Vanda Scaravelli

Vanda Scaravelli

I was recently asked about my relationship with Vanda Scaravelli. To talk about that I need to drag in a lot of other stuff, like all my other meaningful relationships of the 1960s. I am at that age that I look back to the 60s with nostalgia in the sense that I think that our current age now has very little to offer in the sense of true adventure. And to think that I was already a latecomer after the Beatniks, Paul Brunton and other adventurous people.

In 1961 I went to Gstaad in Switzerland with my mother to meet Jiddu Krishnamurti and hear him speak. He was supposed to be the new World Teacher, the modern-day Buddha, and I was very exited. I was 19 when we drove down the mountain into the village in our Beetle called Arretje Nof after the goat we owned right after the war. I remember saying to myself as we glided down the mountain that the next day I was going to meet the Buddha.,

That first year that I went with my mother we stayed in a room in the village of Saanen, 2 km from Gstaad. I had been reading books of Krishnamurti since I was 17, and my goal in life was to become enlightened. 17 year old innocence.

After that first year I went by myself hitch hiking from Holland to Switzerland (quite a common practice in that time) and staying in the little camping ground with some other children of the beatniks.

At night, after the talks, we discussed in the camping ground how to become a jivan mukta, a liberated being. It was the age of the Great Exodus. People went to Japan, to China, following in the footsteps of the beatniks. They went to India, by bus, by train, by bicycle, hitch hiking, through the Middle East, via Russia. No planes. We were in the sixties, the Great War was over since 12, 15 years, and the young generation was on the GO.

Krishnamurti stayed in a Chalet in Gstaad, Chalet Tannegg, which was rented for the summer to accommodate him and his friends. The person who rented the chalet was Vanda Scaravelli, a wealthy countess from Florence, Italy. Everybody called her La Contessa. Krishamurti called her Signora. Never Vanda. She owned a car, which I was sure was a Silver Cloud of the Jaguar family. It was breath taking, its sleek silver frame gliding through the village. K. was in love with that car, and spent a lot of his free time dissecting her. My breath also caught in my throat every time I saw her.

In that time I was the baby, all the others around K. were at least twenty years older than me. I was desperate to get on with my enlightenment and so asked for an interview with K. That is where I was for the first time face to face with Vanda. I was sitting on the bench, scared out of my wits, determined to see K. and she stopped right in front of me, saying : ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’

I was speechless. This millionaire had actually talked to me, a twenty years old Jack Kerouac hippy.

I had been studying Sanskrit since two years in Holland, and done some very mild yoga. Yoga in Holland was still unknown, only here and there some self-proclaimed teacher, but I was interested. The main name was Indra Devi. She was considered THE guru.

My main question to K. was about seeing. Everybody called Krishnamurti K. for short. He talked a lot about that. I wanted to learn to see. I had no idea what that was, and afterwards I would spend a lot of time forcing myself to try to see without much success. We also talked about yoga. He told me that there was a yoga teacher staying at chalet Tannegg, and that everybody was learning yoga from this man called B.K.S.Iyengar. I asked K. to introduce me to Iyengar, which he did.

And so I had my first yoga class with B.K.S. in the garden of Chalet Tannegg, with K. hanging over the balcony laughing. Iyengar was furious.

Everybody in Gstaad was working with BKS. Also Vanda. She was small and thin, and quite supple.

I innocently told Iyengar that I wanted to become a yoga teacher, which made him even more furious, telling me I was stupid and would never get anywhere. So that same day I phoned my mother in Holland telling her to book me a passage on the Maritime Messagerie which sailed from Marseille to the then Bombay, now Mumbai. I told Iyengar I would be in Bombay in October and he gave me the address where to go.

I spent 10 months in Bombay, and Iyengar taught me everything, every blessed asana. I cried, I screamed, I stayed in the Salvation army building with lots of other girls my age, and between classes I went to the race course, ate icecream and spend time with the Irish jockeys. They gave me tips on the horses and I often won.

I did not go back to Gstaad, but went to Holland where I taught for 6 years. In 1969 I went back to Poona for another round with B.K.S. 10 months, after which I went to London where he was going to do a course.

In the meanwhile I had lost contact with everybody from Gstaad, including Vanda. After my second round in Poona I accompanied B.K.S. in London, where he did a three week course.

In that time I owned a Volkswagen van which I had converted in a sort of camper. I could sleep in it and cook.

