But then vulgarity, and violence, are human. That is what places them in the key of C minor. ‘Thus far have our Mice led us. Holding up their tails, let us count them’ (Two Cheers for Democracy).

Friendship for Forster is the very basis of entelechy. Man alone is meaning. I remember Forster’s story of the time, soon after the war, when he boarded a military plane to India for the P.E.N. conference. ‘When I,’ he told me, ‘a civilian and a writer to boot, entered the plane, which was full of old colonels, the uniforms and the medals looked at me as if to say, “What are you doing here?”’ And Forster laughed with tender irony and shining eyes. ‘I am a writer, gentlemen,’ I replied. ‘And am I going to a congress of writers? I am going discretely to meet old friends, real friends, for there are still a few left, you know?’ The uniforms, epaulettes, and medals could not understand how a man who wrote books could fly in a military plane to go and see friends. War is war, even when the war is over.

In autumn of 1945 I met an old friend on a street in Bombay. He said, ‘I say, where are you? I have just been with Forster. He was saying, “Where is Raja Rao? I did not see him at the P.E.N. conference.”’ Later the same day another friend stopped me and said, ‘Forster was speaking to me just now about you. He asked, “Why is it I do not see Raja Rao? Where is he hiding?”’ So that same evening I wrote a letter to Forster. I said, ‘I have abandoned literature for good—and gone over to metaphysics. I am not a writer any more. I do not know on what grounds I could come to see you.’ And Forster immediately sent me a reply: ‘You have, you say, abandoned literature for metaphysical inquiry. I have abandoned literature for nothing at all. So please let us meet.’