Stopped In Our Tracks

It was January 20, 1991. That night Valentine died suddenly. She simply dropped off while she was sitting in a chair eating her dinner. The houselights were shining brightly. The light of Valentine, however, which had been shining brightly in our Poornakutee in Bangalore, went out permanently. Just the day before, my wife Suguna had gone to Bapatla after she had heard of the news of her brother's death. She had been quite distressed at the prospect of leaving the company of Valentine. She had grown fond of Valentine during the past five years, during which time Valentine became like a small baby in the cradle.

The lives of our children, Aruna and Archana, were intertwined with Valentine's, as they had known her ever since they were little. They had played games and sang songs to her while she sat in her chair. They teased her and argued with her. As soon as they came home from school they would hug her and shower her with kisses. How could the children bear this sudden death while they couldn't even imagine living in her absence?

Unfortunately, I wasn't present when Valentine died that night. Just about an hour and half before her death, I had to go out on an errand. When I left I told her in English that I would be returning soon. She tried to smile and held her right hand out as if to shake hands with me. That once-strong hand which had previously given comfort and solace had now shriveled. I pressed her hand gently and said, "Au revoir, Valentine." She replied, "Au revoir," in a weak voice. That was her last good-bye, her last handshake. All was over by the time I returned home. Those hands had become cold and lifeless. My children and her servants were the only ones present when she closed her eyes forever.

It was pitch dark that night. Valentine's dead body was in the front room. And I was there, like a zombie, keeping a watch over the corpse on the sofa. The city had quietened down. Everything was still except for the occasional roar of a vehicle rolling down the street. I heard a mild moaning from the next room, which died down after a while.

How could I carry on the next day without Valentine? My brain was getting numb as soon I began to think about it. I felt my stomach turning. I was suffering from some inexpressible anxiety. What, indeed, was my connection to her? Who was she? What brought her that great distance, from the place she was born, the Jura mountain region of Switzerland, to Poornakutee in Bangalore, the place where she died? Who was she? Who were we? Who was U.G.?

It was thirty years ago when an anonymous person who lost all his roots and bearings, and who was roaming in foreign countries like a vagabond, was blown into the Indian Consulate office in Geneva. Valentine sponsored him with her generosity and handed over to him all she had without a second thought. It was a new turn in U.G.'s life. Who of us had ever dreamt that such a person as Valentine would live her last days and die from Alzheimer's disease right in front of our eyes in Bangalore?

In her years of stay here, our neighbors had also become involved with Valentine. How could I console them? What should I say to comfort them? I was reminded of the mocking voice of Chalam in a letter he wrote to me many years ago, "Am I still in that lowly state of pining after those who are dead?" I laughed apathetically within myself. This had to be my plight. My mind was to be ripped apart over and over again. Valentine lay still over there, as if she was sleeping.

"The body is a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There is no death for the body, only an exchange of atoms. Their changing places and taking different forms is what we call 'death.' It's a process which restores the energy level in nature that has gone down. In reality, nothing is born and nothing is dead," I was recalling U.G.'s words with Valentine's dead body in front of me.

The mind was in no state to contemplate philosophy or science. As ocean waves break upon rocks, all my thoughts were being shattered within myself—I was frozen with the weight of my sorrow.

Suddenly the telephone rang, breaking the silence in the hall. U.G.'s voice on the other end. He was calling from California. There was no emotion in his voice even when he learned of Valentine's death. He reminded me of the important things I had to do: "Valentine is a foreigner. That's why you should inform the police of her death. They may give you trouble, if you don't. You must also inform the Swiss Embassy. When will Suguna return?"

I said, "She must be returning by tomorrow afternoon. I will wait till she comes back."

"All right. Cremate the body in the corporation crematorium. Valentine never believed in the rituals performed after death. She was born a Christian, but she never attended the Church even once," U.G. said. There was a moment of silence. U.G. again asked, "What will you do with the ashes after the cremation?"

"I will immerse them in the Western section of the river Kaveri near Srirangapatnam," came the spontaneous reply out of myself. U.G. was laughing mildly. There was a pity in that laughter for the sentiments I couldn't free myself from.

Some days later, in the morning, Archana was peering from behind me at the papers I was writing on and asked, "Are you writing the biography of Valentine, daddy?" I nodded 'Yes' and looked into her face. The shadows of memories of Valentine flashed in her facial expressions.

