FROM the time I came to Pondicherry as a small boy in the year 1946, I had heard the name of Amal Kiran together with that of Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, of Dilip Kumar Roy, Arjava and a few others as the poets inspired and moulded by Sri Aurobindo himself. Those were indeed the halcyon days of the Ashram at least as far as the Arts and Culture were concerned, for then it was a case of turn but a corner and start a poet. One could not take a step without brushing against a famous poet or painter or musician or thinker or scholar. Nolinikanto, Nishikanto, Dilip Kumar, Bhismadev, Sahana Devi, Monod-Herzen, Sanjivan, Jayantilal, Krishnalal, Sundaram, Purani, Nirodbaran, Anilbaran, Rishabchand, Indra Sen, Sisir Mitra and many more were all so palpably present.
However, in 1946 Arjava was no more, Harindranath had left the Ashram and Amal Kiran was a star that dwelt apart in faraway Bombay preparing to shed his immaculate rays on the pages of Mother India, and my only contact with these poets was through a few of their poems which we studied later in our English class. The one from Amal Kiran that comes readily to mind is The Signature: Sri Aurobindo1:
Sharp-hewn yet undertoned with mystery,
A brief black sign from the Incommunicable
Making the Eternal's Night mix with our day
To deepen ever the shallow goldenness
We hug to our heart!...
I will remember the tremendous impact this poem had on our imagination, especially when we meticulously compared the lines of this poem with the strokes and loops and curls and curves and the overall majestic sweep of the signature of our Master.
1. The Secret Splendour (Collected Poems), p. 234.
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Then came 1952, a red letter year of my life! Some of us students were told that the celebrated poet-editor of Mother India wanted to see our poems. With much trepidation and harbouring no false hope I submitted a few of my compositions for his comments. What he actually thought of them I do not know to this day, but one fine morning — "O frabjous day!" — I received a copy of Mother India with my poem in PRINT! For the next few months almost each issue carried some brainchild of mine — either a poem or a short story - and finally one day I received the princely sum of fifty-one rupees from the publishers as reward for my efforts. I remember how happily and proudly I offered fifty rupees to the Mother telling her that that was my very first earning, but I must confess quite shamefully that the worldly-wise in me had kept back one rupee to buy the deliciously bitter American chocolate which was so plentiful in Pondicherry in those days. I had convinced myself at that time that the Mother would not mind this tiny bit of skulduggery on my part, and I am sure that she did not. But the inexorable laws of karma "after my just desert" had a good laugh at my subsequent discomfiture. For soon after this, one evening, when the great poet, having returned to Pondicherry, came to the Playground and wanted to meet us little ones - measured by the poetic yardstick, that is - I was literally caught in a state of half undress being busy at the moment lifting weights in the gymnasium. There was no time to change. I had to come as I was. To say the least it was rather embarrassing to approach one graced by Saraswati, with a shining but stinking sweat-drenched body wearing the briefest of briefs. Especially so, since Amal Kiran's keen sense of humour was legendary. I tried my best to make the little intelligence I owned suffuse my face and Amal Kiran too, the gentleman that he was, refrained from making any painful pleasantry beyond remarking, "So now we have weightlifting poets!" But in my heart of hearts I had the sinking feeling that he had formed the opinion that I had only muscles where my brains ought to be.
However, even though I appeared in a bad light before him, he did not fail to produce the right impression on me. What I saw was a very fair, handsome, tallish man with a bright face and
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twinkling eyes, a romantic Byronic limp and an irresistible charisma. Of his kind heart and sympathetic attitude towards fledgling poets (in my case the word poetaster would perhaps be more appropriate) I already had first-hand experience — did he not make it possible for my immature efforts to see the light of day? As for his sense of humour and love of laughter I had heard stories galore. How his chance discovery that Sri Aurobindo enjoyed P.G. Wodehouse had pushed up his admiration for his Guru a farther notch or two. How he had the rare but commendable ability to laugh at himself and make fun of his own physical handicap, one of his most endearing comments being: "My feet do not fall with equal stress on the ground on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress: I am an anapaestic fellow." How in his early years in the Ashram, when he was in charge of the furniture department and had gone to a house to remove a cot, he had been thoroughly mystified by a Sadhak, a native of Chittagong, informing him that "the cot was on Barinda." - "You mean Barinda (Sri Aurobindo's brother) is on the cot," Amal had endeavoured to place the two in their logical position. "No", insisted the Sadhak, "the cot is on Barinda." Utterly baffled but presuming that perhaps Barinda was engaged in some strange yogic practice, Amal had decided to investigate the matter himself only to find that very properly the cot was indeed in the verandah — a word often pronounced as "barinda" in some parts of East Bengal. There were many more of such stories and I used to relish them all.
