Stopped In Our Tracks

I think her greatness would not have been any the less if Valentine had never met U.G. U.G. does not exaggerate it when he says, "In fact, Valentine's life-story is more interesting than mine." When asked to talk about her life, Valentine rarely opened her mouth. Nevertheless, I gathered many details—some were extracted out of her, some were from what I collected from U.G. who told them to me according to what her sisters had narrated about her to him. I will briefly relate what I know of Valentine's wonderful life by piecing together all these various details.

Valentine's full name was Valentine de Kerven. She was born in the beginning of the twentieth century, on August 1, 1901, in a village called La Chaux de Fond in the Zura mountain region of Switzerland. It is noteworthy that that day is the National (Independence) day of the Swiss people. That might be why Valentine was so fond of her freedom.

Valentine's father, Alfred de Kerven, was well known in those times as a great brain surgeon. His books were translated into almost all the important languages of the world. As he was the one who researched thoroughly a certain glandular disease of the neck, this disorder, the De Kerven Syndrome, which is mentioned in the current medical textbooks, was named after him. Valentine was the second of his three daughters.

Valentine had an unusual personality even as a child. She never believed anything blindly. She had to find things out for herself and act accordingly. She thus developed her artistic tastes and ideas of freedom. When she was eighteen, she decided to leave home and move to Paris. She wanted to mold her life in her own fashion by mingling with the artists of that time. But no one in her family liked her plan. When they all tried to prevent her from carrying it out, her father stopped them: "Don't force her. We all know what she is like. If we come in the way of her freedom, there is a risk of her leaving us forever. Let her go wherever she wants to go." He persuaded them, and they bade her farewell. He arranged for a yearly income of two thousand francs wherever she lived.

Valentine never forgot her father's generosity. She indeed loved him deeply. Even after she had married, she was reluctant to adopt her husband's family name, contrary to the custom there. She insisted on keeping her maiden name. Even when she had lost her memory because of Alzheimer's disease while she was under our care, her face would shine with joy whenever there was a mention of her father or she saw a photograph of him.

Valentine's big eyes always shone. There was some intense light in her eyes. I believe that no one could express herself with her facial expressions and eyes as well as Valentine could. Even when her body withered away in her last days, the shining in her eyes never went down.

Valentine was an artist from birth. Combined with her free and defiant spirit, her artistic tastes took peculiar forms after she arrived in Paris. Her interest in drama enabled her to become intimate with many prominent artists in the modern arts theater of that time. Antonin Artaud was a great poet and philosopher as well as a playwright. Spectators crowded to watch his plays, but knowing his eccentricity they always kept a respectable distance from him.

Valentine was one of the select few who came close to him. Valentine used to produce in Paris, along with another artist called Dullin, plays written by Artaud. She did her own designing of the costumes for the plays. The new designs for the dresses which she had created earned her a notable reputation in Paris, the center of fashions, as an apparel designer.

Valentine loved photography. She practiced it as an art. It did not take long for her to enter the film field. She was more interested in cinematography rather than acting in the movies. She founded de Kerven Films and produced a variety of documentaries. The film she made on the life of the Gypsies earned her a reputation as a prominent director.

To settle down in life was repugnant to Valentine. That might have been why she was attracted to the life of the Gypsies which involved living without security, and in different places, as long as one pleased, and being jovial like a stream. The famous film institute called Gomo British Theaters showed her documentary in all European countries. She also made documentaries about the medical researches of her father.

When she started coming to India with U.G., Valentine used to observe with interest the movie industry in India. She watched some Telugu movies in Madras. In her opinion, Bhanumati was an unsurpassed artist in the South Indian movie field. According to Valentine, she was quite unique in her acting skill.

At the time of her stay in Paris, Valentine met a Swiss movie maker called Walmar Schwab. As he and Valentine were of one mind, they worked together amid the artistic and cultural areas of Paris. Gradually their friendship turned into romance. But she turned down the idea of marriage when it was mentioned, due to her independent spirit. Swiss women are by nature quite tradition-bound. Revolutionary ideas and independent spirit are scarce among them.

It is perhaps hard to believe that until recently Swiss women had no voting rights. Strangely, it was the women in that country who led a movement against their own rights. Valentine was unique in the sense that, although born in such a country, she had very independent ideas, and was interested in free living within her own life. Although she never participated in any women's movements, her own life, from the beginning to the end, seemed like a liberty movement in its own right.

Valentine never wanted to marry. She detested the institution of marriage. She wondered why a woman should become subservient to man's authority, and why men and women shouldn't live together without marrying. When she wore pants in Paris, the center of fashion, women used to throw rotten eggs at her. As her lover had respect for her independent ideas, they lived together without marrying for twenty years, until the Second World War.

Schwab had not had much schooling in his youth. So when he was forty, he wanted to get some education. Valentine encouraged him and gave him whatever support he needed so he could go to school. He was eventually awarded a doctorate in chemistry, but because he was over-aged, no one gave him a job.

Meanwhile, the Second World War rushed in. Valentine and Schwab escaped from Paris and took shelter in Switzerland in an attempt to avoid the Nazis. The laws in Switzerland were very strict at that time: it was a crime, according to Swiss law, to live together without marrying. When the Swiss police learned that the couple was unmarried, they went after them. Valentine and Schwab ran into trouble trying to avoid the police, and had to change their residence several times. They sometimes hid in potato storehouses. At last, unable to bear the pressure of the police chase, they both decided to get out of the country and get married.

