35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
13
‘No Like A-feesh?’
BANGALORE TO PUTTAPARTHI, 1992
Great teachers, whether the Buddha or the Christ, have come; they have
accepted faith, making themselves, perhaps, free from confusion and sorrow.
But they have never prevented sorrow, they have never stopped confusion.
Confusion goes on, sorrow goes on. If you, seeing this social and economic
confusion, this chaos, this misery, withdraw into what is called the religious
life and abandon the world, you may feel that you are joining these great
teachers; but the world goes on with its chaos, its misery and destruction, the
everlasting suffering of its rich and poor. So our problem, yours and mine, is
whether we can step out of this misery instantaneously.
– J. Krishnamurti, The First and Last Lesson
Now I was back in Bangalore for the first time in fifteen years. The
place had changed utterly, turning into a bustling metropolis choking
on diesel fumes, the centre of the burgeoning Indian computer
industry. There must have been five times the traffic there had been,
and the streets couldn’t handle it. I was glad to escape the noxious
gasses and noise, passing through the West End Hotel’s gates into its
opulent and superbly maintained gardens. The hotel had changed,
too: changed hands. It was infinitely better than I recalled, with a
huge, open-sided Indonesian-style restaurant set in the middle of
an artificial lake, reached by a narrow bridge. The Taj Group had
taken over, I discovered. Yet again those indefatigable Tatas were
taking care of India’s heritage.
At night, a free-form chorus of frogs serenaded diners in the
candlelit restaurant, and the smells of bougainvillea, frangipani,
and hibiscus wafted in from the ingeniously lit gardens. The place
was hopping, too. It was Derby Week at the track across Race Course
Road, and the West End teemed with owners and horse people,
champagne corks popping at that day’s winner’s table. When I
mentioned to someone in Delhi that it had been Derby Week, I was
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