With this post we conclude Hazrat Inayat Khan’s recollection of his early years in India, first begun in this post and continued here.

At the same time as this poetic development was taking place there was a musical development, which my parents noticed with sympathy because my father himself was a musician. He believed that the prospects of reward for a poet were nil, while a musician had better prospects and a chance of getting on in life. He did not mind my becoming a musician, and so music developed along with my poetry. Thus I sang and composed my own songs, based on the rhymes and rhythms of different kinds of verses which I had previously read in some book or had heard somebody recite. I would compose another poem in the same rhythm and with the same rhymes, and sometimes I did this also with songs.

This led to a wonderful and also amusing occurrence. A certain musician came from Jaipur, who knew some of the songs which the guru of the Maharaja had composed. He gave high praise to these songs before my grandfather and those around him; I was sitting there too. He said, “This is a new composition, a beautiful composition written by the guru of the Maharaja.” Then he sang it. I heard this song only once, but the songs of India are always quite short, four or five lines, and they can be said in a few seconds; having heard it I ran to my room and wrote another song with different words but with the same melody. Then I went back and said, “The song you sang, I know it; and yet you say that it is a new composition!” He looked at me in surprise and asked, “Do you really know it?” I said, “Yes”, and sang the same song with the different words I had made. He was very puzzled and wondered how it could be that the same song was known here also, and how it was possible for this boy to bring it after only five minutes. And the same thing happened every day, for I did it to tease him. One day he said to me, “You are a robber. You are stealing all these songs.” I replied, “How can I steal them? You sang it only just now, yet I bring you my notebook with (the song) in it already!” He said, “You are a robber all the same; I am going to tell the guru about it.” This he did, but this guru was very anxious to see me as soon as possible; he was very curious to know more about this.

Well, one day I traveled to Delhi with my relations, and on our way we came to Jaipur. There the guru of the Maharaja wished to see me, and when I went to him the musician was sitting beside him and said, “Sir, this is the boy who has stolen your songs; and now we have caught him!” The guru laughed and said, “Is that what you are?” And I laughed too and said, “Yes, since I could not follow a mystic in the prescribed way I could at least do so in my compositions.” This pleased the guru so much that he said, “You are welcome to take all my songs”, and he listened with great pleasure to my singing of them.

My interest in music, poetry and philosophical and spiritual ideas kept me so close to my grandfather that I came to see him not only as my grandfather, but as one worthy of the greatest respect, as one whom I could idealize. Then, to my great sorrow, the time came for him to pass away. From then on I felt that I was lost in the world, for he was the friend I looked up to; he was the one who interested himself in me during my childhood, when everyone disregarded me. To help me to get over this loss, my father took me to Nepal, where he had to fulfill a certain duty to the Maharaja. Actually it was just an excuse, for when I think it over now, the real reason was to take me to that place. It was meant that I should go to a place where the faculties that were as yet seedlings might spring up into plants. The journey through the deserts where there were tigers and elephants, the traveling from mountain to mountain, from forest to forest, excited me and made me so interested that all the traveling through the world that I have done since has not brought me an enjoyment that can be compared with that of this journey of nine days through the forests. Near to nature, traveling from one place to another, when you cannot sleep for days because you are so tired, how interesting it was!

After we reached Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, I was given a still better opportunity. Why? Because instead of being expected to go to school I was given a very nice horse, and I rode on it through the forest, the hills and the mountains. Sometimes I went on foot and sat on the rocks and thought about deep things, wherever my mind would take me, wherever my feelings might take me. Whenever they were not stopped I gave free expression to my thoughts and feelings. The openness of nature freed the way for me to everything; so much freedom in my soul that it could reach up to the sun, the mountains, the hills, and the trees; where there is no one to talk to, no one to trouble you, as one sits quietly listening to the sounds as they fall on the ear, the sound of the wind, of the waterfalls, so that one becomes one with nature.

It was like this all the time. My father did not really know what I was doing. He only knew that I was very fond of going about. But I did not know what I was doing either; only this, that there was something in me which was becoming revealed, something which was becoming free, going out of me and meeting with something which belonged to it. Sometimes I recited verses, sometimes I wrote songs, sometimes I hummed to myself. Sometimes I was quiet, sometimes I shed tears, sometimes I smiled for no apparent reason, as if nature were saying something to me with so much sympathy. It was as if we were not two, but one. Sometimes I was looking at it, and then closed my eyes, and there came such a peace, such calmness, such stillness, a vision of wonder; I did not know what it was that came about, except that the sorrow and sadness and loneliness produces by the passing of my grandfather was forgotten. Then after a year I returned home.