At eight o’clock in the morning, Bombay is a very agreeable city. The boat waits to take us to Elephanta. Policemen in white, sailors in blue, and the sea all to ourselves. The breeze is cool, but the climbing sun warms us and soon it becomes hot. We sleep, then wake to find ourselves on the jetty of Elephanta. The fisher children playing on the stones come to join us. Monkeys jump from tree to tree, certain that someone among us has peanuts and bananas. The eagles wheel and cry. Everyone is happy on the island of Elephanta when the boat comes in so early.

We leave the sun outside with our shoes. We enter the penumbra of pillars. We see nothing, nothing but the pillars. Then we enter into utter darkness. Now darkness becomes slowly visible and takes form. The form divides into three: It is the Maheshamurti.

What is this Maheshamurti, so often considered to be the most impressive piece of all Indian statuary? In the centre is the colossal bust; to the left a rather barbarous head; to the right a soft, almost feminine one. Is this Vishnu? The terrifying figure on the left is then Shiva, making the central figure the supreme Brahma himself, with a tiara, serene. André Malraux puts his hand upon the gods; with pride, with knowledge, with devotion. He comes down the shoulder of one to go on behind the ear of the other; he goes behind pillars to see higher and from farther away. He discovers, he plants himself before Brahma; he questions: Who could you be?

That Saturday, the sixth of December 1958, I went up for a quiet lunch with Pandit Nehru. Arriving somewhat late, I was terribly embarrassed and in my confusion seemed to see the diplopic presence of André Malraux float before me, then the apsara-ike face of Madeleine Malraux, and a little farther away the discrete, chiselled, classic profile of Count Ostrorog, the French ambassador. Nehru came towards me, and I saw not only him with his air of the Grand Moghul, his smile of a poet, sensitive, wondering, simple, but also behind him, far away, like the image of oneself in a mirror of dream, I saw a Virgin, a Virgin of the thirteenth century, her child so magical in presence, holding himself mischievously high on the lap of his Mother, turning towards us, a gift of De Gaulle, from France renewed, to the new—Republic of India.

Part II

The Meaning—in Meaning

The ultimate Reality, Brahman,

which is without beginning or end,

of the very essence of the word (sabdatattva)

and from it are manifested

all the objects and the whole Cosmos.

Bhartrihari, Vakyapadiya.I.i.

11

On Understanding1

I