18th December 2005
I was reading through an old attempt at a first novel yesterday and the temptation was there to clean it up and continue with it. It would mean losing precious time on the psychiatrist novel, but the story I had rediscovered was so appealing.
The story concerns a young teenager, Trevor, rather at odds with the world, his parents unhappy with each other, and then an Indian, Babayati, moves into the empty house across the road and changes the young teenager's life with tales and parables of the Orient, Eastern spirituality. The young man becomes dependent on his guru as school ends and the unemployment of the eighties becomes more than just a news item.
His mother meets the Indian too and in her flighty way falls in love with him. But the Indian slowly opens Trevor's heart and he begins to fall in love, or become close to, a girl, the daughter of a man his mother had an affair with. Yet he also realizes he has a deep love for Babayati, not a romantic love, but a love which he cannot articulate, nevertheless. The girl tells Trevor she wants to be a missionary but he does not know how far this ambition is yet to be realized. He cannot think of telling her he loves her, not in quite the detail or remote longing he feels. She thinks he merely wants a platonic relationship and, upset, she meets up with his friend, the socialist skirt chaser, Sykes. Sykes tells her he loves her but wants only sex and leaves her once he's got what he wants. Panicking, the young girl tells Trevor what has happened and is met with the cold response that he cannot forgive her.
Trevor is upset himself and goes to Babayati for comfort, only to find the Indian in his mother's arms. His illusions shattered, Trevor retreats home, promsing never to see Babayati again. Babayati leaves the town downcast, knowing how he has let his young protege down. Trevor, however, changes his mind, and wants to see Babayati once more, but when he goes there he finds the house empty. Babayati has gone, leaving only a letter. With only the young girl left in his life, Trevor hopes to find her home, only to discover that she has gone to Africa as a missionary. The next time he sees her she is married. We finally learn that Trevor, some years later, is now looking for Babayati once more in the foothills of the Himalayas, reflecting if things had turned out differently.
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