B.K.S said after the course was finished that he wanted to go to Rome to be with Vanda Scaravelli, who had remained his friend. He planned to do a small course of one week in her house. I told him I would take him in my bus, and he agreed. It took us almost a week to go over the Alps, in the meanwhile playing the tourists. It was a fun trip with tourist outings on the way.

In Rome I drove us to Parioli where Vanda had a penthouse. She had invited some other people, Radames Silvestri of Venice with his wife and mother, and there was another women but I do not remember her name. Vanda’s son Alberto was there and he joined the course, but never really took to yoga to the disappointment of Vanda.

We did lots of ‘furniture’ yoga, using the sofas, chairs and other stuff for the asanas. Sometimes I got tired. I discovered that Vanda had a grand piano in the room next door in the apartment, so when I got tired of the crowd I slipped out of the room to play the piano. Usually they followed me out and so my plan to have a quiet moment for myself backfired. This is how Vanda later on when we were in Firenze decided to teach me the piano.

She had been a concert player before marrying in the Scaravelli family. Her maiden name was Passigli, one of the richest philanthropic nobility families of Florence. Her father had built the concert hall, and I think also the airport. They knew all the important music artists in the world who often stayed at the villa in Fiesole. Vanda was in a way the black sheep of the family with her yoga and friendship with Krishnamurti and her Japanese sandals which she always wore. But I am running ahead.

After the course in Rome was finished B.K.S. went back to Poona, Radames to Venezia and at the invitation of Vanda I stayed a little while, till she sent me to Firenze to teach yoga there. Alberto had already gone there. He was not interested in yoga but wanted to be a farmer, to the dismay of Vanda. They had many farmhouses around the villa with the old feudal system, I think, so Alberto could take any of them to be a farmer.-

When I got to Firenze word had gone around in the community of foreigners that a yoga teacher was coming, and in no time I had a studio and an apartment on the outskirts of Firenze. Vanda came shortly afterwards to stay in one of their farmhouses and as I was only 20 minutes from there I used to go over the first couple of years for lunch.

Initially I helped her with her yoga, but afterwards she changed her mind and started to experiment with different ways of doing yoga. I think she found Iyengar too rough and was looking for a more gentle way of doing yoga. She was also quite old by then, she was 35 years older than me.-

In the meanwhile we continued with the piano, and she had quite some unorthodox ways of teaching by sitting on my shoulders and guiding my hands from that position.

Eventually I moved away from my first apartment to a ‘casa colonica’, or farmhouse on the other side of Firenze, 1;1/2 hours by car to Fiesole where she stayed. By then she had acquired some students, also from England, who came to stay with her to learn her way of yoga. She wanted me to come and learn her new way, but I refused. I am a loyal person, and I was, and stayed, for the rest of my life, the student of B.K.S.Iyengar. I NEVER had another teacher, I never did any ‘shopping’ out of curiosity, even though eventually he and I also had some kind of fallout, I stayed faithful to his teaching and to him as my teacher.

In the meanwhile Alberto had married a girl from the bank and they got two children, boys. Due to work and buying a huge farmhouse myself I lost almost all contact with Vanda. Later I heard that Alberto had died in a farm accident, and that Vanda had lost it. She loved him more than anything else. I got the information from some friends about where the funeral service would be, and I went there. Vanda was more frail than ever. We briefly greeted each other and then I went out during the ceremony. That was the last time I saw her. I later learned that she had died. Vanda had died, Krishnamurti also had died, then B.K.S, Iyengar died at the age of 94.

All my friends from the sixties were gone. All my gurus, my mentors. The golden age of the sixties was gone. I had a computer and a cell phone that I did not know how to use.

I remember once Vanda and I were walking in the street in the center of Firenze and a sleek car drove by with a women in designer clothes, complete with white gloves and hat. Vanda, who was walking next to me in her Japanese judo slippers, a turban on her head for the cold and an old jacket on her shoulders, took one look at the woman and giggled. Then she turned to me and said: I have improved, haven’t I?

The lesson I learned from her and which I have never forgotten was when she and I were walking on the piazza in the center of Firenze with thousands of people, Italians and foreigners, tourists and business people milling about.

She turned to me and said: look around you, look at all the people. Do you see any face among all

these people that you would say: I would like to know that person?.

I looked. And then I looked at her. And I understood. There was nobody. It was just a mass of identical faces, doing identical things, thinking identical thoughts, nothing to make you stop and say: Hey, who is that?

I was extremely lucky to have incredible teachers in my life, Jiddu Krishnamurti, B.K.S.Iyengar, Vanda Scaravelli. All passed away but I remembered, remembered.