Tribute to Amrita on his Birth Centenary

ON REMEMBERING AMRITA-DA

WHENEVER we try to relive the memories of these great men—or should I say great souls—the memories that they have left behind for us, we must always remember that with one's mind or outer mental perspective one cannot understand or perceive the real soul. When we meet these great beings, we look at them each with our own limited individual ignorant consciousness, that is, through our own unconsciousness. Then again, these great souls, when they come on earth they take up a human form representing an aspect of human consciousness or terrestrial consciousness. And naturally this outer form is an aspect of that ignorance.

All souls, big or small, come on the earth for the same purpose: to accept and illumine this ignorance or self-forgetfulness and thereby to dissolve it and regain the original state of Divine consciousness. Naturally big souls have a big responsibility—the greater the soul, the greater its share of work here.

And we who are not yet conscious of and established in our own soul, cannot perceive other souls. We simply assess each other by the measure of our own ignorance, that means each by his own measure of ignorant ideas and perceptions.

So we can admire and feel a greatness, but we cannot really claim to have known or understood a great soul. Because we love them we love to retain the little touches and impressions on our consciousness. In fact, each of us has a personal perception or impression of the contacts we had with them.

And we must also remember that no individual soul, big or small, is complete in his own individual evolution—all souls are parts of the same One, the Unique Divine. As in their human outer being they are aspects of ignorance, so are they in their inmost being the many aspects of the One in this multiplicity of the creation.

The great ones, like Amritada, Pavitrada, Nolinida and many others, they form a solar system around the Supreme Divine who descends in this ignorance to lead the evolution. So they play each a special role, each one has a special mission and all together they form the totality of perfection in evolution. And we too, little souls, have our tiny roles—and if each one of us tries, following the example of the great ones, to fulfil each his own mission, maybe we will be able one

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day to meet and understand them in the true consciousness, being all one with the One and also with the Many.

So what is really our true token of love and gratitude to them is to try to be honest and sincere in our love and self-giving to the Divine just as they were.

And Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who agreed to meet us, the tiny souls in human form—making themselves as tiny as possible to be perceptible to our tiny consciousness—surely they deserve this effort from us. If we want to remember Amritada, let us love and trust and serve the Mother as he did.

Anima Mukherji

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AMRITA—THE WONDERFUL MESSENGER OF

THE MOTHER

ON 24TH September 1955 in the morning, to my astonishment, the Mother for the first time sent me tiny, cute, pink rose buds— signifying "Tenderness for the Divine. It is sweet with charming shade and delicate form, a smile that blossoms"—through Amrita, the General Manager of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He received my thanks with a smile. This was how I had his first contact. Afterwards we met and talked several times. His subtle sense of humour was something to be relished and remembered.

Mostly he read out to the Mother my letters regarding Savitri-work. and other matters.

In the sixties the white roses sent by the Mother came through Amrita. Chinmaya, his assistant, used to bring them to me.

The Mother wrote the following letter to Amrita on 13.10.67 when she opened my bank-account.

"Amrita,

This morning (Saturday) you must go to the Bank (United Commercial) to open an account in the name of Huta (Miss Huta Hindocha). For that purpose you will take Rs.500—Five hundred rupees

from my account at the Bank. She will operate this account and she must be given a cheque book.

If it is necessary you will take her (Huta) to the Bank. I attach a note which you will give to her if you have to take her to the Bank. If there is something you do not understand you can come up at 9 o'clock to ask me."

He did the needful exactly according to the Mother's wish.

Time passed by.

Now I was busy arranging the exhibition of Savitri-paintings along with the Mother's sketches.

I suggested to the Mother that it would be nice if Amrita declared open the Exhibition. She answered on 1.2.1967:

"My very dear little child Huta,

Amrita will go at 10.30 a.m. on 10th to open the exhibition and Nolini will go with him,

All my love."

