Prologue

It was in June 1968, during the hottest part of the summer when invitations to attend conferences and seminars in cooler climes are most welcome, that I flew to Vienna to attend a conference on "Asian literature in the age of decolonization." My recent book on Premchand had earned me a modest reputation in literary circles, and my conference paper was on the influence of Premchand on modern Hindi fiction. At the reception given to the Indian participants by our ambassador to Austria, I casually asked one of the younger diplomats hovering around us, anxious to ply us with a predetermined amount of food and wine and then hurry us off the embassy’s premises, whether he knew Mirabehn.

When I had last heard from Mira, her agonizing restlessness, no longer held in check once Gandhiji was gone, had pushed her ever deeper into the Himalayas. In her first letter to me in many years, written from Pakshikunj, Mira described the breathtaking beauty of her surroundings—the patches of grasslands, the deodar groves, and the magnificent peaks towering before her. She would watch the sun set every evening, spreading its golden light on the snow which rapidly turned orange and then a brilliant pink as dusk fell. The vision filled her with peace, she wrote, but even as she made her way back to the house from the grassy slopes, the restlessness came creeping back, as if it had never left her. So when someone mentioned in passing in 1959 that she had left India for England and moved from there in a few months to Austria to settle down somewhere near Vienna, I was not surprised.

I had not really expected the diplomat to have heard of Mira. To the younger generation of Indians, Gandhiji is a mythical figure. They are familiar with him as an icon, as the "father of the nation." His dreams about the future of independent India, his vision of what makes for an ethical life and the people who shared this vision and accompanied him through his life, have long been forgotten. Even people who were close to him once and proudly called themselves his followers had found other gods after Gandhiji’s death. Some became Marxists, others sang praises of the dynamism of a capitalist America; almost all of them turned to the worship of new idols—modern science and industry. For most, there was no sudden awakening from their infatuation with him, no kiss from a prince to transform them, just a gradual turning away of hearts that grew colder. I was quite surprised therefore when the diplomat said that he knew Mirabehn.

"She is quite a character, you know," he said, in the condescending way the young sometimes speak of the old who are no longer relevant to their generation but still occasionally intrude on their consciousness. "Anyone who visits her is immediately informed that she will not speak of Gandhi or her years with him. That chapter of her life is firmly closed, she says. All she talks about now is Beethoven. She’s writing a book on him, you know. She lives just outside Vienna with an Indian servant and an old dog in a small town called Baden. Do you know her?"

"Yes," I replied. "I taught her Hindi once, some forty years ago when she first came to Gandhiji."

The young diplomat seemed interested, although in my somewhat inebriated state I might have mistaken his polite attention for curiosity. I do not remember what all I told him as my memories of those years came rushing forth. It is possible that I exaggerated my closeness to Mirabehn, and to Gandhiji. I might even have hinted that I was privy to secrets I would reveal at an appropriate time. I had not realized that wine was, so to speak, a "non-vegetarian" grape juice which heats you from within before lighting a slow fire in the part of your brain that controls speech, that it not only loosens the tongue but also opens up the pores of a memory prone to exaggeration. I think I was boasting about how Gandhiji had regarded me as a son and how I remained wedded to his ideals to this day when the young man cut me short.

"Would you like to meet her?" he said, waving away the waiter bearing a tray of drinks just as I stretched out my hand for more of the delicious, red intoxicant.

"Yes, of course," I said hastily. "Could we go tomorrow afternoon? The conference ends at noon."

I did not know that with this casual commitment, I was embarking on a journey that would have me doubling back on the tracks of Mira’s life. I would spend a good part of the next five years poring over her notes, diaries and letters, chasing eyewitnesses for their recollections besides rummaging in the chest of my own memories, as I prepared myself to tell her story, which, in a way, would also be mine.