Due to the generosity of a few friends I had the occasion to visit California, in 2015 and 2019. Apart from a few work related fixtures (vapid though I found them but which were, nevertheless, necessary to get me my daily bread from my hosts) I got some opportunities through good offices of my friends who took me to several places related to Swami Vivekananda, who, a fact not widely known, spent 6 months in California during his second visit to the West (in 1899-1900). That stay in the region impelled me to read about Vivekananda’s time in that part of the world (the primary source of information of course being the matchless, and now a canonical resource by Marie Louis Burke – ‘Swami Vivekananda in the West : New Discoveries’ and the reminiscences of Alice Hansborough – who had been like a shadow to Vivekananda almost entirely through this period – a source material extensively used by Marie Louise Burke herself. Apart from this I could do some small ‘connecting the dots’ exercises through reading of other material that I could lay hands on, before or after, like ‘Reminiscences of SV’s Western Admirers’, his Letters and Lectures of the time, Ashim Chatterjee’s work ‘Vivekananda in America’ et cetera.
Like the great filmmaker of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Billy Wilder, I consider myself more of a ‘rewriter’ than a writer proper. I am by no means a primary researcher and use material and labours of several others who did the real work. My own little skill, such as I feel I have (unless I am not self-delusionary on the point) is of ‘rewriting’ with the help of motley sources’ and trying to shape the material into a somewhat orderly form, also, hopefully, making it pleasantly readable.
So as it happened, I started to write on the subject in 2015 and – not that it requires stating – could not keep the continuity due to my own fickle mind. It took another visit in 2019 to re-trigger that interest again, and given my lousiness and waywardness, it snapped again. I had, by then, relegated this project to cold storage, or even discarded it altogether, convinced that I was neither worthy of taking up writing anything related to Swami Vivekananda nor had the singlemindedness to ever bring such a work to any kind of completion. There would be much better persons to do that, was what I felt. While nothing has occasioned to revise this opinion but knowing that I had written some 30 thousand words already, it occurred to me that it would not hurt placing these writings in public domain, even if doesn’t do anyone any good.
Hence, expecting some ususal indulgence from some friend-readers, who have always bestowed upon me more than what this amateur deserves, I hope to place this in form of a new series ‘Swami Vivekananda in California : His Swansong’. I call it his swansong because indeed it was the last stage act on the world platform by this great life-artist, his farewell act to the world, when he was 36-37, and was already deciding or perhaps even longing to close his sojourn in the realm of mortals, a place which only his great love for humankind and his pain at people not realising their latent divinity, caused him not to view as what T.S. Eliot would powerfully describe in his great 1922 poem eponymously as ‘The Waste Land’. Many of those who came in touch, even for a few moments, with this Messenger of Light, could hardly forget for rest of their lives the impact it had on them. Of course I, and I suppose all us who inhabit the world today, have never seen Vivekananda, but I am compelled to believe that a like of such a personality has not come among humanity since then, and does not seem likely to appear anytime soon.
I don’t mean to disparage anyone but from my little, imperfect, and indeed incorrigibly crooked mind, when I look at Celebrity Gurus of the day offering Stress Management / Self-Help modules or other like packaged courses, costing considerable sums of money I perforce have to grapple with questions like whether the poor are ever in stress or they just don’t count, whether developing, or as Vivekananda would have said, manifesting spirituality requires money or it can be made available free as air – a gift equitably available to rich as well as poor, and the question whether austerity in one’s life as a way of life is important in any way or one can wallow in luxury and costly material pleasures caring only for their spouse, children and immediate family, and yet claiming a Gita-like ‘bhava’ of being untouched by it – ‘Janaka’, it seems, is a convenient role model for our age. Were it possible to make the twain (of matter and spirit) meet so harmoniously, it would make life so simple and offer best of both worlds. And most important – can anyone continue to live cosily thinking only of one’s own well-being (even if it is non-material, like emotional well-being etc) while hardly having an identification or any marked empathy with the poor of the world who, and this I speak from no borrowed wisdom or rhetoric, decidedly have everyday as a challenge and are reconciled to their life being a series of indignities.
I am no spiritual practitioner. If I ever had illusions of the same they cease to exist now. Most of my tendencies and habits are antithetical to what I myself understand as a pure, spiritual life: I can, to some extent recognise spiritual greatness, and have had the privilege of seeing and meeting such who belonged to that elevated class of humans. However, even though convinced that it is not within me to reach anywhere close to that bracket, I have started trying to at least make sure that the vices in me, and they are in plenty, remain low-cost, financially speaking. If not in virtues, at least in vices, I hope and wish to be one with our humble and meek proletariat.
I dedicate this entire series to the memory of Alice (Mrs Hansborough), an embodiment of selflessness, who came into Vivekananda’s orbit for just six months, as if it was ordained by destiny, at the right time and right place and, equally wondrously, quietly disappeared into what she called her ‘little world’ that she had to take care of. A proper biographical account of this seemingly ordinary (yet one who through her spiritual insight, ability of spotting greatness, and signing up fullfledgedly to serve an exceedingly special cause) still waits to be written. I fervently hope there will be someone soon who will take up this task.
▶Next Chapter: The Blessed Golden State