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Since I was not allowed by the Mother to attend, I came to know from others that the exhibition of 5'avi'm-paintings was highly appreciated by people. Amrita and Nolini congratulated me and praised the work profusely. They also expressed their feelings to the Mother. She informed me of it.

Much later, to my amazement, I came to know from some Ashramites that Amrita had been in a previous life Michelangelo!

When I went to Europe in 1952 I saw the magnificent work of Michelangelo. I was fascinated by his masterpieces both in sculpture and paintings.

Let me quote from a sonnet by Michelangelo:

"With chiselled touch

The stone unhewn and cold

Becomes a living mould.

The more the marble wastes,

The more the statue grows."

He has also written:

"The true work of art is but a shadow of

the divine perfection."

One day the Mother could not write in answer to my letter owing to her ill health. So she conveyed her message through Amrita. He wrote to me:

"The Mother said: 'The Divine is always in you.

One must become conscious of its Presence and gain the contact with it.'

"This is what I understood from what the Mother said."

He was a wonderful messenger full of understanding, goodwill, consideration and kindness.

I am extremely sad to miss people like Amrita, Nolini, Pavitra, Andre, Vasudha, Champaklal, Dyuman, Parichand and so many others who dedicated their lives exclusively to the cause of the Supreme Lord. These people will never be forgotten. By the Grace of the Divine Mother, they may have taken a new birth in order to fulfil yet other brilliant and higher aspirations of their souls.

I read the book. Reminiscences by Nolini Kanta Gupta and K. Amrita. It is a very interesting book. It gives us the idea how these

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people worked together in perfect harmony and understanding fulfilling selflessly the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in building the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Amrita stated in Reminiscences:

"....An image of immeasurable power—that was how I felt the Mother to be whenever I approached her. She, however, held that power in herself without allowing the least display of it. On some occasions the great power would shine forth irresistibly. Our inner sense would perceive this radiation if it was awake...."

Copyright © Huta D. Hindocha

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AMRITA: A HOMAGE*

K AMRITA, Manager, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, passed away on . Friday the 31st January at 8.40 p.m. He was born on 19th September 1895. His original name was Aravamuda lyengar. His father, Rajagopalachari, was a respected village Munsiff of Kazhipervembakam.

An insatiable desire to serve the country brought Amrita to Pondicherry. Here he met a galaxy of refugees from British India, like poet Bharathi, V. Ramaswamy lyengar and others. From that time onward, he used to visit Sri Aurobindo. Finally in the year 1919 he was accepted by the Master as his disciple. Since then up to the last day of his earthly life he was a dedicated servitor of the Master, the Mother and their Ashram.

For fifty years he filled the role of the Ashram's Manager. Lord Acton wrote: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Had he seen our Amrita, he would have changed his view. For here was a Yogi who was serving the Divine egolessly and without any earthly ambition—offering his work as an oblation to the Supreme.

Never have I seen him spending time uselessly; nor was he ever weighed down by work. Warrior-like he faced all trials and troubles. The burden of responsibility that he carried on his shoulders would have crushed a lesser being. With a joyful heart and a constant twinkle in his eyes he would address himself even to the toughest of jobs.

In the very midst of work he would gladly listen to anybody who approached him. He was friend to all, philosopher to many, enemy to none. Not once did I catch him in a temper. His spontaneous amiability disarmed even the most hardened heart.

He was simplicity incarnate; it was a delight to see him bare-tor- soed, going about his daily business without any show. In Kipling's words, he could "walk with kings and never lose the common touch".

Looking at his unassuming behaviour, one would not guess he was quite a learned man. Master of Tamil and fluent in English, he was also admirably conversant with Bengali and French. In all these languages the range of his reading was pretty wide. His early English book. Visions and Voices, is full of a lyrical quality. But what distinguishes

* Reproduced from Mother India, Feb. 1969

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it is not only lyricism: there is, throughout, an intuitive turn, a subtle insight born of a Yogi's inspiration. Latterly he wrote his reminiscences for Mother India: they brought his Yogic life nearer to a larger circle of people.

