Life of a Twentieth-Century Adventurer

G.V. Desani would have celebrated his 100th birthday on July 8, 2009. During his long and productive life, Desani partook of, and commented upon, much of the intellectual, religious, political, and Eastern world available to 20th Century adventurers.

Considered a prodigy, but difficult, by grammar school instructors and a naïve dreamer by his Indian merchant-class family ("I like books," he insolently told his father, declining to sign up for the family business. Another anecdote: "Boy, you don't understand," said his aunt upon being informed by a teenage Desani that he would go to Great Britain and become famous.) In fact, Desani ran away from home numerous times, and ultimately did arrive in Great Britain, penniless and knowing no English, at age 17.

After a chilled-to-the-bone first winter, Desani quickly became a sensation among London intellectuals of the day. Attractive, brilliant, charismatic, articulate, and supremely confident young Desani was sponsored to self-study at national libraries. Later he was often called upon to explain India and the Orient to the British Empire either one-on-one or in a series of lectures including "India Invites."

Over the next 15 years Desani travelled frequently between Britain and India, its largest colony, working as a stringer for a British journals, taking a stint as headmaster at the same grammar school he had once dropped out of and, on occasion, collecting debts for his family.

During World War II, Desani lived in London where he worked as BBC-sponsored lecturer. Meanwhile he experimented with his adopted language. The result of these efforts was a lengthy verbal "gesture". But, as Desani dryly observed in his introduction to All About H. Hatterr, there was no market for gestures, only for novels.

Brief History of All About H. Hatterr

After being turned down by a number of publishers and many revisions All About H. Hatterr was finally published in 1948. It was an immediate sensation with the British literati (a notable exception being George Orwell, author of 1984). The book was also very favorably received in the U.S. and India. Over the next 40 years, Desani was to revise or expand his beloved book at least four times.

Hatterr made grand fun of all manner of social structure, religious instruction, and language itself, English and its bastardized stepchild Indian English. Yet the book also offered glimpses of a man seeking to interpret the human condition — despite its obvious shortcomings — as having — if not a higher purpose — at least a purpose.

Never a commercial success, Hatterr greatly influencing contemporaries such as Saul Bellow and later writers, including Salman Rushdie. In recent years, Desani's writing has been compared with other well-known gesture-makers, James Joyce and J.D. Salinger. The anti-hero H. Hatterr's hilarious and somewhat pathetic attempts to reconcile East and West seems to have foreshadowed the contemporary challenges of maintaining self, civilization, and true faith in a pluralistic world.

After publishing in 1950 a critically acclaimed but highly idiosyncratic epic poem — Hali — Desani returned to India where he spent his middle years in an urgent, highly personal spiritual pursuit.

An Intense Spiritual Quest

Unusually, having written the novel, Desani proceeded to live the life. Reluctantly supported by a well-off cousin, Desani scoured the Indian sub-continent with the zeal of an investigative reporter searching for absolute proof of a spiritual or mystical world connection. A man of enormous physical and mental energy, Desani earnestly sought out local mystics and gurus and — using bravado, abject devotion, a photographic memory, and disarming charm — collected all manner of oral teachings, tantric yantras, mantras, and arcane yogic practices. In one memorable incident, Desani had himself "buried alive", a favorite trick of local yogis. His conclusion: to avoid panic that would consume sparse oxygen you must have complete confidence in those who remain above.

The Indian ascetic guru system (master and disciple) was dying out in the face of Indian independence and modernity. Desani was one of the few devotees with a sufficiently wide world view to recognize its demise. 

In the early 1960s, in a climax worthy of any adventure, Desani embarked on the most rigorous of spiritual disciplines: pursuit of Enlightenment. His first attempt — in a Japanese Zen monastery — was not a success. Subsequently, however, he spend nearly a year in a Theravada Buddhist monastery in Rangoon, Burma.

As part of a small group of Western practitioners gathered to meet the Master upon commencing their practice, Desani scandalized resident monks by asking the Abbot — Mahasi Sayadaw — of Enlightenment, "How much does it cost?" The monk translator at first refused to translate the insolent question as the Abbot demanded in Burmese, "What did he say!? What did he say!?" Once a translation was finally provided the Abbot, according to Desani, roared with laughter.

