Knowing what the Fuehrer had indeed said in cold print about the Indians (fit to be hewers of wood to the noble Germanic Aryans, and drawers of water), I tucked my bottles under my arm and rushed towards the pension. Hill after hill rose above me, measured as if into civilized stances like those organized elevations that stand one behind the other up the roads to Ooty in the Nilgiris and layer after layer of playful mist covered the edges of pine-black trees. Far down in the valley the lifeless railway line ran, and some unacknowledgeable river. The air became crisp. Why, it could almost be the Himalayas (the Terai)—but one never felt the background of snow or the benignant presence of the Ganga.

Lord, what could we Indians do without the Ganga!

Badenweiler is a staid, dumpy town. Almost a township, with its white villas, its arched-in avenues, and its sole sanctuary, the sanitorium up the hill. The thought of The Magic Mountain came to me, but I brushed it aside and switched on to Hsuan Tsang:

Then the Master of the Law thought with love of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, and turned his whole mind to the Heaven of the Blessed, earnestly praying to be born again there, in order to offer this Bodhisattva his respects and homage, to hear the excellent Law expounded, and to attain perfect understanding . . . All at once, in the depths of his ecstatic soul, he seemed to be rising up as high as Mount Sumeru, and after passing through one, two, three heavens, he seemed to see in the Palace of the Blessed, the venerable Maitreya, seated on a resplendent throne, and surrounded by a multitude of gods. At this moment he was floating with body and soul on an ocean of joy . . .

Lord, when I see your face, may it shine as that which brought compassion to man, quadruped and three, twenty-five centuries ago. If Mahatma Gandhi was a Visvamitra, Pandit Jawaharlal was the Bodhisattva. Lord, mayst thou have a halo round thy auspicious face!

I sat in the feebly lit corridor of the pension and opened the book I’d brought with me. It was Sur les Traces du Boudha by René Grousset.3 I had meant to speak of this extraordinarily moving book to Panditji.

What a great thing it would be for India and the world (I said to myself) if Panditji were to declare: ‘Yes, of course, friend, this be my path. This, the sure, trodden, ancient way. The eightfold path to the knowledge of the root of bondage and freedom from sorrowings.’