And, of course, it is as a Yogi that we essentially know him. It is as a Yogi full of "sweetness and light" that his presence still pervades the Ashram, a constant reminder to us of what whole-hearted surrender to the Divine Mother could be like.

In closing, we may note a trait which endeared him all the more to his friends. He had a lively wit, a fondness for the sunny "wisecrack". Whoever met him, at any time of the day, came back with some joke ringing in his ears. Perhaps the last one was when somebody asked him how he was. Amrita had been having heart-trouble. He replied:

"Everything right, but I am having some trouble with my sweetheart." Even with the Mother he could indulge in humour—and the Mother always appreciated this leap of happy spray on the surface of the sea of Ananda in which her love and grace kept him. Not for nothing did he come to bear the name "Amrita"—"the Immortals' nectar".

Kamalakanto

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"COME"—THE LOVING CALL

"COME"—his loving and tender call still rings in my ears. With Grecian profile and a cultured voice—soft and amiable, that was our Amrita-da. The moment you stepped on the door step of his office, he would look up at you and call "come". Of course he knew why we "come" to him! Our day-to-day problems, our anguish, our demands, our anger, our quarrels—those were the things we came to pour on to him. Knowing fully well that he had to hear only the problems and the troubles, his first words never be "What do you want?" He spoke only one word "come" and with that single utterance we knew we could confide in him—tell him of our problems, entreat him or even threaten him—he would listen to all our outbursts calmly and give advice or act accordingly, whichever he felt right. There never was any distinction between his room and his office. He was available at any odd hour—we could just walk in and he would be there, not disturbed in the least that his rest was interrupted—ready to listen and to help. He personified the word "AMRITA" the name given by Sri Aurobindo.

Born on 19th September 1895 in a Tamil orthodox Brahmin family, he was named Aravamudha. He was a school-going boy when on his repeated requests he was introduced to Sri Aurobindo in 1913 on August 15th, Sri Aurobindo's Birthday. As Amrita-da himself wrote in "Old Long Since": "As he looked at me, in a trice all gloom vanished from within me, and his image was as it were installed in the sanctum sanctorum of my being". Once his soul chose the Guru, it wavered not. Then onwards he started frequenting Sri Aurobindo's house and the work of posting letters was given to him by Bejoy Nag. He writes "Feb. 1915, a crucial stage arrived in my life. Along with this came a quietude of mind, a constant memory of something which was fundamental". He was barely twenty years old at that time.

He joined the Ashram permanently in 1919. Dedicated his service to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother till the end which came on 31st January 1969.

He was the bridge between the Mother and us. With her he was her child—when he came down he was our supporter, elder brother. How unassumingly he mingled the two roles he played.

Yes, sometimes he was sad and hurt. After all he was also human like us. But his aristocratic nature would never permit any angry

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outbursts or revenge or abuse from him. That was the sweetest part of him—soft and tender and full of forgiveness.

One cannot think of Amrita-da without his sense of humour. Suffering from severe heart ailment, he used to joke about it and say "My sweet Heart is giving me trouble". He would go for his hair-cut, with a bald head and hardly any hair. If asked "What was the necessity?", he would give a naughty smile and say "I go for after-hair cut". We wondered what that could be—Well! It was the massage of his neck and back given by our Manodhar-da, every time Amrita-da went for his hair cut. That was his only recreation.

If a day could have more than twenty-four hours, he would have worked all through those hours also. An unassuming, detached worker, fully engrossed in work alone. No other activity or other recreation! So unassuming was he that when a visitor asked him about his work, he replied: "I look after the needs of the Ashramites". Much later the visitor came to know that he was a Trustee and the Manager of the Ashram on whom the Mother relied for her day-to-day work. How humble indeed! His dedication—his sadhana can best be understood in the words of the Mother when she wrote on his birthday in 1958.

