Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

My Wonderful Teacher

THE MOTHER arranged my reading Savitri 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 chessboard, 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 arranged 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 7 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 would leave my apartment, I would write down what he had explained to me in detail. I have several cherished notebooks which are of great value to me.

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

...An appreciative treatment of Savitri in terms of its quality

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— 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 knew he would write such a thing about me. I always marvelled at his modesty, selflessness and goodwill.

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 relation to whom the generally forgotten proto-artist of the Ashram has lingered in stray action on private occasion.

Here is Amal's letter to me dated 4.12.74:

Dear Huta,

May 1 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

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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 February 1967 along 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 ?

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

The Mother wrote to me on-.26.1.67:

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My very dear little child Huta

Your declaration is very good indeed and it will look

quite nice where you want to put it.

With all my love for you and blessings for the exhibition.

The Mother's lovely message for the exhibition ran:

The importance of Savitri is immense.

Its subject is universal. Its revelation is prophetic.

The rime spent in its atmosphere is not wasted.

It will be a happy compensation for the feverish haste men

put now in all they do.

Amal gave me all the beautiful books he had written, with his good wishes and affection.

His wife Sehra who loved me and treated me like her own daughter was once attacked severely in her sleep by the invisible beings of the vital world. This incident was not a mere dream but a concrete experience. In relation to it, I was amazed to read in Amal's book Our Light and Delight p. 206:

...I may end by striking a spiritually optimistic note. When I had an occasion to relate the incident to Huta, she suddenly lighted upon an implication I had not guessed. I had seen only the frightful possibility of hostile blows having more and more gross-physical consequences. I had not let my mind appraise all-round the critical point at which the workings behind the scene might have arrived. But she exclaimed: "What has happened shows that the Divine Force also can now have a direct effect upon the body. If the dark powers have this new possibility, the inner Light and the higher Consciousness can just as well emerge into the body with concrete changes in it if we are truly receptive!"

The Mother, while teaching me occultism during our Savitri

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work, disclosed to me the mysteries of the higher as well as the nether worlds.

And yet another book of his, The Mother: Past-Present-Future, pp. 161-2; Amal stated my experiences and Nolini-da' s comments on them. Here is one of them:

A Dream of Reality

In a dream on 15 August 1974, early in the morning, I saw the Mother lying on a bed. Her body was immobile, I questioned myself: "If the Mother's body was put in a casket, how is it that it is here ? Then I saw her hands moving and her eyes open.

Suddenly, while I was wondering, I found her standing near me and I had the same feeling as when she used to embrace me in the old days. I was still in amazement. She then became invisible but I distinctly heard her parting words:

"I am coming."

(A comment by Nolini)

"She showed to you her living presence still continues."

Recently Amal presented to me his book The Secret Splendour - Collected Poems.

Each poem is like a fragrant flower. I was exceedingly charmed by the poem Sri Aurobindo:

All heaven's secrecy lit to one face

Crowning with calm the body's blinded cry —

A soul of upright splendour like the noon.

But only shadowless love can breathe this pure

Sun-blossom fragrant with eternity -

Eagles of rapture lifting flickerless

A golden trance wide-winged on golden air.

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SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENT:

It comes from the higher mind except for the third and seventh lines which have illumination and are very fine.

Amal is a genius. His remarkable books are a great revelation to the whole of humanity.

*

Invariably he has been sending me birthday greetings. Here are two of them:

1

To very dear Huta

On a birthday there is usually the Shelleyan moment:

We look before and after

And pine for what is not.

For us, the birthday should bring no regret, no doubt. The "what is not" of the past is the fading of our small self in the largeness of the Divine Presence. The future's vagueness is the unlimited room the same Presence shows us for merging in the depth beyond depth that is the Mother's Love and in the height over height that is the Truth of Sri Aurobindo.

With a warm heart's wishes,

1.9.1985

Amal

2

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

Dearest Huta

A happy birthday

embodying that vision of Sri Aurobindo -

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"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 me humorous notes;

Here are two masterpieces

1

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!

2

I had misplaced the MS. for the October instalment of my 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 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, because 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 flourishing in Sri Aurobindo's Light and his psychic is constantly nestled into the Mother's loving arms. That is the reason why I always sec Amal as "The Clear Ray".

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

HUTA

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