Mariana married in, I believe, 1936. I went to Germany a number of times since then but just as her noblesse oblige made her get married my common sense– on aniour propre- prevented me from getting in touch with her. It is just not done.
Last year, however, I somehow come to know that her husband had died thirteen years ago. I wrote to her and got an immediate reply. She did not write in detail. She said she had two sons aged twenty four and nineteen. She concluded by saying that as a large number of Indians are visiting Germany since independence why should I not find a way to do the same. She finished her letter by As long as I am alive you are most welcome to my house.
Alas for Mariana! She does not know the Sanskrit proverb Vasundhara Virabhogya (The world belongs to the heroes viras) but today it is vasundhara tadbirbhogya. it belongs to those who are masters of tadbir, pulling the strings, buttering up the paladins of the imperial court or/and the various foreign missions. As I am fast approaching the other world destined for me (sadhonachitadham) I would rather employ whatever tadbir I am capable of for gaining a better seat, if not in Dantes paradise, at least in the purgatory.
But Allahs ways are inscrutable. Certain quite unexpected circumstances and a couple of friends created a situation which found me in a Air India plane bound for America over Europe. The service was excellent, the food delicious but as that particular plane did not stop anywhere in Germany I got down at Zurich and took a train to Luzem which I have visited at least four times and shall never be tired of saying Gruess Gott to her again.
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The Meeting
I caught an evening plane and reached Stuttgart when the light was fading. But there could be no mistake that it was Mariana. As she came towards me from the parking place I could distinctly see the same gait, the same bearing and I believe with a view to please me she had put on a Kostum and even the same coiffeur she used to have forty years ago. As I approached her she smiled but I did not ask her whether she recognized me at the first glance who knows what disappointing answer I might get.
Of course she had grown old (I should say elderly, according to a German who told me that there are no old ladies in Germany but elderly ladies). She had crows feet at the corner of her eyes, lines on her forehead and upper lip and her eyes had lost some of their sparkle but inspite of all, the contour of her face and the body was the same. Her figu (face in French) had, as I have said, heed lines but strange to tell, her figure (taken in the English sense) had not, I was glad to note that she needed no artificial teeth, for often enough they change the entirely the contour of the face, and you feel, for good or bad, as if your are not looking at a familiar face. Or as Daudet puts it, looking at a friend through a fog.
It is actually only forty miles to my village home as the crow flies, she said as she started to drive in a tiny but delightful car, but it is a strain to drive thought the crowded Stuttgart and in the country the lights dazzle my eyes. During the past years I have driven to Stuttgart only twice. I apologized profusely and remembering that Mariana had poor eyes even forty years ago said, I could have taken an earlier plane, if I only knew. Besides, I could have come from Stuttgart to your home by train. I told you so in my letter. But I knew in the heart of my hearts that she knew, ever since we met for the first time that while travelling as good as an Eskimo in Berlin. But I believe that was not the main reason. She really wanted to do something for me symbolic at the very first moment of our meeting which will give us a good start in our new relationship for, after all, the Germans themselves define friendship as a relationship of mutu al attraction between two persons based on sympathy, understanding, respect for each other, common interest and readiness to help one another. I felt hat I had not made a mistake in seeking out Mariana after forty years. I was certain that she was not boasting of the trouble she had taken to come to Stuttgart, for she replied immediately as she always did, Dont be silly! which came as naturally as her mentioning the difficulty of driving in the dusk.
