Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

SECTION THREE

A Name sung by the poet fame

A Golden Bridge to Sri Aurobindo

IN THE Ashram who does not know Amal Kiran ? He is not only known to all but much loved by them. Mother India under his editorship is a wonderful magazine one eagerly waits for every month. It is through Mother India that I first met Amal. To be precise, his letters on Life-Poetry-yoga first drew me to his glowing heart and brilliant mind. His, I found, is the heart that "knows strange depths".¹

It is indeed a beautiful sight to see Amal coming to the Ashram, to the Samadhi, to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This is his delightful daily pilgrimage. A happiness hovers around him. The young boys of the Ashram who help him go about, do so with utter love and devotion. Saurav is always thinking of new ways of making Amal happy. And Amal who constantly lives in a heaven of happiness, smilingly and graciously accepts all that the boys plan for him. On Sunday evenings I have seen Rasanand bring Amal in his wheel-chair, via the beach road from the Park Guest House. Back home he gives Amal a glass of water to drink, a napkin to wipe his hands with and helps with other sweet little necessities of the body. Finally, before leaving, he takes Amal's hands in his own and, with eyes closed, the two concentrate. Love flows from one to the other. With an expression of fulfilment 'Rasu' leaves to return at the appointed time. Even the simplest of actions with and around Amal becomes a prayer, an offering, an oblation. For Amal constantly lives in the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. He is for ever in a "heavenward groping mood".²

Therefore, to merely know Amal is not enough. He has to be experienced. Behind all else that Amal is, he is a poet. And not just a poet, but Sri Aurobindo's Poet. And just as all talk about a poem does not give the joy which the reading of the poem gives, all talk about Amal will never be able to convey the joy which will come to us only when we touch the poet in him. His is "... a

Page 115

spirit-wideness sown with spirit-stars".³

Reading his prose writings one gets the sparkle of his clear and pure mind but in order to feel the real Amal one has to reach out to his poetry. It is there that he is truly to be found, hidden in a mesh of silvery stars.

When I read Sri Aurobindo, I try to enter the words, feel their aura, imagine myself to be a poet to whatever degree and slowly and silently sip the nectar from each word, phrase and turn or expression. The same I do while reading Amal's poetry. One then becomes a co-poet and partakes of the poetic creation. In another dimension the time thus spent becomes itself a poem — a poem in time.

This approach bears abundant fruit specially with mystic poetry. And Amal is a mystic poet par excellence - a poet whose visionary intensity has no boundaries.

Mystic poetry can sometimes look rather abstract and difficult to grasp. But if one can once catch the central thread then line after line unfolds layers of meanings and the movement is then like the waves of an ocean, running one after the other.

In Amal's poetry there is everywhere underlying his unlimited thirst for the Divine, his battle with the world, his ultimate triumph and his absolute and ecstatic surrender to Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother. Not only is he an idealist but an extremist. When he feels, he feels all.

"Love's life is precious only if given whole,"⁴ he says. So is it with everything else: all or nothing. Life around him throbs with an enchantment. Mere sunshine, filtered through the shaking leaves of a young tree near by, gives him a thrill. He watches with joy and spangled beauty of the sunlight falling on his table. "The tree outside my window is twinkling green and gold," he once said to me over the telephone.

The aspiration in him cries out:

...O let each pore of me

Become a mouth of prayer!⁵

The vast peace within him finds poetic expression:

Page 116

An ocean-hearted ecstasy am I,

Where time rolls inward to eternal shores.⁶

In his poems is found a passionate cry for God. His poems sometimes emerge on the spur of the moment. God's Steep⁷, a very powerful little poem, he said he had written in a railway compartment on way to Pondicherry. It was scribbled on tissue paper in torch-light. Based on a dream, it is a deep cry for the highest: "How shall I climb God's steep?" Not by reason but

Only some animal hunger for the height

Dreaming not of the path but of the goal,

A cry from the dazzled depth of a child-heart,

Can dare....

