My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyintelligence of the British Raj. The contrast was the supreme beauty of India and themassive achievement of British administration in at least procuring with slendermeans peace, tranquility and life without bloodshed.We went by P. & O. boat and stopped shortly in Cairo, where we combined seeing thewonders of Egyptian antiquity with a tour of the local slums; they were bad, thoughnot so bad as those in India. I remember finding in a Port Said bookshop for the firsttime Shaw's book on Wagner; it had not yet appeared in his collected works. Thesphinx should always be seen for the first time as Shaw's favourite hero saw it, bynight. The same is true of most of the world's masterpieces, notably the Taj Mahal andthe Piazza San Marco at Venice. We may arrange these moments, but chance bringsoften the most poignant emotion, as when suddenly and without forethought in theProtestant cemetery at Rome I read the words: 'Here lies one whose name was writ onwater'. Sometimes the acute experience of beauty is due to the fortune of solitude, aslately in Greece when for over half-an-hour I found myself entirely alone in theParthenon during the luminous sunshine of the afternoon, and felt that Goethe'spilgrimage was realised: 'Das Land der Griechen mit der Seele suchend'.The journey to India by boat gave us the opportunity to read everything that could befound in London on the Vedas and the Upanishads; every aspect of Indian religionhad to be studied. It was interesting in itself and it opened many doors which mightotherwise have been closed. The combination of an effort to discover what Indiansthought and felt with the Left-wing politics which suggested some sympathy withtheir aspirations, took us much deeper into Indian life than was customary for theEnglish.To arrive in Ceylon is the best way to start the Indian journey. After bathing in a seaof caressing warmth came the retreat to the hotel's swimming-pool when an Indianfriend told us that sea-snakes were about, which were poisonous; perhaps he wasinventing them, for we never saw any. Then came a tour of the island, at that timesuperbly organised for the few tourists. British administration was more concentratedhere than in the rest of India, and the result was a high degree of efficiency. Youcould motor through primeval jungle on macadam roads and meet an extraordinaryvariety of wild animals. The butterflies are without parallel anywhere else I havevisited in the world. Passing through a cloud of them with the sensations of the wingsbrushing against the face is described with pages of voluptuous French adjectives byFrancis de Croisset in his little book, La Feerie Cingalaise.Repose from these excitements was in the clean and well-arranged rest-houses in themiddle of the jungle, where all was provided by a single capable and agreeableSinhalese. Next morning an early start had to be made to see from the great rock thesun rising, and steam mounting in mysterious clouds towards the dawn from the vividgreen sea of jungle. Within this jungle were astonishing things. The vast blackBuddha with the eternal lotus flowers placed by the big toe. The golden-robed monksmoving through the jungle, glittering in the distance like fantastic insects against thesombre green of the interlacing trees. The lost cities, Anuradhaoura and Polunnaruwa,in those days partly buried in the oblivion of the all-embracing vegetation, weredefended only by a vast pearl of water. A sense of man's ultimate destiny, of hisinterwoven inspiration rose from the exquisite moonstone designs of this superbcivilisation as we learned that it was contemporary with the architecture of classic102 of 424