The Last Walk

(Passing away of J. Krishnamurti)

by Asit Chandmal
(Some Extracts were published in
Bombay - The City Magazine in March 1986)
--------------------------------------

I SEE him now, stepping out of the portals of Vasant Vihar in

Madras, walking with his nephew Narayan, two proud
Brahmins, one 90 the other 60, looking decades younger,
dressed in the clothes of ancient India striding towards the
platform under the lit tree, awaited by thousands.
He climbs slowly onto the cloth-covered platform, and sits
in meditation, alone; as if on the lonely high mountain where a
small stream is perpetually being born as the Ganga. Then he
speaks.
Something entered me. He tells me later that evening.
Something happened to me.
He speaks of the birth and beginning of all energy. the
perception of the path into the source of all creation. At the
1

end of an hour. he sits in silence. A child walks up with a

flower. He turns and smiles and takes the white champak
flower.
The child smiles. The sermon ends with the silence and the
smile. He has said it is the last talk.

AMONG THE lasting images is that of my aunts and cousins

weeping silently in the second row of chairs, while my nieces
and daughters sit upon the ground, the sad stories of the death
of kings on their faces.
It is the evening of the 4th day of January. 1986. The body
has six more weeks to die.

ON THE evening before the last talk on impulse. my 18-year

old daughter Clea flew from Singapore to see him. She has not
met him since she was 13 years old. a student at Rishi Valley.
We go to see him in the morning. As he enters the room he sits
up in bed to talk to her. We talk about molecular biology,
genetics and what will happen if the computer and all these
other technologies meet, combine and grow. What will happen
to the human brain?
And he turns to her and says. You are going to Cambridge.
The professors there are very clever, Nobel Price winners, all
knowing a great deal. They know much more than you do.
They are the authorities. They will say: We will speak. we will
teach. you will listen. What will you do? How will you study
with men who dictate to you their findings. and tell you to
learn what they teach? With what quality of mind will you
meet such minds?
An extraordinary energy emanates from him.
2

Just then Parameshwar, the cook, enters with breakfast. He

puts the tray of idli and ghee on the bed. Krishnaji offers us
some of the food, and asks if we want tea or coffee.
When Parameshwar leaves I repeat the question to him. He
does not seem to understand. My daughter tells me not to
press it. Later she said. He is two different people. the teacher
and the man. She felt he had no memory of the conversation
we had just prior to Parameshwar entering the room.
But that evening, halfway during the talk, he smiles at her
sitting on the ground in front of him, and talks about genetics
and the computer coming together, and its impact on the
human brain. What will happen to you then? he asks the
audience.

ON THE days that follow he meets his friends and associates

from the Krishnamurti Foundation in India, sometimes alone,
sometimes in a group.
He speaks to us of many things, of schools, study centres
and silence. Towards the end of the last gathering he says, Be
absolutely alert, and make no effort.
I ask if these are his last words to us and he smiles.

THOUGH HE is weak and losing weight and has his meals in

bed. he goes for a walk every evening. Every evening it is the
same walk. He drives from Vasant Vihar to Adyar, through the
grounds of the Theosophical Society, until he reaches Radha
Burnier's house on the sea. She is the President of the Society,
an office she won in election against her aunt Rukmini Devi
Arundale.
He walks on the beach where he was discovered", found
and adopted and initiated by the sea at Adyar, 75 years ago,
3

when Halleys comet last entered the orbit which would carry
it towards the sun.

WHEN HE was 34, he had walked out of the Theosophical

Society, and rejected everything that had been built for him,
renounced everything that had been given to him, with the
words, Truth is a pathless land... if you follow someone you
cease to follow truth. He had renounced more than any man
since the Buddha (Renunciation is intoxication) and yet
Radha was a friend, and perhaps something at the end drew
him to his beginning. On one of those last evenings he stopped
by at Rukmini Devi Arundale's house, and they spoke together.
She was a great Theosophist like her husband and Krishnaji
had come to a parting of ways with them, so when they met it
was alter half a century. Rukmini too had six more weeks to
live.