In a year or so Amal Kiran once again became a familiar figure in the Ashram, especially since he began teaching the First Year Arts Students of our College Course. As I was in the second (or was it the third?) year, my timetable did not permit me to attend lectures which, I heard, combined erudition with hilarity in equal measure. In fact he became so popular in such a short time, that one of the teachers of our school who was something of a dry stick (a mere statement of fact, no offence intended) and taught the dull bits of English grammar, one day cornered Amal Kiran and demanded to know the secret of his popularity.
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"Well, I suppose," hazarded the poet, "they enjoy my class because I tell them jokes and funny anecdotes and endeavour to make the work seem like play."
- "But I know no jokes. Never had any time for them. Could you tell me a few?" Out came his notebook, the painstaking, systematic man that he was, and whatever Amal Kiran recounted, he noted down diligently.
Next day our grammarian went to his class armed with his collection of jokes. The class was conducted as usual but exactly five minutes before the bell he stopped the class, opened his notebook and read out three jokes in a monotonous, lugubrious tone. Then, his duty done, snapped his notebook shut and was gone. The students were so taken aback that they missed the cue to laugh.
A few years passed. I had by now finished my studies and taken up teaching. Amal Kiran, on the other hand, had stopped taking classes but he kept in touch with all of us through his periodic talks on poetry in general and Sri Aurobindo's Savitri in particular. I always made it a point to attend his talks not only because of their brilliance and entertaining and edifying value, but also because they helped me in my teaching by giving me new knowledge and new insight into poetry. They strengthened some of my convictions and corrected many of my out-moded notions.
I am not overfond of reading magazines, so I miss much that appears in Mother India. But whenever I have chanced to go through stray copies, I have been amazed by the sheer variety of the subjects on which Amal Kiran writes so authoritatively and thought-provokingly. The vision of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, mysticism, yoga, philosophy - both eastern and western - literature, especially his treatise on Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare and other English poets and authors, sociology, politics, Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin are all subjects in which he is completely at home. Moreover he made his presence strongly felt among the readers of Mother India through his erudite articles on Hinduism, the original home of the Aryans, ancient Indian history, India's rich and hoary civilisation and her stupendous achievements.
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I used to read some of these articles and mutely wonder: how can one man know so much ? But whatever may be his secret, there is no doubt that he is a fit disciple of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The Mantra of his life is contained in Sri Aurobindo's words: "Adore and what you adore attempt to be." He adores Sri Aurobindo, so he faithfully follows in the Master's footsteps.
In spite of reading one of his articles on Einstein I had always thought of him, quite mistakenly I am afraid, as an expert on only the so-called Arts subjects i.e. the humanities. But then came a day which brought home a new revelation to me. It so happened that I travelled to Madras by car with Amal Kiran and Mr. K., a foreign friend of ours. Mr. K. is an engineer and industrialist and consequently very well versed in the latest developments of modern science. I was on the front seat with the driver and following my usual practice let the motion of the car lull me into a pleasant doze. But the interesting conversation that began in the back seat must have penetrated my subconscious, for I was soon wide awake listening intently. Twenty years ago a budding poet- cum-weightlifter might have shocked Amal Kiran, but that day a poet spouting the latest breakthrough in the physical sciences astounded me much more. For nearly four hours Amal Kiran kept us spellbound not only by merely informing us about the most modern scientific discoveries and inventions, but also elaborating on the theories involved in them and their future possibilities. I must confess that, though I fully enjoyed the witty and humorous bits of this dissertation, much of the pure science went over my head. But I quite realised the fact that Mr. K. too was often finding himself out of his depth.
