Why I Write This Book

Nothing is so precious to one as one’s own self and no one else can judge it better than oneself, provided one is truthful and fair. Essential human nature is the same in all, and to reveal it without damage to its intrinsic dignity is, or ought to be, the legitimate aim of all biographies, especially autobiographies. The latter can take the form of confessions and may fall into the error of revealing more than what is consistent with the nobility and dignity of human nature by under- or over-estimation. When others write a biography, the personal Boswell-Johnson intimacy counts, so that commercial banalities and distortions may be avoided. There are aspects in one’s private life that one would rather speak of for oneself than trust such matters of importance and delicacy to others who might, often by misplaced admiration, damage the values involved. There are sidelights that one could throw on many seemingly insignificant subjects which one can treat better when one tells his own story than in the form of formal essays or articles, by way of anecdotes or intimate incidental remarks casually made in relation to the living experience of oneself in life.

Although reminiscent moods, except when they refer to a clear spiritual content, are detrimental to the course of life of an absolutist speaker of truth – all memories being forms of regret – I have long nourished the idea of writing my own story so as to save my disciples the trouble of interpreting me. I see signs already of some disciples about to take up their pens for the purpose, and one of them, as Editor of Values at present, actually prompts me in telling my story, merely saying, ‘We disciples really won’t find anything more interesting than that’. These are some of the remarks and excuses with which I wish to kick off the ball, as it were, as Robinson Crusoe did, simply by the sentence, ‘I was born in the city of Bangalore in the month of February in the year 1895’.

The long reign of the good Queen Victoria had not ended; and India had lived through the days of the mutiny against foreign domination for about four decades already; and the memories of the Delhi Durbar of the early seventies were ushering in a period of very settled rule that prevailed in the country, punctuated later by the second Delhi Durbar of 1911.

Mysore itself, of which Bangalore was the de facto capital, was ruled by an Indian Maharajah, although under the paramount power of the British. With its clean roads and attractive avenues, flower gardens and elevation on a plateau almost three thousand feet above sea level, Bangalore City had many features not shared by many other similar cities in India.

February mornings could be quite chilly and August mists could still hide the faces of passers-by on the same road on certain misty mornings. Vasanta is the name in Sanskrit for the season when spring meets summer, when nature abounds in flowers and the messenger of the season, the Vasantaduta (the Indian Cuckoo) plays hide and seek among the tall trees of the countryside with its long-drawn and modulated musical note, giving that Kalidasa touch to the lazy hours of the noontide. The generosity of the fruit season attracts plumed and other visitors including monkeys from neighbouring parts. It is true that rainfall is sparse and the village tanks are parched for many months; but welcome rains bring out the hut-dwellers with their ploughs, season after season, eagerly blessing the Rain-Giver, themselves being blessed in turn. There is the kite-flying season too, when grownups forget to be serious and join the urchins of the village in high spirits when the high winds prevail. Dust-storms and whirlwinds sometimes on very dry days drag their ghostly trail, crossing the parched grassy plains. Bamboos can catch fire and spread circling smoke on the hillsides. The bats clustering on hoary banyan trees near the village wells and the kites flying high reveal the jungle India that Kipling’s Mowgli knew well. A deer or two might leap across the field of vision and be gone in a trice while elephants could also not uncommonly be sighted in their unconcerned majesty round this countryside. The tiger and the peacock too added glory or a note of fear in thick forests, with stripes or spots. What particular planetary or natural forces conspired to make me born, as I was, in the middle of February in such surroundings, I do not hope to know in any wakefully precise terms. Just as the rainbow is a marginal effect, a sort of epi-phenomenon, forces from the farthest corners of the cosmos must have come to a sort of focal point in me to vivify my being and make me grow as a local fixed entity, both as a lump of protoplasm and a bit of consciousness.