HE HAS been talking about his death openly and freely. He

tells me one evening, Dr. Deutsch will examine me a week
alter I reach California. If he says no more travel, no more talks,
then it's all over. The body will die in four weeks.
Then he asks, What are you going to do with your life, Sir?
If you have touched the other, and are not anchored in it, you
will go to pieces.
AT 5.30 in the evening of the 10th day of January he goes
for his last walk. He is to leave for California at midnight.
As usual, he walks through the garden of Radha's house,
through the walled gate, opening and closing it carefully and
turns right along the beach. There are boats and boys on the
beach, darkened by the sea and sky. As he strides along the
shore he is silent.
4

He holds Radha's hand as he walks, reaches out and

touches Nandini Mehta on the shoulder, resting his hand on
her as he walks, then turns around, and walks past Radha's
house to the other end of the beach, where the broken bridge
ends, and the Adyar river becomes the Bay of Bengal (less than
two months later, his ashes are to be scattered here). He
stands silently, looking at sea and sky. He is completely alone.
Then he turns and faces each direction, and becomes the
silence, the sea and the sky.
He turns and starts walking towards Radhas house. He lets
everyone precede him. His hair streams behind him, like a
comet's trail. We reach the house and he lets everyone pass
through the gate. He stands aside. When he is alone he once
again faces each direction for a few moments. He sees the
sand, the sea, and the sky, and that is his farewell.

THAT NIGHT, at midnight, he comes down the circular stairs

from his room on the first floor, and his old associates are
standing in a half circle to say goodbye. He greets each one of
them, and at the last, Pupul Jayakar, whom he asks jauntily,
How do I look Pupul? and she replies. Very young.
I meet him on the plane. He is wearing a grey Huntsman
jacket, dark gray trousers, and a maroon scarf. The plane takes
off just alter midnight, and Krishnaji leaves India for the last
time, not far from the place where he was born, just after
midnight, 90 years ago.

AT 4 AM on January 24, I phoned Dr. Parchure from

Singapore. He had just returned from the hospital, and told me
that Krishnaji was in intensive care. Though Krishnaji had
always said that he did not want to go to hospital when he was
5

dying, they had had no choice. Krishnaji was in great pain. The
doctor said the he could not treat him without knowing the
cause, and the tests could only be done in hospital. He was
admitted to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital on January 22. I
read later in the doctors report that an ultrasound test had
earlier revealed a 3 cm mass in the right lobe of the liver and
within a week it had grown to 8 cm. A needle biopsy was
unsuccessfully attempted, and then serolgies (involving the
application of monoclonal antibodies) revealed cancer of the
pancreas which had spread to the liver. After consultation with
a top oncologist it was felt that no further diagnostic tests
were necessary. Krishnaji was told that there was no chance of
recovery. He asked for and was given all the facts. He was
discharged on January 30, since he wanted to leave the
hospital and return to Pine Cottage at Ojai.

MY AUNT Pupul Jayakar, her daughter Radhika Herzberger,

the Director of Rishi Valley School, and I travel together from
Delhi via Amsterdam to Los Angeles, reaching Ojai on the
evening of January 31. Professor Krishna, head of the Rajghat
educational institutions has left a day earlier, and Mahesh
Saxena, the Secretary of the Foundation in India is to come as
soon as he gets a passport and visa.
Pupul is travelling Business Class, while we are on excursion
tickets. Radhi and I carry a silver urn with us. There is a vacant
seat next to us. and the um rests on it. We buy the
Amsterdam-LA-Amsterdam tickets at Schipol airport. Since it is
an excursion fare, we have to specify the return date. Radhi
and I look at each other, knowing fully the implications of
giving a date. Finally. we decide on February 16.

On this flight to Los Angeles too there is a vacant seat next

to us and Radhi looks after the empty urn while I sleep. The
next morning, on February 1, Pupul, Radhi and I go to see
Krishnaji at Pine Cottage. He is lying in bed, and though he
greets each one of us individually for a few moments, he
hardly recognizes us. His attention span is a few seconds. His
eyes close after each greeting. I stand aside in a state of deep
shock. Was this the man I had walked with at Adyar three
weeks earlier?

