The Years of Awakening (eBook)

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Birth and Childhood

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born on May 11, 1895, in the small hill-town of Madanapalle about a hundred and fifty miles north of Madras. As the eighth child who happened to be born a boy he was, in accordance with Hindu orthodoxy, called after Sri Krishna who had himself been an eighth child. The Jiddu family were Telugu-speaking Brahmins, a Brahmin being the highest caste. Krishnamurti’s great-grandfather had held a responsible position under the East India Company and been an eminent Sanskrit scholar; his grandfather had also been a very learned man and a Civil Servant, while his father, Jiddu Narianiah, after graduating from Madras University, became an official in the Revenue Department of the British administration, rising by the end of his career to the position of Tashildar (rent collector) and District Magistrate. The family were not, therefore, poor by Indian standards.

Narianiah had married his second cousin, Jiddu Sanjeevamma, who bore him eleven children, only six of whom survived childhood. It seems to have been a very happy marriage. Narianiah described his wife as having a very beautiful melodious voice and liking to sing to him. Indian life in those days was primitive and the caste system rigidly adhered to. An open drain to carry all water used for household purposes ran beside the house where Krishnamurti was born; it was cleaned by the sweepers, the ‘untouchables’, who belonged to no caste at all. The sweepers were not allowed into the house except to collect sewage, and, in a Brahmin household, no food would be prepared, cooked or served by a non-Brahmin; moreover, in South India the cook would invariably be a South Indian Brahmin since the South Indians were such strict vegetarians that even the eating of eggs was forbidden by their caste rules. There was nothing to prevent a poor Brahmin from taking a domestic job in a Brahmin household, though he would not, of course, undertake any of the tasks performed by the sweepers or lower castes. The castes did not intermarry and no one could change his caste except in a future life. Europeans were on a par with ‘untouchables’. Sanjeevamma would throw the food away if so much as the shadow of a European fell across it, and if an Englishman entered the house on official business, the rooms he had been in were scoured and the children put into clean clothes. Such was the environment into which Krishnamurti was born.

Sanjeevamma had a premonition that this eighth child of hers was to be in some way remarkable and she insisted that the baby should be born in the puja room on the ground floor, a special room set aside for prayers in orthodox Hindu households. Narianiah gave way to her whim although the puja room was not normally entered at night after food or in the morning before washing.

Only a cousin with experience as a midwife was present at the birth which, unlike Sanjeevamma’s other confinements, was quick and easy. Narianiah sat in the next room with his watch in his hand. At half past midnight the door of the puja room was opened a crack for the cousin to whisper ‘Sirasodayam’, meaning in Sanskrit ‘the head is visible’. This for Hindus is the precise moment of birth, essential for astrological calculations. As in Hindu astrology the day is reckoned from 4 a.m. to 4 a.m., Krishna was born on May 11, whereas by Western reckoning he would have been born at 12.30 a.m. on the 12th.

The baby’s horoscope was cast next day by Kumara Shrowtulu, one of the most renowned astrologers of that region. He was able to assure Narianiah that his son was to be a very great man indeed. For many years it seemed most unlikely that this prediction would be fulfilled. Whenever the astrologer met Narianiah he would ask, ‘What of the boy Krishna?’ Narianiah’s reply was evidently never very hopeful for the astrologer would again assure the disappointed father, ‘Wait. I have told you the truth; he will be somebody very wonderful and great.’

In November 1896 Narianiah was transferred to Cudappah, a much larger town and one of the worst in the district for malaria. The following year, a very bad famine year, the two-year-old Krishna had malaria so badly that for some days he was not expected to live and, although Narianiah was transferred again in 1900 to the healthier town of Kadiri, Krishna was for many years attacked by periodic bouts of the fever, and he also suffered a great deal from nose bleeding.

