. He couldn't have been four foot six. He had an ingenuous smile and protruding, fan-shaped teeth. Around his head was wrapped a turban, upon which a series of Sanskrit prayers had been scrawled in red and yellow crayons. A similar cloth hung around his shoulders. Beneath it was a gray undervest which did not entirely hide a woolen sweater and the tops of some brown underwear. And below all of this a white cotton skirt dropped clear to his feet. These, mercifully, were not naked: instead he had shod them in a pair of blue tennis shoes. Taken together, this outfit was his version of khaddar--Indian homespun--for adoption in northern climates. The sneakers he wore for religious reasons: any other footwear is of leather, which would be in violation of sacred cows. I don't know why they were blue. He also had a string of wooden prayer beads wrapped around his neck.

. . .
 

"I am Mahanan Brata Brahmacari," he told them, in the meanwhile ordering the taxi driver to deposit his luggage on the veranda, "a Hindu mendicant from the Sri Angan Monastery, Faridpur, East Bengal. Your son has invited me to stay with you for the summer. Ay, Saymour," he said, noticing me for the first time in the crowd that by now had gathered around the taxi, "there you are. Delighted to see you. Please pay this man. "

. . .
 

In the background Josey hovered, concerned about his meals. These, it appeared, must consist entirely of vegetables. No eggs, no fish, no meat. "Not even eggs?" asked my mother. "Can Josey fix you a salad for lunch?" He agreed that a salad would be splendid and the two women bustled off, full of plans. It was apparent that he would have to do all the cooking himself.

. . .
 

My brothers and I got on with his luggage. This consisted, in addition to three tin suitcases, of a box full of philosophy books, and a potted plant, securely wrapped in brown paper, which he asked me to unbind and set in a window seat. . . Brahmacari explained, waggling his finger at us from where he sat in the middle of the couch, that it was a Tulasi plant, a bush sacred to the Hindus for a reason I now forgot. His abbot had given it to him when he first left India. He never travelled without it.

. . .
 

It's my impression that Brahmacari was comparing the attitudes toward God and salvation that obtained in his Hindu monastery with those of the Hasidic Jews. His order was devoted to Lord Krishna, he told Mr. Isaacs. This meant it was opposed to Brahmanic formalism and put its stress on music and dancing and ecstatic union with God. As among the Hasidim there is a preference for the Psalms of David over the priestcraft and legalisms of the Mosaic testaments, so among the members of his order less attention was paid to the Vedic writings than to the Bhagavad-gita, a song by the same Lord Krishna in praise of Himself.
 

. . .
 

He had again stripped down to his loincloth, his turban and the holy beads, and wih his long brown fingers he was tapping on the two-headed drum. Bolt upright in front of Grandma and with a slight smile on his lips he weaved the upper half of his body and his tapped. "Hari Krishna," the monk hummed.

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