THE NEXT day he is much better and is able to talk for a few
minutes at a time to many of his close associates. Mary
Lutyens, the daughter of the architect of New Delhi, and other
members of the English Trust have also flown in, and all of us
lunch together everyday at Arya Vihar, a few hundred yards
from Pine Cottage.
And so the days pass. Some see him, some don't. Some
leave. some remain. He speaks to some. he is silent with
others. He asks me. What are you anchored in, sir? Alter a
moment's hesitation, I answer, In you, sir.
Im gone. he replies.

THE DOCTORS are unable to say how long the body will live.
it is unpredictable, it could be a matter of a few weeks or a few
days. Not a few months.
One afternoon he asks to be taken outside the cottage. He
is carried out and sits silently under the pepper tree where he
had his first experience of enlightenment in I922. He asks to be
left alone. Then he says: Take me a little further so that I can
see the hills. This is done. He again asks to be left alone. There
7

are groves of orange trees around him. with many oranges and
the fragrance of their white blossoms.
He bows his head slowly to the sky and to the hills.

ON WEDNESDAY, February l2, Halleys comet has circled the

sun, and is on its journey away from the sun. Pupul phones
that Krishnaji has been haemorrhaging. A violent storm comes
from the Pacific Ocean. The Ojai Valley and the roads leading
up to it are lashed with unprecedented rain for two days.
Mudslides block the roads leading to the a valley, there is
danger of total isolation at the far end of the valley where Pine
Cottage is situated, some homes are evacuated, and television
crews are seen in Ojai filming the deluge.
The storm passes on Friday, February 14. I speak to
Krishnaji that day. I say, All your life you have helped others,
you have been concerned about others. You have helped me
all my life. May I ask you. if it is at all possible, can I help you? I
am not talking about the body, that is being looked alter, I am
asking how can I, how can we, help you?
He listens with his eyes closed. He opens them, smiles and
says very seriously. Don't let anyone spoil the teaching.
Then he closes his eyes again. He later calls to see me and
asks about my visit to Silicon Valley. What is the latest in
computers? Are the Russians spying? Are the Japanese
catching up? He listens very intently and I am (and perhaps
he's too) momentarily back in Rishi Valley, and he is the
Krishnaji I know, engaging in dialogue and discussion.
ON FEBRUARY 16, he is in great pain. l hear his pain when I
go to Pine Cottage at 11 in the morning. When there is a
respite from the pain I go into his room and stand at the foot
of his bed. He recognizes me and holds out his right hand, and
8

beckons me to come nearer. He holds my hand and his grip is

strong, he asks, Are You all right? Are You comfortable? Are
you all right? I say. Yes. and he closes his eyes.
I leave the room.

THAT NIGHT I cannot sleep though Im exhausted. At eleven

oclock the atmosphere becomes frightening in my room. The
fear persists. I want to be with someone. I force myself to
sleep. An hour later I am woken up by my hostess. Krishnaji
has just died. I am disoriented and for a moment do not know
where I am and what she is saying. She repeats Krishnaji has
died.

I JUMP out of bed, dress quickly, and just then Mark Lee
comes to pick me up. Mark, a very close associate, had
specifically been entrusted by Krishnaji to bathe his body alter
death (I have always been a very clean man, wrap it in a cloth,
I have no nationality") and to cremate his body without any
ritual, rite or ceremony whatsoever.
Mark asks me for a dark tie. I give him a black silk Charvet
tie which Krishnaji had given me years earlier. I grab a pair of
socks and see the initials JK on them. He has always given his
material possessions (mainly clothes) to others. In the few
weeks before his death he had virtually given away all his
clothes, both Indian and Western, to some members of the
three foundations.
When we arrive 15 minutes later at Pine Cottage, Krishnaji
is already bathed and wrapped in a simple white cloth, with a
pink and grey blanket up to his chest. His face is unlined,
peaceful, beautiful, with a faint smile.
9

