Swanwick Star Issue No. 7 (2014)

An Interview with Roerich

My father, Dr. A.S. Atwal (the Indian entomologist who introduced the European honey bee into India) used to go to Kulu and Manali regularly to perform his bee experiments in the early sixties. On one such occasion, he came to know that the famous Bengali actress, Devika Rani, lived in a village he often passed through with her aristocratic Russian husband. Naturally, he could not help wanting to meet this intriguing couple.

They lived in an apple-growing area of the Kulu Valley in a big bungalow that was originally built by a British landowner. It was located on a hilltop where one had to send up a request to visit them. If accepted, their caretaker brought word down the hill right away. My father was elated to find out that his request had been granted.

So, he was invited to visit them for afternoon tea at their residence and they were very pleased when he presented them with a bouquet of local wild-flowers. It turned out that this was their summer home while they lived just outside Delhi during the rest of the year. Nevertheless, the tea-service was conducted in the finest English bone china and nothing was lacking.

Svetoslav Roerich was a quiet and reserved man while his wife was very talkative as might be expected. However, Roerich gracefully answered my father’s many questions about Russia without betraying any bitterness on the subject. He said that he had left Russia during the Revolution. It is quite likely that he was no longer welcome there with his family’s ties to Theosophy.  My father had little time for discussions about religion and philosophy, though, unlike my mother’s side of the family, which would not meet Roerich until the next decade once their spiritual quest was well under way.

It appears that Roerich spent much of his time painting while in the valley and some of his works decorated the walls of their house. This was of particular interest to my father who was also an amateur artist and could connect with the spiritual nature of this endeavour.

At the end of this quaint meeting, my father left feeling gratified that he had met an unusually sophisticated pair.