LIFE LESSONS | PHILOSOPHY | RELIGION

Prayer, with Nirad Chaudhuri and Khushwant Singh

(More lessons from very old human beings)

I keep being congratulated by passers-by for the monumental fig tree that grows against the front wall of our house in Antwerpen, Belgium. What did you do to get it into this state?, people wonder. The answer is: I cared. — Every spring, there it goes again. The first few leaves, March 2024 — photo by flaleman

Many of my readers know that I have never stopped counting my blessings to have been able to be alive in this world as a much younger contemporary of two very old men in particular.

Two very old men

One is Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999), who against all odds maintained a lifelong love-affair with his native Bengal. Of Chaudhuri I read The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951) in my student years — and I have never read even a single Chaudhuri sentence ever since, that wasn’t either merely beautiful or sparkling with unusual insight, or of utmost interest. In the course of a remarkable life as a late-starting writer (he debuted when he was 54), Chaudhuri first moved from Kolkata (Calcutta) to Kashmiri Gate in Old Delhi, and from there to Oxford, UK, where I tracked him down on a memorable hiking trip I did when I was still very young, walking all the way from Marx’s tomb in Highgate Cemetery to Southall and Ealing, and hence, over Wycombe and Tetsworth to Oxford. Finally arriving in Oxford was like walking the last lap to Compostela, or spotting the golden rooftops of Jokhang from the backside of Barkhor Square in Lhasa. For me, like for most…