A Passage from India
My dear Simon : From the cool heights of the seventh heaven, I am writing this after reading your reminiscences of me. You say that you find it difficult to reconcile the contradictions in my character. I don't re- member to have said to you ever that I was a totally integrated individual without any contradictions whatsoever. Simon, I was a mere human being.
You seem to be really amused and pen turbed that I was bone idle. Yes, it is true that my output was notoriously scanty. I wrote a few books hoping that writing would clarify my thinking about the world and my- self. I found that instead of clarifying my attitudes, it only made me more confused. Instead of trying to look at life in its totality, I looked only at a fragment of it and wrote about it. Others thought that I had done a fine job and with the passage of time my fame grew, and so did my disillusionment: I decided not to look at life with a view to writing about it, as the urge to write most often stood in the way of experiencing life fully.
I decided not to seek anything, but to accept things as they were. This is one of the reasons why I had no firm decisions or even engagements of my own. I tried to find out if it would be possible to live without a will of one's own. My conduct must have appeared odd to any westerner, not just you, as they are used to asserting their individual- ity. You seem to have forgotten that I spent several years in India where, 'a direct ques- tion would always receive an indirect answer', where non-committal replies are the norm rather than the exception. I felt that to be committed was to be a fool. Life is too complicated and complex to allow for definite positive or negative answers. Late in my life I sensed in me : the negative capa.A I felt and felt but couldn't convey, what I felt. Perhaps this is the cause of your puzzlement.
It must be a source of satisfaction to the editor of SPECTATOR that some in heaven do subscribe to it, though not to its views. Remotely yours,
Morgan (Through the medium of Dr. K. Subrahman. ian, Central Institute of English Hydera- bad-7)
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