Because he was the first person from his country to come to India. On top of that, his skin wasn’t getting tanned enough in the sun. So one morning he took a mat and went up to the roof, covered his face with a towel, and lay there until noon. By evening, his whole body was covered in blisters. We children laughed a lot; it wasn’t out of any special sympathy. Ma was very worried—this boy has started acting crazy. It’s hard to manage a wild European boy, especially when the language isn’t quite under control; Chandsi’s ointment arrived. Ma showed him how to use it; uncle, while applying it, began translating Ma’s scoldings into English.

Later, Baba explained to him, “Look, Mircea, everyone will know you’ve come to India just by listening to you, and you yourself will change from within. That’s what really matters. You can get a brown skin by lying in the sun anywhere—but the real transformation will come from Indian philosophy, from what you study here. That’s where the change will be.

And as for revolution? There’s no point running around to witness a revolution. Right now, revolution is happening everywhere in India. Is picketing and tear gas all there is to see? The very fact that you are staying in our home is a revolution—could you have stayed in my father’s house? Then my wife would have covered her face in front of you, and this Amrita, who goes to a boys’ college to recite poetry—could that ever have happened? Your utensils would have been kept separate, if you touched the rice it would have been thrown away—that was the way things were. Compared to that, even this house today is a revolution.”

There was going to be a grand literary conference at the Sahitya Parishad, where the Gokhale Memorial School now stands. For the first time, I would be reading an original prose essay—the topic was, “Where does beauty reside?” Is beauty outside? Or in the human mind? Why make such a complicated issue out of it? Beauty can never be an external thing; it is the human being who perceives beauty, that is, sees it with the eyes—in other words, in the mind, in a blue-shadowed illusion. I worked hard on this essay—whatever I wrote, Baba didn’t like it—but in the end, it came together. Now, a test lay ahead: Rabindranath was supposed to preside over the conference, but he wouldn’t be able to come, having fallen ill in Hyderabad. There would be much criticism of him at the venue, that is, at the literary conference. In this country, no one misses a chance to say a few words against Rabindranath. I was amazed to see how everyone was eager to speak with him, to visit him just once, and if they saw him in person, they would be overwhelmed, but behind his back, a thousand tongues wag in criticism. Baba’s feelings about him are much the same. He has read so