"And meanwhile, I suppose, you give thanks to the Enlightened One, or Shiva, or whoever it may be?"
Shanta shook her head emphatically. "That would distract your attention, and attention is the whole point. Attention to the experience of something given, something you haven't invented, not the memory of a form of words addressed to somebody in your imagination." She looked round the table. "Shall we begin?"
"Hurrah!" the twins shouted in unison, and picked up their spoons.
For a long minute there was a silence, broken only by the twins who had not yet learned to eat without smacking their lips.
"May we swallow now?" asked one of the little boys at last.
Shanta nodded. Everyone swallowed. There was a clinking of spoons and a burst of talk from full mouths.
"Well," Shanta enquired, "what did your grace taste like?"
"It tasted," said Will, "like a long succession of different things. Or rather a succession of variations on the fundamental theme of rice and turmeric and red peppers and zucchini and something leafy that I don't recognize. It's interesting how it doesn't remain the same. I'd never really noticed that before."
"And while you were paying attention to these things, you were momentarily delivered from daydreams, from memories, from anticipations, from silly notions-from all the symptoms of you.'"
"Isn't tasting me?"
Shanta looked down the length of the table to her husband. "What would you say, Vijaya?"
"I'd say it was halfway between me and not-me. Tasting is not-me doing something for the whole organism. And at the same time tasting is me being conscious of what's happening. And that's the point of our chewing-grace-to make the me more conscious of what the not-me is up to."
"Very nice," was Will's comment. "But what's the point of the point?"
It was Shanta who answered. "The point of the point," she said, "is that when you've learned to pay closer attention to more of the not-you in the environment (that's the food) and more of the not-you in your own organism (that's your taste sensations), you may suddenly find yourself paying attention to the not-you on the further side of consciousness, or perhaps it would be better," Shanta went on, "to put it the other way round. The not-you on the further side of consciousness will find it easier to make itself known to a you that has learned to be more aware of its not-you on the side of physiology." She was interrupted by a crash, followed by a howl from one of the twins. "After which," she continued as she wiped up the mess on the floor, "one has to consider the problem of me and not-me in relation to people less than forty-two inches high. A prize of sixty-four thousand crores of rupees will be given to anyone who comes up with a foolproof solution." She wiped the child's eyes, had him blow his nose, then gave him a kiss and went to the stove for another bowl of rice.
"What are your chores for this afternoon?" Vijaya asked when lunch was over.
"We're on scarecrow duty," Tom Krishna answered impor tantly.
"In the field just below the schoolhouse," Mary Sarojini added.
"Then I'll take you there in the car," said Vijaya. Turning to Will Farnaby, "Would you like to come along?" he asked.
Will nodded. "And if it's permissible," he said, "I'd like to see the school, while I'm about it-sit in, maybe, at some of the classes."
Shanta waved good-bye to them from the veranda and a few minutes later they came in sight of the parked jeep.
"The school's on the other side of the village," explained Vijaya as he started the motor. "We have to take the bypass. It goes down and then up again."
Down through terraced fields of rice and maize and sweet potatoes, then on the level, along a contour line, with a muddy little fishpond on the left and an orchard of breadfruit trees on the right, and finally up again through more fields, some green, some golden-and there was the schoolhouse, white and spacious under its towering shade trees.
"And down there," said Mary Sarojini, "are our scarecrows."
Will looked in the direction she was pointing. In the nearest of the terraced fields below them the yellow rice was almost ready to harvest. Two small boys in pink loincloths and a little girl in a blue skirt were taking turns at pulling the strings that set in motion two life-sized marionettes attached to poles at either end of the narrow field. The puppets were of wood, beautifully carved and clothed, not in rags, but in the most splendid draperies. Will looked at them in astonishment.
"Solomon in all his glory," he exclaimed, "was not arrayed like one of these."
But then Solomon, he went on to reflect, was only a king; these gorgeous scarecrows were beings of a higher order. One was a Future Buddha, the other a delightfully gay, East Indian version of God the Father as one sees him in the Sistine Chapel, swooping down over the newly created Adam. With each tug of the string the Future Buddha wagged his head, uncrossed his legs from the lotus posture, danced a brief fandango in the air, then crossed them again and sat motionless for a moment until another jerk of the string once more disturbed his meditations. God the Father, meanwhile, waved his outstretched arm, wagged his forefinger in portentous warning, opened and shut his horsehair-fringed mouth and rolled a pair of eyes which, being made of glass, flashed comminatory fire at any bird that dared to approach the rice. And all the time a brisk wind was fluttering his draperies, which were bright yellow, with a bold design-in brown, white and black-of tigers and monkeys, while the Future Buddha's magnificent robes of red and orange rayon bellied and flapped around him with an Aeolian jingling of dozens of little silver bells.
"Are all your scarecrows like this?" Will asked.
"It was the Old Raja's idea," Vijaya answered. "He wanted to make the children understand that all gods are homemade, and that it's we who pull their strings and so give them the power to pull ours."
"Make them dance," said Tom Krishna, "make them wiggle." He laughed delightedly.
Vijaya stretched out an enormous hand and patted the child's dark curly head. "That's the spirit!" And turning back to Will, "Quote 'gods' unquote" he said in what was evidently an imita tion of the Old Raja's manner, " -their one great merit apart from scaring birds and quote 'sinners' unquote, and occasionally, perhaps, consoling the miserable, consists in this: being raised aloft on poles, they have to be looked up at; and when anyone-looks up, even at a god, he can hardly fail to see the sky beyond. And what's the sky? Air and scattered light; but also a symbol of that boundless and (excuse the metaphor) pregnant emptiness out of which everything, the living and the inanimate, the puppet makers and their divine marionettes, emerge into the universe we know-or rather that we think we know."
Mary Sarojini, who had been listening intently, nodded her head. "Father used to say," she volunteered, "that looking up at birds in the sky was even better. Birds aren't words, he used to say. Birds are real. Just as real as the sky." Vijaya brought the car to a standstill. "Have a good time," he said as the children jumped out. "Make them dance and wiggle."
Shouting, Tom Krishna and Mary Sarojini ran down to join the little group in the field below the road.
"And now for the more solemn aspects of education." Vijaya turned the jeep into the driveway that led up to the schoolhouse.
"I'll leave the car here and walk back to the station. When you've had enough, get someone to drive you home." He turned off the ignition and handed Will the key.
In the school office Mrs. Narayan, the Principal, was talking across her desk to a white-haired man with a long, rather doleful face like the face of a lined and wrinkled bloodhound.
"Mr. Chandra Menon," Vijaya explained when the introductions had been made, "is our Under-Secretary of Education."