At Kadiri, when he was six, Krishna, like all Brahmin boys at the start of their education, went through the sacred thread ceremony, or Upanyanam. This ceremony marks their entrance into Brahmacharya, meaning that they take on the responsibilities of Brahminhood, for every Brahmin boy is born a priest. Narianiah described this important occasion:

It is our custom to make it a family festival, and friends and relations were invited to dinner. When all the people were assembled, the boy was bathed and clothed in everything new—very rich clothes are used if the parents can afford them. Krishna was brought in and placed upon my knee, while on my stretched hand I supported a silver tray strewn with grains of rice. His mother, sitting beside me, then took the index finger of the boy’s right hand, and with it traced in the rice the sacred word, AUM, which in its Sanskrit rendering, consists of a single letter, the letter which is, in sound, the first letter of the alphabet in Sanskrit and in all the vernaculars. Then my ring was taken from my finger, and placed between the child’s finger and thumb, and my wife, holding the little hand, again traced the sacred word in Telugu character with the ring. Then again without the ring, the same letter was traced three times. After this, mantrams were recited by the officiating priest, who blessed the boy, that he might be spiritually and intellectually endowed. Then, taking Krishna with us, my wife and I drove to the Narasimhaswami temple to worship and pray for the future success of our son. From there we drove to the nearest Indian school, where Krishna was handed over to the teacher, who, in sand, performed the same ceremony of tracing the sacred word. Meanwhile, many of the friends of the school-children had gathered in the room, and we distributed among them such good things as might serve as a treat to the pupils. So we started our son in his educational career according to the ancient Brahmin custom.

Krishna’s little brother, Nityananda, just three years younger, would run after him when he went to school, longing to go too. Nitya was as sharp as Krishna was vague and dreamy; nevertheless there was a very close bond between these brothers. Krishna would often return home from school at Kadiri without a pencil, slate or book, having given them to some poorer boy. In the mornings beggars would come to the house when it was the custom to pour a certain quantity of unboiled rice into each outstretched hand. Krishna’s mother would send him out to distribute the rice and he would come back for more, saying that he had poured it all into the first man’s bag. In the evening when Narianiah sat with his friends on the veranda after returning from the office, beggars would come again for cooked food. This time the servants would try to drive them away but Krishna ran inside to fetch food for them, and when Sanjeevamma made a special treat of sweetmeats for the children, Krishna would take only part of his share and give the rest to his brothers; all the same Nitya would ask for more which Krishna never failed to give him.

Every evening while they were at Kadiri, Krishna and Nitya would accompany their mother to the large Narasimhaswami temple, celebrated for its sanctity. Krishna always showed a religious vein. He also, surprisingly, had a mechanical turn of mind. One day, when his father was away, he took his father’s clock to pieces and refused to go to school or even to eat until he had put it together again. These two rather contradictory strains in his nature, as well as his generosity, have persisted throughout his life.

Narianiah’s frequent transfers as well as Krishna’s bouts of fever interrupted the boy’s schooling (for one whole year he was unable to go to school at all), so that in lessons he fell far behind other boys of his age. Moreover, he hated book learning and was so dreamy as to appear at times mentally retarded. Nevertheless he was keenly observant when his interest was aroused. He would stand for long stretches at a time watching trees and clouds, or squat on the ground gazing at plants and insects. This close observation of nature is another characteristic that he has retained.

In 1903 the family, after three quick transfers, were back at malaria-ridden Cudappah where the following year Krishna’s eldest sister died. Narianiah recorded that his wife ‘was heartbroken at our daughter’s death, a girl of only twenty years, highly spiritual, who cared for nothing that the world could give her’. It was soon after her death that Krishna showed for the first time that he was clairvoyant. In a memoir of his childhood, written when he was eighteen, he says that his mother ‘was to a certain extent psychic’ and would often see her dead daughter:

They talked together and there was a special place in the garden to which my sister used to come. My mother always knew when my sister was there and sometimes took me with her to the place, and would ask me whether I saw my sister too. At first I laughed at the question, but she asked me to look again and then sometimes I saw my sister. Afterwards I could always see my sister. I must confess I was...