A Centenary Tribute

Amal Kiran - My Wonderful Teacher

The MOTHER arranged my reading with Amal Kiran (K,D. Sethna) in 1962.

Sri Aurobindo had first introduced Savitri to Amal in private drafts and written to him most of the letters that are now published along with the Epic.

For the first time Amal and I met in 1961 upstairs in the passage which connects the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's rooms. I casually asked him about a chess board because the Mother and I were doing something on the theme. He drew it and made me understand it.

When we started our reading of Savitri, some interested people warned Amal against me and asked him to discontinue. Amal cut them short by saying: "The Mother has ar-ranged our reading. Besides, I have seen and felt Huta's soul. I cannot back out."

Amal made me understand Savitri intellectually and aesthetically.

It was 7th August 1965 when I finished reading the whole of Savitri with him. I could not check my tears of joy. Amal too was moved. We shook hands over the long harmonious collaboration and absorbing discussions.

That day in the afternoon I went to the Mother to inform her about it. She smiled and heaved a sigh of happiness and said:

Ah, one great work is done.

*

As soon as Amal left my apartment, I wrote down what he had explained to me in detail. I have cherished several note-books which are of great value to me.

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Here are Amal's own words in Mother India, May 1979, p. 276:

...An appreciative treatment of Savitri in terms of its quality - an elucidation of its thought-content, its imagery-inspiration, its word-craft and its rhythm-impact: this the Mother did not consider as beyond another interpreter than herself. I can conclude thus because she fully approved Huta's proposal to her that I should go through the whole of the Epic with Huta during the period when the Mother and she were doing the illustrations of the poem, the Mother making outline sketches or suggesting the general description of the required picture and Huta following her instructions, invoking Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help, keeping the Mother's presence constantly linked to both her heart and hand producing the final finished painting.

It was a long-drawn-out pleasure - my study-sessions with the young artist who proved to be a most eager and receptive pupil, indeed so receptive that on a few occasions, with my expository enthusiasm serving as spur, she would come out with ideas that taught a thing or two to the teacher.

I never thought he would write such a thing about me. I always marvelled at his modesty, selflessness and good will.

He also wrote without my knowledge in his book Life-Poetry-Yoga:
 

...Huta- was indeed a far cry. Huta whom the Mother assiduously taught and inspired to paint Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri belongs to the late fifties, sixties and after, but she happens to be perhaps the single friend in re-lation to whom the generally forgotten proto-artist of the Ashram has lingered in stray action on private occasion.

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Here is Amal's letter to me dated 4-12-74:

Dear Huta,

May I make a request to you? You are free to say 'No' without feeling any embarrassment. I remember that in your diary there is a statement by the Mother that before she came here she went through all possible occult experiences. She never told them to Sri Aurobindo but later she found them all expressed in Savitri. I should like very much to publish this statement in the February Mother India. Will you permit me and, if you do, will you please send me as soon as possible the exact words as reported by you? I shall be thankful and, of course, I will mention that they are from you.

Yours affectionately

Amal

Later Amal gave the account of this matter in Mother India's issue of November 1982 and not in that of February 1975.

*

When the paintings of the whole of Savitri were over they were exhibited in February1967along with the Mother's sketches.

The Mother asked me not to attend the exposition. So I wrote my declaration as follows:

All can be done if the God-touch is there.

This is what Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri. I feel that the painting of the pictures exhibited here is explained only by this line. For the task which the Mother had given me was so immense, so beyond the capacity of the little instrument she had summoned, that only her Grace working in Sri Aurobindo's Light could have seen me through.

I am deeply grateful to the Mother for her constant personal guidance - outward as well as inward. And what shall I say of the Presence of Sri Aurobindo helping all along?

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I thank the Mother also for making possible a study of the Epic with Amal Kiran.

Several years later Amal wrote:

From 'The Clear Ray' to 'The Offered One'.

Dearest Huta

A happy birthday

embodying that vision of Sri Aurobindo -

"Light, endless Light! darkness has room no more" -

and ever voicing for earth the invocation: "

O Wisdom-splendour, Mother of the universe, Creatrix, the Eternal's artist Bride."

In unison with your old friend

Amal

1-9-1993

Amal never lost the chance to write to me humorous notes. Here are two masterpieces!

Dear Huta,

It does not matter even if you forget. But once you remember that you have not forgotten, your memory is not yet sufficiently supramentalised like Nirod's. Wish you more progress!

I had misplaced the October instalment of The Story of a Soul. Then eventually I found and sent it to Amal. He wrote:

Dear Huta,

I am glad that the "Old Lady" has been saved from the re-typing the Oct. instalment. Some tonic for the memory is needed - to save it from getting Nirodianly Supramentalised at such a young age!

I relished his sense of humour. I like his company, be-cause he has treasures of knowledge, he has a wonderful understanding, consideration, and a broad mind. The adjectives to describe him are not enough.

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I have been always feeling that his consciousness is flour-ishing in Sri Aurobindo's Light, and his psychic is constantly nestled in the Mother's loving arms. That is the reason why I always see Amal as "The Clear Ray".

May the Supreme Lord and the Supreme Mother fulfil all his highest aspirations.

IN THEIR LOVE

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