The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Dahl Roald

Author:Dahl, Roald [Dahl, Roald]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781101652954
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2000-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

4

In the living room, I got out paper and pencils so that I could make notes. I have a sort of private shorthand of my own that I use for taking down the medical history of patients, and with it I am able to record most of what a person says if he doesn’t speak too quickly. I think I got just about everything Imhrat Khan said to me that evening, word for word, and here it is. I give it to you exactly as he spoke it:

“I am an Indian, a Hindu,” said Imhrat Khan, “and I was born in Akhnur, in Kashmir State, in 1905. My family is poor and my father worked as a ticket inspector on the railway. When I was a small boy of thirteen, an Indian conjuror comes to our school and gives a performance. His name, I remember, is Professor Moor—all conjurors in India call themselves ‘professor’—and his tricks are very good. I am tremendously impressed. I think it is real magic. I feel—how shall I call it—I feel a powerful wish to learn about this magic myself, so two days later I run away from home determined to find and to follow my new hero, Professor Moor. I take all my savings, fourteen rupees, and only the clothes I am wearing. I am wearing a white dhoti and sandals. This is 1918 and I am thirteen years old.

“I find out that Professor Moor has gone to Lahore, two hundred miles away, so all alone, I take a ticket, third class, and I get on the train and follow him. In Lahore, I discover the Professor. He is working at his conjuring in a very cheap-type show. I tell him of my admiration and offer myself to him as assistant. He accepts me. My pay? Ah yes, my pay is eight annas a day.

“The Professor teaches me to do the linking-rings trick and my job is to stand in the street before the theater dressed in funny clothes doing the linking rings and calling to the people to come in and see the show.

“For six whole weeks this is very fine. It is much better than going to school. But then what a terrible bombshell I receive when suddenly it comes to me that there is no real magic in Professor Moor, that all is trickery and quickness of the hand. Immediately the Professor is no longer my hero. I lose every bit of interest in my job, but at the same time my whole mind becomes filled with a very strong longing. I long above all things to find out about the real magic and to discover something about the strange power which is called yoga.

“To do this, I must find a yogi who is willing to let me become his disciple. This is not going to be easy. True yogis do not grow on trees. There are very few of them in the whole of India. Also, they are fanatically religious people.

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