Although they had already lived together for twenty years, Valentine still felt that marriage was a bondage. Just to prove her independence from the institution of marriage and authority of man, she prepared a marriage contract. According to that contract, although they were husband and wife legally, neither of them could exercise any rights or restrictions on the other. They both could feel free to lead their own lives without the permission or interference of the other. Their incomes were also kept separate. When they married they both signed the contract.

It was not in Valentine's blood to lead a life without turbulence. She never liked that sort of uneventful life. She felt that a life without adventure or adversity was not her kind of life. She would compete with teenagers in cross-country running competitions. They were tough competitions and involved running uphill for four or five kilometers. The organizers of the competitions required her to get a medical certificate saying that she had the stamina to run against women far younger than her. In spite of these odds, she got her way and participated in the competitions.

Before World War II, Spain was under the dictatorship of General Franco. In those days, when most of Europe was resisting Franco's aggression, some artists started a movement called the Revolutionary Association of Artists. Valentine joined this movement, along with her friend, and actively participated in its anti-Franco activities. She even received training, along with other fighters, in the use of firearms.

The fact that she, who wouldn't hurt a fly, became a fighter and took to guns in order to bring down a dictatorship in a neighboring country indicates how deeply the love of freedom was implanted in her personality. She dreamt of going into Spain with her friend secretly, joining hands with the Republicans there, and fighting against Franco. She even had gotten the necessary false passports ready. But when Schwab backed out at the last minute, she too had to cancel her plans.

After the World War started, Valentine also worked in the Red Cross Society. Earlier, she had received training as a nurse. I think that only someone like Valentine can express her talents in multifarious ways—as a fighter, as a nurse and as an artist.

In 1939, before the onrush of the World War, Valentine contemplated the conquest of the Sahara desert along with her friend. Even today it is not an easy matter to cross the Sahara Desert on a new motorcycle. Half a century ago, even most adventurers would not think of such daring deeds. Except for adventurers who contemplated crossing the English Channel or the Atlantic Ocean, no one would have had the guts to attempt to cross a three thousand mile desert, finding her way even in the middle of frequently raging desert storms.

Valentine had great faith in her powerful 7 1/2 head motorcycle. If one were to write an account of how she sat Schwab on the back seat and then traveled day and night for three months in the desolate, terrible desert under the hot sun and in the hot winds, this account would be more interesting than a Jules Verne novel.

The struggles they went through getting supplies and gasoline for the motorcycle, the meals they ate sitting on the cadavers of camels because they couldn't set their feet in the burning sand, the hospitality of the residents in the occasional desert villages—adventures of this sort can only be told by a person such as Valentine.

The album of photos that she assembled still remains with us as a witness of their Sahara conquest. Weekly magazines at that time gave high praise for their adventurous journey.

After the World War, in 1954, Valentine contemplated another adventure. This time she traveled to India from Switzerland with her friend Schwab in her Volkswagen car. She came to India for the first time via Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. She and Schwab drove across India, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, in their car. It may be from this trip that she developed, unbeknown to herself, a deep attachment to India. Indian people, especially people from small villages with their simple living, interested Valentine very much. She was so fascinated by the Indian sleeping cot, with woven twine, that she had one transported, along with her Volkswagen, on a boat from Ceylon to Switzerland. She used the cot for a long time after she returned to her country.

After she returned from India, Valentine accepted a job in the Indian consulate in Geneva as a translator. It was about that time that she severed her relationship with Schwab. Valentine never had any children, even though she lived twenty years of life with him before their marriage as an unmarried companion, along with twenty more years after marriage. Meanwhile, an eighteen-year old young lady had come between them. It was such an unexpected and sudden development that the sixty-year old Schwab fell in love with this woman and started a relationship with her.

Although in the light of her own marriage contract she couldn't find any fault with her husband, Valentine could not swallow the harsh truth of losing someone whom she thought was her own. That is why later, whenever a discussion about woman-man relationship came up, Valentine used to say, "As long as there is a tendency among men and women to own each other, no matter how sweet the relationship is, it will have to turn bitter. No matter how many ideals you cite, and no matter what you do, that tendency will not go away. If the lives of married couples are horrible, the lives of unmarried couples are even more horrible."

At that time Valentine was living in a house given to her by her father. Valentine could not tolerate Schwab carrying on an affair with his new girlfriend. When, not stopping with that, Schwab went ahead and filed a lawsuit in a court asking for a divorce from her, Valentine's mind was closed to him. At the time of the verdict, the judge read their marriage contract and asked in shock, "What kind of a marriage is this? How could you call this sort of a contract marriage? With such a marriage, why would you still need a divorce?" He immediately annulled their marriage and sent them off.

"I never saw Valentine shedding tears. She had the courage to face any kind of hardship," says U.G., "The word sentiment does not exist in her vocabulary." After forty years of relationship with her companion broke up, Valentine started feeling that her life was in vain. What must she do? Why should she live? She was crestfallen, unable to find any use or aim for her life. One midnight, unable to sleep, Valentine sat on the banks of the Geneva Lake. For one who had never cared about her future before, now it seemed terrible. When she told me much later about the mental agony she had experienced that night, U.G. was with us. U.G. asked, looking at Valentine mischievously, "You didn't feel like jumping into the lake?" She replied, "No use jumping into the water. I knew how to swim."

U.G. later jokes about her saying, "She must have been afraid that the water in the lake would be frozen from the cold. Or else she would have jumped in it." She seemed to have been fated to return home that night without attempting anything drastic on herself, and it was the very next day that U.G. stepped into the office of the Indian Consulate. The lifelines of those two seemed to have merged on that day and started to move in the same direction: they both had not the faintest idea of how they were going to live, what their future was, or why they should live. And both their lives were like kites cast off to the winds of fate.