I would have ended my personal glimpses of Amal Kiran at this point, had I not, like the Three Princes of Serendip, made a fortunate and fortuitous discovery. We were seeing some of the most beautiful old designs created by the Ashram artists for the Mother's saris, dresses, headbands and sandals. When I enquired about the authorship of some of them that caught my eye, I was informed that they were the creations of none other than K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran. "Why, didn't you know", my edifier was genuinely surprised, "Amal is an accomplished artist." I might
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have guessed! Poet, painter, writer, scholar, wit, conversationalist, sadhak - all in one! The vast ocean that is Amal Kiran - who knows how many more gems of purest ray serene are not hidden in his unfathomed depths ?
ANIRUDDHA SIRCAR
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AMAL KIRAN is nothing if not versatile. Poet, scholar, literary critic, historian with expert knowledge of its twin discipline archeology, artist, editor, keenly interested in problems of modern Physics, acquainted with basic problems of philosophy and great philosophers' attempted solutions of them, raconteur with a razor-sharp wit, humorist, teacher who in his lectures on poetry makes the Muse come alive, Amal Kiran is a multi-faceted and sparkling personality. Whether it is the problem of the original home of the Aryans, reconstructing Indian chronology, Karpasa in ancient India, the world of Sri Aurobindo's poetry, identifying the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, unravelling the mystery of Blake's brightly burning Tyger or Mallarme's Swan submerged in snow, he brings to bear upon his studies of these subjects his wide knowledge and gives minute attention to their treatment in such a manner that his readers can only marvel at his poetic sensitivity and intellectual rigour. He is a writer who turns into gold all that he touches.
Amal Kiran is nothing if not a virtuoso. He is extremely skilful in gathering his materials and marshalling it in a most systematic way and then arranging his arguments in a very convincing manner. Let me give an example from a recently published article of his. In the July 1994 issue of Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, he has tried to determine Panini's time from his place, i.e. his home.1 While the wealth of scholarship evident in it is mind-boggling, the way in which he has built up his thesis is nothing short of amazing. An instance of him as a critic of poetry will show how responsive he is to poetic excellence and at the same time objective and even-handed in his estimation of different poets. His comparative study of the two Autumns — Hood's and Keats's — is a case in point. While the discussion of the two poems leaves no doubt that our poet-critic considers Keats the better, not to say greater, he grants that in the-line "In
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the hushed mind's mysterious far away". Hood brings "a profound note beyond anything in Keats's picture — a note which may legitimately be called the Romantic age's anticipation of Aurobindonian style."2
Amal Kiran is a master of the poet's craft. His knowledge of the technique of poetry, its language, diction, of prosody, metre and rhythm is truly authoritative. He has very sensitive ears which enable him to appreciate and at the same time he can communicate to the reader the reason for his admiration for a poem, a passage or even a single line. Listen to our poet-critic's analytical estimate of a line in Savitri which he discusses in his masterly work of Sri Aurobindo - the Poet. I will quote the whole paragraph because all of it is devoted to one line which occurs in the following passage of Savitri (p. 255, Cent. Ed.):
Alone a process of events was there
And Nature's plastic and protean change
And, strong by death to slay or to create,
The riven invisible atom's omnipotent force.