Who cares about Valentine now? She never even cared about herself. Even when others reminded her of her adventures and sacrifices, she used to smile as though they were quite ordinary. Valentine had no more interest in her own extraordinary personality than the interest a flower has in its own fragrance. Even those who knew U.G. intimately knew her only as a companion to him in his world travels, and as an extraordinarily generous person who made it possible for U.G. to stay in Switzerland, but who knew of the heights of her magnanimity?

Ever since the time of the Calamity, U.G. and Valentine used to come to India every winter. U.G. used to say, "We are migratory birds: we come to this country to escape the winter in Switzerland. Here, unlike in that country, we can find all our conveniences. There is no other higher purpose in coming here."

Valentine always liked to travel to India, and particularly to visit Bangalore. She enjoyed spending her time in Bangalore standing in the upstairs balcony of the house and watching the huge peepul tree in front of the Anjaneya temple. She would watch the large bats that hung on its branches upside down and made screeching noises, as well as the ladies who circumambulated around the statues of snakes installed at the bottom of the tree. Also, there were the lazy buffaloes which were chewing their cud and swatting themselves with their tails, and the vendors who were selling a variety of wares from their push carts on the street.

Everyday, she would go enthusiastically half a dozen times to the nearby Gandhi Bazaar to buy something there. Until she was past eighty, she used to go around alone in the vicinity of Basavangudi in Bangalore. Valentine had the habit of walking fast. At times, I myself found it difficult to catch up with her. When one of us tried to hold her hand to be sure that she would cross the street safely at the cross roads, she used to shake our hand off and walk away swiftly.

Everyday in the evenings many friends used to gather to talk to U.G. Usually the conversation turned around trivialities. If there were any serious discussions with U.G., Valentine never moved out of the room. She used to sit there for hours and listen to the conversations with keen attention. I asked her once, "For how many years you have been listening to U.G.? Don't you get tired of it?" She would reply, "No matter how many times I've heard him, each time it seems new."

Valentine used to cook for U.G. while they were in Switzerland. Even there she enjoyed walking several times from their home on top of a hill, about a hundred feet high from the street level, to the market place, going with ease down and back up the narrow pathways, on the pretext of needing to buy things.

In Bangalore, in the house where we used to live, children used to gather around Valentine. She would be nice to them and pass out food to them. Children played with her and sang songs to her. She used to clap with them in joy, even though she did not understand their songs. Aruna and Archana felt great pleasure in spending time with her. They used to bring their friends and introduce them to her proudly and showed her off to them. It was Valentine's habit to say "voila" for "all right." When she rolled her eyes and nodded her head while looking at the children, saying, "Voila," they would join her by singing, "Voila, voila, voila, voila, Valentine." She too would burst out laughing along with them. The children liked to make her say their names. They would have great fun when she had trouble pronouncing their names.

Valentine had other close friends in Bangalore: the squirrels which jumped off from the coconut tree to the balcony and came close to her, the stray street dogs that approached her when she walked on the street fast, the baby monkeys saying hello from the peepul tree across the street from the temple, the lambs nibbling grass in the park—Valentine was great friends with all of them. She took photographs of each of them and preserved them carefully. When she made a photograph, even the ugly face of a baby donkey would look like the face of a royal horse.

Once she took me upstairs, offering to show me something interesting. She took me to her table and silently signed to me to be quiet. After a little while, she very gently pulled the drawer open and asked me to peep in. There didn't seem to be anything in there except rubbish. When I looked in more closely, there were four dark mice moving around. Their mother, sitting in their midst, lifted her head and looked at me fearlessly. In her look I could see the confidence she had that as long as she had the protection of Valentine no one could harm her family. Valentine closed the drawer quietly and said looking at me, "Aren't they cute?" I can still remember clearly the glee of joy I saw in her eyes. She was quite preoccupied with that family of mice, as though feeding them bread crumbs and cookies and protecting them from the cat that came to say hello to her were her life aims.

Valentine by nature was not very talkative. She could communicate much better with her eyes and facial expressions than with words. She knew several languages. Her mother tongue was French. She also knew English, German, Spanish and Italian well. After coming to India she learned a few Hindi words. When I sang poems that I wrote about U.G. in Telugu, I could see her feeling sorry that she wasn't able to grasp the poems directly in Telugu, rather than in my English translation. I felt that I didn't need any more recognition for my poems than that. Later, she bought the book called Telugu in Thirty Days and tried seriously to learn the language. But she got confused with the Kannada vocabulary that was used around her, and soon quit her effort. Soon after that, Valentine reached a state beyond our words and language, a thought-free state where there was no need for words.

