Such fireworks was not for Panditji. Not only speech came to him with difficulty. But even his thought process seemed to have become more quiet and grave. He had been facing silence in jail—death in Badenweiler. Guehénno was an observant man. He realized there was no dialogue possible with Malraux. It could only be a royal monologue. Yet he loved Malraux. But he felt reverence for Panditji. Panditji’s gentleness, his sheer nobility, seemed almost desecrated with European violence. So, Guehénno asked for the bill. Nobody remembered we had been eating Chinese food. For Malraux we were in history. For Panditji we were in a disturbed silence.

‘Monsieur Nehru, you know I love India,’ started André Malraux following his own thought. ‘I even learnt some Sanskrit to read the Bhagavadgita. It’s a great book, a revolutionary book—that is, a bible for the Real Revolution. Man’s aim is to achieve his déstin. Every man, as the Hindus believe, has his dharma, the leather worker, the minister or the king, like Dharmaraja. I love the way Bhisma, on his deathbed, gives advice to Arjuna, his adversary in battle, but a nephew of his. That is what I admire in India. The déstin d’homme.4 Bhisma is great, for, having fought with the Pandavas, he, it is when fallen, asks Arjuna to bring him a glass of water on his deathbed of arrows. Now, that to me is India. India has no enemies. She only has adversaries. That is what Gandhi is about. I admire him. I cannot follow him. For the Indian will follow his dharma, like Bhisma did against the Pandavas, though these were almost like his own children. But, I, the occidental man, need to fight, fight against evil. Take away evil, and there is nothing to fight for.’

‘But,’ said Panditji gently, ‘evil is only misunderstood good, is it not?’

‘Then why do you fight the British?’

‘Not I, but Gandhiji would say, to convert my enemy! Like Bhisma in fact.’

‘But Bhisma fought a battle—’

‘We fight our battle too. You fight with guns, we with wills and hearts. Do you think it is easy to stand before a towering police horse, and be crushed like a hen? We Indians, Mr Malraux, are not cowards.’

‘Of course not. Look at the way Alexander treated Porus. By the way that is the first confrontation between the occidental man and the Indian—the Indian, the Indian, shall I say the saint.’

‘No, the king,’ corrected Panditji, with his thin voice. ‘You have to see Gandhiji, dressed like a peasant, but walking erect as no emperor in India has ever walked. We believe in the saint king in India, like we believe, we believe in poet-sages, Kavis. Dharma binds them both.’