Amal Kiran gives a luminous critique of the last line and brings home to the reader the suggestive sound-value of the words employed by Sri Aurobindo in an inspired moment and how its subject-matter takes body as it were and becomes alive. Says he:
"...here too the accent is recognisably Aurobindonian. The Overhead breath blows everywhere and in the last line we have its art at top pitch. The craftsmanship of that line is superb, with its dense humming sound dextrously mixed with other expressive vibrations, and all moving in a metre packing fourteen syllables and a predominantly anapaestic run into a scheme of five strong stresses which are helped by massed consonants in several places to beat out clearly as well as to contain the overflowing music. The four "i"s and the four "o"s suggest at once penetration and expansion, the latter as if from an all-round fastness. The "v" in "riven", pronounced as it is with the upper teeth touching the lower lip, aids the sense of cutting that is in the word, while the "v" in "invisible" not only supports and increases the cutting
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suggestion but also hints by occurring in that particular word and in the midst of several syllables successively short in quantity the marvellous carrying of the power of fission into the mystery of the infinitesimal that constitutes the unseen atomic nucleus. Then there are the two "m"s with their movements of lip-closure corresponding to the closed secrecy that is being spoken of and they are preceded and followed by the labials "b" and "p" respectively which correspond to the initial motive of breaking open the closed secrecy and to the final accomplishment of that explosion. The hard strokes of the three "t"s mingle a further nuance of breaking. The "f" of force picks up again the fission-power of the "v"s and completes it with its own acute out-loosening sound accompanied by the somewhat rolled sibilance at the end. The sibilance itself, giving clear body to the softer sound of the pair of "s"s earlier in the line, achieves the idea of a full escape of the power that was so far not sweeping out of the charmed circle, as it were, of the atom's vibrant energy."3
This detailed study of the line under discussion will enable the sympathetic reader, sahrdaya, to understand why it still reverberates in his consciousness even long after he has read it. Amal Kiran's enlightening study, Sri Aurobindo - the Poet, is replete with such examples of his poetic sensitivity and critical acumen. As regards thoughts and ideas - contents of poems - Amal Kiran's observations are illuminating.4
Amal Kiran's books on the problem of the Aryans' original home and ancient Indian history and chronology have broken new ground. It is to be earnestly hoped that academic and professional historians and archeologists will pay serious attention to them with open minds. With wide-based reading, deep contemplation and careful construction of material, they point to a new direction in which the study of and research in Indian history should move. People more competent than I will surely write on Amal Kiran's poetry which of course I appreciate and enjoy immensely. Apart from their poetic excellence, they suggest things behind and beyond the ideas and moods they express - an intangible and yet concrete world of truths embodied in bold and beautiful images which are often symbols representing
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realities of other planes of being and consciousness. Many phrases, even lines stick in the memory of the readers of his poetry. Each one of them subtly conveys aspiration for realising the depths and heights and wideness of his being and consciousness. Many of the poems have the influx of currents from overhead planes of consciousness. The combination of overhead inspiration and its vivid images and moving rhythm and variegated colour in poetry is rare. And this fine blend marks him out as a sadhak-poet. I shall content myself with quoting one of my favourite poems from his vast output of poem after admirable poem — Her Changing Eyes:
Brims there a fathomless blue ?
Then loves' deep-surge has made her ocean-souled!
Shed they a fiery hue ?
Then truth has lit her mind to pure sun-gold!
Are they like purple wine ?
O she is drunk with the Ineffable!
Out beams a dark dew-shine ?
With pity of your gloom her lustres fill.
But when that varied glance
Is fading to a quiet none can see
Behind the snow-lids of trance,
She's waking in you all eternity!5
Amal Kiran is nothing if not a sadhak, - a sadhak with a most intense and ardent aspiration for self-realisation and God-union and eventually, the divine life. This does not mean that he is at the first stage of practice of the integral yoga. For though aspiration is admittedly the first thing, it is also a continuous process. It is my firm conviction that Amal Kiran's diverse aspects radiate from this core — his spiritual longing for the Divine. In his case it is true to say that the things, that is, his many facets do not fall apart, that the Centre can and does hold. Amal Kiran's burning faith in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is an iridescent
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example to all disciples and devotees of the twin Avatars.
Who is Amal Kiran ? Kekoo D. Sethna - a sadhak resident at Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
What is Amal Kiran ? - In his being a spiritual soul whose one preoccupation is its evolution to the integral Divine; in his nature a pure ray serene; an incandescent, receptive intelligence, buddhi;
a quiet resolute determination, samkalpa, a flaming, unifying love, prema.
ARABINDA BASU
Notes and References
1. Pp. 489-498.
2. Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, June 1994, p. 391.
3. Sri Aurobindo - the Poet, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, 1970, pp. 163-64.
4. For instance, Ibid., passim, the reader may refer to pp. 227-239 and pp. 240-263.
5. The Secret Splendour, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry, 1993, p. 438.
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