Soon enough Desani settled down into a tiny room where his assigned practice was 22 hours a day of intense walking meditation with one instruction: observe. After a few months the Master told him, "You may go" and also authorized Desani to provide instructions in Theravada Buddist Vipassana meditation. Traditionally such a dismissal would only be provided had the practitioner attained at least the first of the four stages of Nibbana (Pali for Nirvana).

Columns and Short Stories

At age 53 or so, Desani began writing again for something other than his voluminous diary journals. Over the next three decades he produced a significant amount of world-class fiction and commentary. Many of these writings can be found in Hali and Collected Stories, available from McPherson & Company. Others, such as his then-anonymous column "Very High and Very Low" in the Illustrated Weekly of India, and are currently only available on in libraries or on microfiche. Many of Desani's powerful essays, written in the Sixties and Seventies, are also currently unavailable.

In Hatterr, through his spiritual quest, and in his later years teaching in the U.S. in Austin, Texas and Boston, Desani delighted in debunking teachers and teachings that he considered "beneath contempt", a favorite phrase. Yet he had the utmost respect for genuine spiritual teachers — Hindu, Moslem, Jewish, and Christian — and their craft. He was keenly interested in still unknown Nari texts, ancient hand-written books based on Indian astrology that were traditionally property of Indian gurus and their disciples.

Texas Years

Professor Desani, as he came to be called, first came to the U.S. in 1967 as a Fulbright exchange scholar. Within a few years he settled in Austin, Texas where he shared a full professorship in Oriental Philosophy at UT Austin with Raja Rao, another highly regarded Indian writer. Desani taught Theravada Buddhism in the Spring; Rao taught Mahayana Buddhist in the Fall. Being the late Sixties, both classes had hundreds of students each semester.

As an instructor Desani exuded great confidence and a sense of personal achievement that contrasted markedly with the in vogue images of contemplative and retiring gurus and Zen masters. He uniquely combined a highly competitive — if not occasionally combative — persona with a deep bow to the great religious traditions of the East. His teachings are respectfully summed up as follows: The ancient goal of Enlightenment is real and attainable. However, the quest is difficult and is for the few, not the many.

Legacy

Desani was born in Kenya, Africa and raised in Shikharpur, Sind, India (now part of Pakistan). Once a British subject, post age 65 he became an American citizen and qualified for a driver's license about the same time. He loved the independence of driving his '58 blue T-bird.

After retiring, Desani's daily ritual included phone calls to close associates, a drive to the campus to pick up mail, a courtly bow to the Philosophy Department administrators and home again to work on his writings, revisions, and plans. On many weekends Desani would play host to many of his former students for an afternoon and evening of projects which could range from re-organizing his wall-to-wall library to improving an object found in a junk shop by spray painting it gold. At the end of the day his tired workers would crowd into a tiny sitting room where Desani would serve one of his out-of-this-world curries punctuated by Lay's potato chips ("A very healthy meal.") and share one of his life lessons with a rapt audience.

Unfortunately, Desani's plan to publish a compendium of his writings — fiction and non-fiction — was never realized. The Rissala, as he called it, was submitted to a major publisher but, by then, the market for massive compendiums of living writers — never large — was basically gone.

Similarly, an ambition to detail his mid-life spiritual quest relying on his voluminous diaries was never realized. Desani spent his last years in seclusion and failing health, cared for by former students, all Americans. He died at 91 near Ft. Worth, Texas.

Desani had no formal education, never married, and has no known descendants or relatives. In 2007 the Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin, received his papers, including the original manuscript of All About H. Hatterr. A few other documents including pages from rare Nari texts were donated to Boston University by Desani during his life. UNICEF was the beneficiary of the rest of his estate and any future royalty earnings.

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Editor's Note: Over the next several years we hope to provide further insight into Desani's teachings, and to offer examples of his world-class fiction and commentary. Our goal is simply to chronicle, as fully as is permitted, the legacy of a man whose teachings and writings have, if anything, greater relevance today than they did during his lifetime. In the meantime you are cordially invited to send questions or comments to mail@desani.org. Emails of general interest will be posted on this site.