When Valentine was eighty-two years old, that summer she fell ill for a week in Bombay with sun stroke. From that time, although her physical health recovered, her memory deteriorated day by day. The doctors who examined her in the United States determined that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Medical experts are now of the opinion that the disease is spreading worldwide without regard to young or old. Scientists are still unable to fathom this disease which afflicts the memory-storing neurons in the brain. It's appropriate here to remind ourselves of U.G.'s warning: "Man's brain is intended to run efficiently this machine called the body.

If the brain is used for any other purpose, mankind cannot but be subject to the horrible disease called Alzheimer's. It's not cancer or AIDS that will wipe out mankind which has appeared on the earth as a scourge among living species; the Alzheimer's disease is soon going to spread like an epidemic," says U.G.

With her memory loss Valentine also became less active. That's when U.G.'s troubles started. It was not easy for him to take her along on his travels. Sometimes an American friend called Kim Lawrence used to take care of Valentine's needs and go around the world with both of them. For some days, the famous movie star, Parveen Babi, also served Valentine while she was traveling with U.G. But as Valentine grew older, and as her Alzheimer's disease was advancing, it became clear to U.G. that she could no longer travel. He felt that she needed to stay in one place for the rest of her life. It was our sheer good fortune that U.G. decided that Bangalore should be the last stage of Valentine's life journey and that she should be in our care. It was indeed our good fortune to have been of service to that extraordinary person in her last days.

Before he moved Valentine to Bangalore permanently in September 1986, U.G. arranged a get-together of Valentine with her younger sister Rose and her elder sister Adrian. "Valentine has gone past the stage of being able to travel, and I cannot stop traveling for her sake. So, I am going to make arrangements for her to spend her last days comfortably in India. If you can arrange better facilities for her, I have no objection. I can hand her and her money over to you this instant and go my way," U.G. said to them.

The two sisters declined: "Look at our own state. We ourselves are dependent on others in old-age homes. What good is our money to us? Valentine is many times more fortunate than us. Who else besides you can look after her better? You do whatever you feel is appropriate, U.G.," they said and bid Valentine a final good-bye. Later, a year before Valentine died, her younger sister, and then, a year after she died, her elder sister, died in Switzerland.

Alzheimer's disease, which wipes out the 'self' and erodes the ability to recognize things, may be a frightening disease; in Valentine's case, however, it created situations which were amusing to everyone. The first incident of Valentine's forgetfulness which perturbed U.G. occurred in Switzerland: that year, as always, Valentine and her sister Adrian were reminiscing about their childhood events.

After two or three hours Valentine suddenly turned toward Adrian and asked her seriously, "By the way, how did you happen to know about my childhood events?" Her sister was shocked: "What do you mean, 'How?' I am your sister!" "How could you be my sister? My sister is with me here. Look!" and she pointed to U.G. No one could say a word.

Ever since then such forgetfulness became quite common. On some occasions when she was forgetful, we could not contain our laughter at the timely jokes Valentine used to make.

When an acquaintance once asked her in the way of greeting, "Who am I Valentine?" Valentine answered, "If you don't know yourself, how am I to know who you are?"

On another occasion, when U.G. said, "If you keep forgetting everyone like this, Valentine, you may finally forget me too." She replied mischievously, "You deserve that!" We all broke into laughter.

Once when U.G. and Valentine were traveling on a bullet train in Japan, suddenly Valentine looked around and wondered, "How come there are so many Japanese in this train?" She calmed down when U.G. explained to her that the reason for that was that they were in Japan.

When she noticed that U.G. continued to talk to some friends even after dark, Valentine used to get worried that they might remain there. U.G. explained to her as though she were a child, "They have their own homes, Valentine. They won't stay here. They will leave after a little while." Then she asked U.G., "If they all leave, what will happen to them?"

Valentine had no real anxiety. No worries. She was always calm. If she became angry, it was just for the moment. Then she would laugh happily like a baby.

Sometimes, after she ate her dinner, when someone asked her, "Valentine, have you eaten your dinner yet?" she would reply emphatically, complaining to U.G., "No, they haven't fed me, yet! They haven't given me a morsel of food in ten days. They have been starving me," with conviction, as if she were expecting everyone would believe her. It used to be difficult to convince her that she had just eaten a full meal. She used to read newspapers holding them upside down. She would try to read them aloud in French, and not being able to make sense of them, she would throw them aside.

