And I said, ”You please sit down, there is no need to continue to stand. Sit down, be at ease, and I
will go and close the door.”
He said, ”Why are you closing the door?”
I said, ”The door has to be closed. Passengers are passing by, what will they think? You
are trembling, perspiring, in an air-conditioned room? No, I don’t want you to look so silly and
embarrassed.” I virtually forced the person to sit down. I was forcing him to sit down, and he wanted
to stand up.
He said, ”Can’t I stand?”
I said, ”You just first relax. Do you want to go to the bathroom or have you already done it? Anyway
there is no need to worry – you just sit down.”
That man looked at me and looked all around. It was just a small cabin for two persons and he was
thinking, ”this type of man, he can do anything.” But he tried somehow to figure me out; anyway he
wanted to be acquainted. And he said ”By your face you look religious.”
I said, ”Yes, when I look in the mirror I also feel that this man looks religious. But I am not religious.
Never go by the appearance, appearances are not always real.”
”No,” he said, ”you are still trying to befool me. You are a religious man.” Now he was trying somehow
to categorize me.
I said, ”If you say, and if it consoles you, helps you in some way, okay, I am a religious man.”
The man was a brahmin – I had seen his name on the door. In the air-conditioned compartment
they have the passengers’ names on the door, so I had seen that he was a Bengali, a high-caste
brahmin, a chattopadhyaya. So he said, ”What religion?”
I said, ”Religion is just religion – there is no adjective to it.”
He said, ”That I cannot believe. You must be a religious Hindu sage.”
I said, ”If it helps you, I am.”
And he fell at my feet, and he said, ”I knew from the very beginning that you are not mad, that you
are a sage. And sages and mad people look alike, behave alike. Everything that you said now
makes sense.”
But I said, ”One thing I have just said to console you – really I am not a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan.”
And now you cannot believe what a terrible mess he fell into. He had touched the feet of a
Mohammedan! A Hindu brahmin, a high-caste brahmin, is afraid even of touching the shadow
of a Mohammedan. If he touches even the shadow of a Mohammedan he will have to take a bath to
cleanse himself. And he had touched actual feet!
Now the situation had become much worse. The chattopadhyaya said, ”But why did you lie to me?”
I said, ”I was just trying to console you. I never thought that you would fall at my feet. Before I
could prevent you, you had already done it. But don’t be worried, I am really a brahmin. I was just
checking what happens: if some Mohammedan looks like a brahmin sage and you touch his feet,
what will happen to you? I was just trying to see.”
He said, ”That’s right.” And a great smile ... and he relaxed in his seat and he said, ”I knew from the
very beginning – such a nice person could not be a Mohammedan. Those Mohammedans are all
butchers.”
I said, ”You are right, because I was born a Mohammedan so I know perfectly well they are all
butchers.”
This way I have seen many well-educated people trying to figure out ... and I told them, ”Why are
you bothering to figure out about me? If you take that much trouble to figure out about yourself you
will become enlightened! You need not worry about me. You do your work, whatever you want to
do; you simply accept me as absent, I am not here. Behave as if I am not here and do whatsoever
you want to do.
”If you want me to close my eyes, I can close my eyes. If you want me to go to sleep, I will go to
sleep. But please be at ease; just forget about me. But don’t try to become familiar with me – that I
don’t allow. We are going to remain strangers for ten hours.”
In fact we are all strangers.
Even if we live our whole life together it makes no difference, we remain strangers; we just settle for
consolations, and we start taking the other for granted. It is a make-believe that you know the other
– your wife, your mother, your father, your brother, your friend – it is just a make-believe that you
know them. You know nothing about the other because that is impossible – for the simple reason
that you don’t know anything about yourself yet. Without knowing oneself it is impossible to know
anybody else.
The trouble is you can be introduced to somebody else, but how can you be introduced to yourself?
Who is going to do that?
You can be introduced to somebody else because that introduction is just arbitrary. The name, the
caste, the country, the religion, the profession – these are all arbitrary and accidental.
It happened ... really a great coincidence, almost inconceivable, but it happened so whether it is
conceivable or not makes no difference. When I was standing at the window after my matriculation,
to obtain entry into a college, there were many people who were filling in forms and I was waiting
to get my form. When I was filling in my form a boy just of my age came to me, and he said, ”What
subjects are you taking?”
So I showed him my form and said, ”These are my subjects.”
He said, ”Oh, okay, I will fill in these subjects also.”
I said, ”But this is strange. You have come to the college – don’t you have any idea what you want
to study?”
He said, ”It is all the same to me. My father wants me to study so I have come to the college. I don’t
have any interest in anything, I have just come to enjoy. My father is rich. He wants me to be in
college so okay, I will be in college and have fun and enjoy. Any subjects will do.”
But I said, ”These subjects perhaps may be difficult for you: philosophy, logic ....”
He said, ”I don’t care even what they mean. I don’t know, I have never heard this word ‘logic’ before.”
”Then,” I said, ”It is perfectly okay.”
And he asked me, ”Will you please give me your fountain pen?”
I said, ”This is too much – you don’t have your own fountain pen?”
He said, ”I am not a man who is interested in these things.”
He showed me a packet of cigarettes. He said, ”I am interested in cigarettes, not in fountain pens;
and I am not going to attend any class or anything. My father is going to send me the money and I
am going to enjoy, and I am going to ask him for more and more. He has enough, and I am the only
son so I am not wasting anybody else’s money. It is my own, I am going to inherit it anyway.”
I gave him my fountain pen and he filled in the form. He even had to look at my form for the spelling
of the words that he was filling in. But this way we became friends. I liked the boy, he was sincere,
and not a hypocrite in any way. We became friends. He needed me and I needed him, because I
needed so much money for books and he had so much money that I said, ”This is good.” And he
was not interested in books at all.
But I was his first friend in the college. And he had everything: a car, a driver, a bungalow – I needed
all these things so I said, ”That’s perfectly good – you came at the right time. And whatever your
need is, I will manage, you don’t be worried.” So I had to do examinations for both of us. In three
hours time, half was mine and half was his. In one and a half hours I finished my paper and then I
would start his paper.
But he said, ”This is a great bargain.” He said, ”If I can pass, my father is going to be mad with
happiness. He cannot believe that I can pass, because in matric he had to give such a large bribe
to push me through. And now he knows that in college it is going to be difficult.”
I said, ”You don’t be worried, you will pass first class.” And he passed first class with a B.A. After
the B.A. I left Jabalpur because one of the professors in Sagar University, S.S. Roy, was persistently
asking me, writing me, phoning me to say, ”After your B.A. you join this university for your postgraduation.”
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