Dr Deutsch had been with him when he died at 10 minutes

past the midnight of the 16th (or 0.10 am on February 17). He
had not been in any pain since about 8.30 pm when he had
fallen into a deep sleep. I cannot help kneeling at his feet when
I see his body (I have never in my life been able to prostrate
myself before anything or anybody, but this time it is an
inevitable and natural movement). There are two or three
others alternately keeping vigil in the room. Lawrence Durrell's
The Alexandria Quartet is by his bedside. and Palgrave's
Golden Treasury, the Oxford Book of English Verse, ltalo
Calvinos stories, The Berlitz Dictionary of Italian, Alphonse
Daudet's stories and Gustave Dore. Books in English. Italian
and French. His Patek Phillipe timepiece with an ancient Greek
coin on a chain on the table. I make calls to India to break the
news.

THE UNDERTAKERS are to take the body at eight in the

morning. A few minutes before that l pluck a white camellia
from a bush in the porch outside the room where Krishnaji's
body lies. I also pick up a camellia which lay on the floor.
because he had once asked me while walking, 30 years ago,
Have you ever picked up a fallen flower from a dark lane?
and had shown me the flower he had just picked up.
I put the fresh flower at his feet. I do not think it is a rite or
ritual. The flower is from all of us. I go out to put the flower in
a glass of water and keep it on a table in the room.
I return to find the face wrapped. The face that has taken
centuries to refine, and who knows what otherness to make
divine, that face would not be seen again.

10

THE UNDERTAKERS come. The body is put in a brown

cardboard box which is then closed. It is 8.10 am. The body is
carried through the porch on a trolley to the waiting station
wagon under the pepper tree. It is a sunless sky.
We watch in silence. A great flock of hundreds of grey
geese fly East in a perfect V formation over the body in the
station wagon under the pepper tree. There are three cars
which follow the station wagon for almost an hour to the Ivy
Lawn Cemetery at Ventura. The crematorium is besides the
Pacific Ocean.
The blue steel door of the cremation oven is raised. We
examine it to see that it is clean. that there are no other ashes
in it. Then the box with the body is slid into the oven, the door
closes and the flames are started. It is 9.10 am.
At 11.10 am the attendant fills the silver urn we had
brought from India with the ashes. Carrying the urn we step
outside. At that very instant. the sun comes out and floods the
um and the lawns of the cemetery.

MARK DRIVES Mahesh and me back to Ojai. I am carrying

the urn in my lap. It is warm, almost alive, like an animal. It is
like that for an hour, before the warmth slowly gives out; as we
reach Ojai.
The ashes are divided into three urns -one for America, one
for England, and one for India. Scatter the ashes. Let no one
tread on them. Grow trees over them. Let it be anonymous.
Ojai Valley awoke to the news that morning, and the news
spreads gently. There are no crowds, not even groups of
people, only the silent separate mourning of deeply affected
human beings.

11

MAHESH AND I fly from LA to Delhi on the evening of the

19th. We change planes at Amsterdam reaching Delhi on the
21st morning. On both flights, there is a seat vacant next to
Mahesh where he keeps the urn.
Pupul receives the ashes at the foot of the plane. She places
a rose on the urn. takes it from us gently, and drives straight to
her house at 11, Safdarjung Road, where Krishnaji stayed when
in New Delhi. When she steps out of the car there is a sudden
and unexpected downpour, a hailstorm which drenches my
aunts and cousins as they carry the urn to the foot of a great
tree on the lawn, where Krishnaji once gave a discourse. The
urn is surrounded by flowers. The lawn is white with the hail
stones for a moment. Just then the sun also rises. Standing
there I feel the sacred. If there are only five people who will
listen, who will live, who have their faces turned to eternity, it
will be sufficient.

I CANNOT write anymore. I have been writing since five in

the morning for six hours, writing on the dining table in
Sterling Apartments, where he used to sit and eat - there was
so much laughter. I sit on the chair opposite his. He once told
me, when a great friend of his had died. When someone dies,
there are one or two persons he or she may want to see. They
will only come back to a house where there is no violence,
where there is love.
Time does not pass, only you and I do.
=O=O=O=

12