Excerpt from Sweet Synchronicity: Finding Annie Besant, Discovering Krishnamurti Chapter Twenty Roselind’s Story The newspaper reporter who did the article on the screenplay writer, Elizabeth Spring—the one who was writing on the life of Annie Besant—quoted something very wrong, according to a woman who lived in the upper Ojai. And so I got a phone call to come over for tea to talk with her about this error. The light was already beginning to fail as I drove up the windy mountain road to Rosalind’s house. She’d asked me to come for tea at four; a time when I’d usually be thinking about dinner plans and a large glass of cabernet sauvignon. She shared a house with the potter, Beatrice Wood, but she confided that Beatrice was away, and only Rosalind’s old dog was there, and dying. She hoped I would understand if there were interruptions. Rosalind was in her nineties then, and I was in my forties. I was a New Englander, and Rosalind had lived in California most of her life. Time and distance had separated us but I was thrilled to bridge this gap. Rosalind was well known for her connection to Krishnamurti. She led me into her living room and motioned me to sit on her sofa. Her large old dog would be resting on a blanket between us. I carefully sat myself down on one side, and looked at what lay between us. There was love there, and tiredness, and the feeling of the ending of things. There was nothing to fear here with this dear creature, but Rosalind made me nervous. I could feel my face flushing, so I distracted myself by staring out a large window to the rolling hills beyond—hills on the land that Annie Besant had bought so many years ago. Rosalind poured the tea and handed me a cup. She had called me to tea for one purpose, which she had briefly mentioned on the phone. She wanted to correct my grievous error concerning George Bernard Shaw and Annie Besant. “They did not have an affair, they were not lovers!” she exclaimed. Her voice was proper, precise and uncompromising. I had shamelessly told the newspaper reporter who had come to interview me on my screenplay that they had an ‘affair.’ Rosalind went on: “Annie may have loved him, but in those days, ‘affairs’ were not what a woman of integrity would do—and if nothing else, Annie was a woman of integrity.” Rosalind sounded as if she was gearing up for verbal battle and I could feel a veil of mistrust drop down between us. I began defending myself: “What they had between them may have been ‘an affair of the heart.’ Perhaps I was wrong to say use that word because of the connotations.” I pleaded. “But Rosalind, you know that between 1885 and 1887 they were very close—at times she supported him financially, they wrote letters and poems to each other, and they even played piano duets for their friends in the Fabian Society at that time…you must know this.” “That may be so, but still….” Rosalind stroked the dog’s lean body and sighed. “People can be so harsh, and Annie was wonderful, I met her several times.” I nodded my head. “I love Annie too. You know that Shaw asked her to marry him, but because Annie’s husband refused to give her a divorce, Annie drew up a marriage contract instead that she hoped would somehow legalize their union. Shaw didn’t sign it however. He was a bit of a slippery fish.” Rosalind laughed and I dared to place my hand on the dog’s back as well. I looked up at Rosalind. “Here we are talking about love, and assuming that we know what their love was like, and assuming that negative judgments will be made—I don’t think so.” Rosalind’s eyes were glistening and her face looked weepy. Was it the dog? Or something else? “People who barely know me, judge me” she whispered. She wiped her eyes and turned away. “People knew that I was married to Krishnamurti’s manager and that Krishnamurti and I were also a couple. What they didn’t know is that my husband and I were completely estranged—he didn’t want to have a marriage with me after our daughter was born. He left me, but stayed in the house….and during the war years the three of us began living together. It was Krishnaji who was more of a husband to me and a father to our daughter.” I took another sip of tea. “I understand, Rosalind, and I don’t judge you for that.” We were from two different generations and it was easy for me not to judge. Rosalind smiled at me and dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “There’s more that I want to tell you. I want you to know the Truth. For one; in the early days, before my marriage, I was deeply in love with Krishnaji’s brother, Nitya, who died here in Ojai while Krishnaji was away. And something happened—I must tell you because it brought both of us out of our grief.” I sipped my tea and wished that I had a recording device with me. But I couldn’t have been more open; I quivered with receptivity and listened to every word. And so she began: “Krishnaji was in his twenties when he went with me and Annie and others to go on ship heading to India. He left Nitya behind because he believed what the Theosophists had said: that although Nitya was sick, he would not die when he was gone; that the Masters had told them that. But when we were mid-route we received a telegram saying that Nitya was very ill, and a couple of hours later another telegram arrived saying that he had died. At first Krishnaji simply couldn’t believe it. Krishnaji was never the same after that; he lost faith in Theosophy and the shock and the sadness was overwhelming, except for one thing, that softened it all. Perhaps it is what gave him his courage to speak later in life.” The dog lifted his head and nudged into my side. And so she began: “The night that Nitya died I had a dream. I saw Nitya with a white silk scarf around his neck and I could tell in the dream that he was dying. He seemed in good spirits though and was happy to talk—he told me that I must remember meeting with him this night. But I said I was a bit of a ‘doubting Thomas’ and how could I be sure when I woke up that it was not just a dream?” “Remember this scarf,” he told me. “Remember to ask about a white scarf.” I asked him why he had the scarf around his neck and he said his throat was sore, and that I could ask the woman, a Mme de Manziarly, who cared for him that night about this. And so I did just that. I asked her about that night and she said that she took off the white silk scarf that she was wearing and put it around Nitya’s neck that night. I paused and thought about that: “Ah…so it was proof that Nitya had come to him in the dream from the other-side, and that there was…and is, an afterlife.” “Yes.” It was a comfort to both of us. “Nitya was a very pure Soul. Krishnamurti was a wise Soul, but it was almost as if he had two sides to him, and one side sometimes didn’t know what the other was doing: the Teacher and the Man. Perhaps I was wrong to fall in love with Krishnaji later, but I did.” The dog moaned. “A little later when Krishnaji was ill—he had three days of what they called ‘a painful and mysterious spiritual experience’ I was there to comfort him. We were a couple for twenty-five years after that. It was not an affair, but really more of a marriage. Yet, in the last years of his life even we drifted apart…” She stopped. I looked into the dog’s big brown eyes. “We’re all so human, even when some of us are very wise.” I added. “And does it really matter about Annie Besant? If she and Shaw loved each other, the rest is none of our business.” Rosalind nodded in agreement. The affection in the room had changed; Rosalind, the dog, and I were all sitting there feeling the miracle of the scarf, and the sweetness of Rosalind’s sharing. The affection between the three of us was palpable. I can’t remember much more of the afternoon, but by the time I left it was dark, yet my heart was light. This was the real Krishnamurti I had been wondering about; the Teacher, the Man, and someone who knew that there were deep connections and synchronistic moments that couldn’t be explained away by common sense. This was the Krishnamurti that I loved.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:13:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015