Read Travelers for Free Online Page A

come any more to India to do good, those days are over. What they come for now is—well, to do good to themselves, to learn, to take from India. That’s what Margaret’s here for. Above all she wants to be pure—to have a pure heart untaintedby modern materialism. Margaret hates modern materialism. Of course, so do I; that’s why we’re both here. But I know that Margaret is more serious than I am in her search. Sometimes I don’t know that I am searching for anything—sometimes I think maybe I’m just floating around, just not doing anything, just running away from things. But Margaret is always sure and doesn’t lose sight of her purpose. She’s been traveling about more or less the same way I have but not so aimlessly. She’s spent a lot of time on trains and buses and she usually stays in rest houses or temples and all these sorts of public places. That way she says she’s got to know a lot about the country and the people, but that’s only secondary: it’s herself she’s in search of and wants to get to know—and not in any boring personal or psychological way, but she wants to find herself in her deepest essence where she’s not only Margaret but what there is beyond and including Margaret. She has been staying in a few ashrams and met several gurus but has not yet found the right one. She has been to Pondicherry and saw the Holy Mother but she did not get any good answer there. She has also been to the place where Ramana Maharishi lived and died, and there she did feel the stirring of the right kind of response, but he is dead and what she wants is a live guru—someone to inspire her, she says—snatch her up and out of herself—simultaneously destroy and create her.
    She’s a very definite kind of girl. Even her coming here was a definite decision. She didn’t just drift into it the way I did (because I’d heard about it and because other people had done it and because there wasn’t anything else). Margaret came because she had to. It was an active step of revolt against her life at home and her family and what they and everyone else expected of her. None of this was good enough or true enough for Margaret. What really finally set her off was her sister’s wedding. It was the usual kind of affair and we all know what they are. But for Margaret it was worse than just unpleasant, it was a catalytic experience which showed her the futility—no, notfutility, what’s the word she used?—anyway, this nothingness in which everyone lived and to which she too was expected to commit herself. But there she drew the line; that she could not have.
    It might be all right for her sister Penny, but she and Penny had always been quite different. Penny liked clothes and dances and shopping and all the things their mother wanted them to like; she went out a lot and had different boy friends, and now she’d decided to marry this boy friend who was exactly like all the others only more so. Everyone was terrifically pleased and there was going to be such a wedding. Preparations for it went on for weeks and weeks. Penny and their mother were radiant, and of course no one noticed about Margaret, the way she was feeling. But she was glad about that, it gave her privacy and protection in which to work out her destiny. Finally there was this definite climax, which was when they went to buy her bridesmaid’s dress. Naturally she was to be a bridesmaid, everyone expected it, she herself expected it really—she hadn’t seriously questioned it but went along with the idea in the same negative way as with everything else. She was in the shop trying on this bridesmaid’s dress, which was pale green with lace and rosebuds, and she could see it didn’t suit her at all (no, those sort of clothes wouldn’t suit her because she’s got rather a stocky sort of figure and pale plump cheeks). But everyone was