Evening, an autumn many-spaced evening, was falling all about me as I went up to his rooms. Forster always looks fresh, as if nothing is an effort because the mind is so clear. He set a glass of orange juice before me and poured himself a glass of wine.

He brought out an eighteenth-century manuscript in Sanskrit rhat I had given to him in Bombay. ‘I can’t read it ever. It’s a pity the book is with me.’

‘The giver is always beholden to the receiver for receiving,’ I murmured. ‘The Buddha spoke of the void—only there can one receive. How can a person receive anything? Who in the world can receive a gift?’

‘A difficult question,’ Forster whispered, as if to himself.

‘To receive, one must almost not be, and be. Only in the cowless world can one receive.’

‘Yes, you’re right. Because there’s no cow, you can accept the cow.’

‘Thus you become a Brahmin.’

‘Ah, ah.’

‘And so one becomes the Brahmin of Cambridge.’

‘No Walden for me, please.’

‘Yes, for you’ve the Cam.’ And we laughed together.

Then Forster thought for a moment, and said, ‘I believe—I believe in Man.’

I looked out of the window, the words of Forster falling with their timid precision—and I wondered at the extraordinary quality of silence about me. Silence is the stuff of language as humanity is that of a saint. Comprehension is only a game of chess—you understand because you play.

‘You must know Sanskrit well,’ he remarked, looking at the eighteenth-century manuscript, the words flowing like a logarithm of ideas. ‘It must be a wonderful language.’

‘I know some Sanskrit,’ I answered, ‘not sufficient to know, and yet I understand.’

‘Difficult,’ he said, looking into his glass. ‘“To be” is Indo-Aryan, isn’t it?’ he added as if in explanation.

‘My position,’ I ventured, ‘is somewhat complicated. Born in south India and into the Sanskrit tradition, having a French intellectual discipline, and writing in the English language. It’s all so difficult.’

‘What an envious position. And how fascinating,’ exclaimed Forster. ‘That is why the way you write interests me.’

Abhuman by nature, I see but metaphysical propositions everywhere. Forster, however, sees in every man the rational saint.

‘The maharaja,’ I said, ‘to speak of your last book, perhaps the most remarkable of all your books, a sort of Dostoevskian text written by Turgenev—a maharaja who loved women perhaps a little too much, “shifty and cunning but never cruel,” as you say, a buffoon, a prodigal, a devotee of God in high moments of worship, a good father, a king in exile, and finally a saint. What a page from one of our Puranas. The Hill of Devi is certainly one of the most Indian of books in this century.’