U.G. used to describe her by saying, "She is in what you would call the state beyond turiya. There is no state higher than that. If that isn't the turiya state, what else is turiya?" When he asked that question, he didn't sound like he was joking.

In earlier days, Valentine's forgetfulness caused problems for U.G. Once he took her to the Swiss Passport Office in Berne to get the date of expiration on her passport extended. A couple of other friends accompanied them. When he observed Valentine, the official in the Passport Office grew suspicious and said he wanted to talk to her alone. U.G. tried in vain to explain to him her condition. Having no alternative, the company left the room, leaving Valentine alone with the official.

The official came out of the room in just a couple of minutes, wiping the sweat off of his pale face. He had extended the duration of her passport, but said, "You can take her now. I don't need to see her again." He reported that he asked her, "Who were all those people who came with you?" and that she replied that she didn't know who they were. When he showed her her passport and asked her, "Whose passport is this?" she apparently replied that she didn't know. The official was shocked. Then he showed her photograph to her and asked, "Is this your picture?" she answered seriously, "That's not mine. Do I look like that?" The official got very confused by her answers.

What was the relationship between U.G. and Valentine? There is no doubt that this question has bothered many people in different ways. There are friends who have whispered among themselves, "When they both met in Geneva in 1964, Valentine was 63. But her age could not have been a big barrier for a physical relationship." There are others who gossiped, "If there was no relationship, why would she give away without hesitation all her property?"

What's interesting is that U.G. and Valentine were never concerned about such rumors. However, after the behind-the-curtain affairs, the secret romantic adventures, of the world famous philosopher J.Krishnamurti, who was reputed to be a world teacher, became public through a recent book, some close friends of U.G. were worried that future generations might misunderstand and gain a mistaken impression of the relationship between U.G. and Valentine. U.G. replied to this worry unperturbed, "Let them misunderstand. What do I care?"

Once U.G. went to Bali, accompanied by Valentine and Parveen Babi, the Indian film star. Parveen needed a change of weather for health reasons. Everyone knew how even a responsible magazine like India Today reported in big captions that U.G. had been married to Parveen, and that they both had gone to Bali for their honeymoon. When he returned to India from Indonesia, press reporters surrounded U.G. and asked him how true those reports were.

Then U.G. replied, "I wish that news were true. What more could an aged person like myself want? What more could I want than a beautiful and famous movie star like Parveen Babi landing in my lap with a lot of money!" The reporters were disappointed at U.G.'s answer. When some of his friends suggested to U.G. that he should sue the India Today magazine, U.G. smiled and brushed the idea aside by saying, "If what they wrote was false, it doesn't bother me. And if it were true, I still am not bothered."

Valentine was never concerned about the rumors that speculated of a relationship between U.G. and herself who was already sixty to seventy years old, nor was she annoyed by people's curiosity about the nature of her relationship with U.G. When asked at different times about why was it that, on the very first day of meeting U.G. she was so mesmerized by her attraction to U.G. that she deposited twenty thousand dollars in a bank in his name, Valentine would answer with silence. How can a mind, which insists on believing blindly that for every action of ours there must be a motive, accept the idea that there can be actions which have no causes?

U.G. has said that there can be true relationship between men and women only when there is no sexual involvement. In our experience it seems only the relationship between a mother and her children is such a pure relationship. Many believe that the relationship between Valentine and U.G. was such.

When U.G.'s life was taking a crucial turn, Valentine entered the scene and stood as his support. However, she always knew clearly that U.G. had no need of her, and she knew that at any moment he was capable of dropping her and her money and going his own way. She led her life with U.G. in a precarious fashion, a life that could be described in India as: "Within every day lurks a danger, but you live till you're a hundred anyway," or living as if "wrestling standing on the edge of a knife."

As soon as U.G. took her financial affairs into his own hands, she found no need to continue working at the Indian Consulate. U.G. directed her to sell all the gold she had in her possession, the antique art pieces she had inherited from her father, as well as other valuables, so as to convert these items into cash. He then arranged, on the basis of that cash, a fixed monthly income sufficient for Valentine's needs. In addition, she also received additional money in the form of a pension from her erstwhile job. With that limited income Valentine and U.G. financed their living in the Saanen area of the Alps mountains.

U.G., when talking about the intermingling of their lives, has said: "Ever since she met me, Valentine has had no life of her own as such. She has pretty much led my life."