No fumbling

But a close clasping of ledge on small keen ledge,

A love that clings in blindness to the light....⁷

And then

...suddenly the hushed infinitudes

Halo the thought-transcending human head -

While wise men chattering far below

Argue for ever the unattainable!⁷

While the passion and power remain, not all his poems are born so suddenly. In When Poems are Born he writes:

A light that is nameless and formless

Plucks up the master of life —

Limbs of carved thunder take

An infinite silence for wife.⁸

In the infinite silence of his heart a lovely little poem took birth in a most interesting manner. Talking about this poem Amal once

Page 117

said: "For nine years I lived in the room of the old Guest House where Sri Aurobindo had lived. From the small terrace, I could see the tall silk-cotton tree in the compound across the road. The morning sun lit its one solitary branch that stretched far out on to the road. I waited looking for Nolini who brought me each morning a letter from Sri Aurobindo." The sunlight, the swaying branch of the tall and massive tree, the waiting in the heart for Sri Aurobindo's letter - all three combined into a new alchemy and a beautiful poem was born: Tree of Time.

I am a tree of time, a swaying shadow,

With one sole branch lit by eternity -

All of me dark save this song-fruitful hand.⁹

In moments when poetry flows through the poet

Fragments of deathless ecstasy outflower

And I but live in these few fingers that trace

On life's uncoloured air a burning cry

From God-abysses to God-pinnacles.⁹

And when 'the buried vast' shall wake within the poet's breast

...then through each quivering nerve shall course

No feeble brightness self-consumed in joy

Like the brief passions of earth, but nectar-flame -

A Force drunk with its own infinitude.⁹

There is no sobriety in Amal's poetry. In his own inimitable words he is

Condemned for ever more to be

A drunkard of infinity:¹⁰

An unmistakable poetic aura surrounds him. Lines of poetry flow out of his mouth at the slightest turn of things, happenings or even the mere mention of a word: Turn but a stone and start a

wing.

Page 118

Amal sees poetry, lives poetry and therefore his world, though outwardly simple and Spartan, is inwardly rich beyond measure.

True poets never age, they only mature endlessly. That Amal is turning ninety is almost impossible to accept. His radiant face, the youthfulness of his hearty laughter, his unbelievable memory, his loving empathy - all these qualities and more have endeared him to all, young and old.

To me Amal is like a golden bridge to Sri Aurobindo. He constantly lives in Sri Aurobindo. To be in touch with him is to be in touch with someone who was very dear to Sri Aurobindo and to whom Sri Aurobindo is everything. After completing the reading of The Life Divine Amal noted: "The author of this book seems to be the author of the Universe."

Providence brought me to Amal just a little before some terrible difficulties began to brew up in my hitherto extremely happy life. The inner support he gave me not only helped me out of the prolonged mental agony but as if laid my heart in the lap of Sri Aurobindo. It is after knowing Amal that Sri Aurobindo has become a living Presence to me: my Friend, Guide and Master. From Amal I have learnt the beautiful, enriching and fulfilling art of reading Sri Aurobindo, not only with reverence but with absolute love.

Amal's words even in ordinary conversation are often very concentrated and carry a great deal of significance. This is perhaps because of the purity and sweet sincerity of his nature. Borrowing from W.B. Yeats I would say about Amal:

...and sweetness flows from head to foot.

His words therefore often linger in my heart and mind and gradually deepen the understanding. To be in touch with his mind is to constantly grow and learn more and more. Once when I spoke to him of the special comfort I felt in reading The Life Divine, he said: "Reading Sri Aurobindo creates an atmosphere around us that protects and nourishes us." I now read Sri Aurobindo in a softly loud voice so that along with the eyes, heart and mind, the speech organs and the hearing also parti-

Page 119

cipate in this action of prayer. Reading then is like our soul embracing Sri Aurobindo with all ardour.

Amal has the great capacity to enter the other person's mind and understand even before one has given full expression to one's thoughts. He catches the vibration, identifies and knows. "When I look at a person or a thing I try to look into their depth," he said to me once. His advice I have found to be always not only the wisest but the happiest and the most elevating. "Continue reading Sri Aurobindo," says Amal when troubled thoughts surround me. Three simple words. But how much they contain: And they lead me out of sadness to joy again.

Amal invariably takes his friends nearer Sri Aurobindo, because that is the luminous stuff he is made of. My brother and I feel he is a beautiful Consciousness crystallised around a flame lit by Sri Aurobindo.

ADITI VASISHTHA

References

1. The Secret Splendour, p. 378.

2. Ibid., p. 6. . 3. Ibid., p. 9.

4. Ibid., p. 388.

5. Ibid., p. 459.

6. Ibid., p. 433.

7. Ibid., p. 370.

8. Ibid., p. 368.

9. Ibid., p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 7.

Page 120