"1914-1958 To Amrita

After 44 years of faithful service, I greet you at the threshold of Realisation, with love and confidence".

He used to get late very often for the translation class which the Mother used to take in the play-ground. One day when he was late and stood at the door-step of the class, the Mother asked "Amrita, how far is the Divine from you?" He did not reply immediately, but counted the steps till he reached the Mother and said "so many steps Mother". Like Ganesha taking the Pradakshina of Parvati and saying that He has gone round the world and winning the race against Kartikeya—for Amrita-da too, the Divine was very near—just a few steps to reach Her!

Krishna Chakraborty

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K. AMRITA—A VISITOR'S VIEWPOINT*

SHRI K. Amrita, lovingly referred to as Amritada, was a man to whom visitors came for help to be put into contact with the Mother, and they were never disappointed. He never viewed visitors in the light of their capacity of making offerings. The only thing that mattered to him was the visitor's devotion for the Mother—no matter how poor or powerless was the supplicant. He loved all who loved the Mother; he would take the visitor's troubles to his heart and allow nothing to stand between the Mother and the devotee. He would faithfully present the case or the communication to the Mother and receive the responses from her for the devotees. This communication was sacred to him and he held it in trust for the Mother and the devotee. He was indeed the true trustee of the Mother.

When a devotee asked for permission to go to her he never decided beforehand, on the excuse of Mother being busy, whether the devotee should go or not. If refusal had to be there, it had to be only from the Mother. Because of this simplicity of his he received every visitor—rich and poor, powerful and weak—with equal feelings of love. He slighted no one. That was his character. His speciality was that he knew how to say "No" to a visitor with all affection and love. If he was approached by visitors when he was busy or at an odd time, he was never impolite; he was aware how difficult life was in the outside world. He would call them at another time, hear their story of plight with love and kindness, and present the facts to the Mother in the proper perspective. That was the mark of Amritada's humility and compassion, which were unique. He was a rarity.

Jagat Kapadia

* Reproduced from Mother India, Vol. 48, No. 4, Apr. 1995

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AMRITA'S HUMOUR

Often there used to be a mistake in calling the wrong Kailas by our Divine's messenger Suresh Joshi. When Amrita wanted to see me, he used to go and call the lady named Kailas and vice versa. So to avoid this confusion Amrita told me that he was naming me Purusha Kailas and she would be Prakriti Kailas. This shows his humorous way of dealing with us.

The Mother used to take French Translation classes in the play-ground in the evenings. Once our ever busy Amrita was late to the class. The Mother asked him what was the distance between the human and the Divine and told him "Unless you answer this question you should not enter the class". Our witty Amrita, instead of answering the question, went straight to the Mother with long strides, to the astonishment of the others in the class for violating the orders, and he told the Mother, 'Only three steps. Mother, Thou art Divine and I am human.' Mother was much pleased with this apt answer and allowed him to attend the class. The entire class admired his intuitive, apt answer told in a humorous way.

There used to be a big cupboard with a little projection near the entrance of the Mother's room. Often people used to knock against it and get hurt. When they suggested to the Mother that it be shifted to some other place. She didn't agree, saying, "It makes the people conscious." So it remained there like a sentinel. Once our busy overloaded Amrita carrying a big trayfull of things,—letters, prayers, plans, things for the Mother's touch and Prasad, innumerable things, to the Mother's Room, inadvertently knocked his head against the cupboard and got a bump on his forehead. On seeing this bump on the forehead of Amrita who was unloading the things in front of the Mother, the Mother affectionately asked him what was the matter, referring to the bump. "Making me conscious. Mother," was the humorous answer of our Amrita while continuing the work without caring for the pain. Our Amrita cared only for service at all times, keeping the brain calm and cool and witty in all circumstances.

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Amrita-da was one person who was long associated with the Mother even from Her first arrival in Pondicherry in 1914 till the end of his life-journey, on 31-1-1969. Mother seems to have said that he was to die at the age of 50 but She had extended his life-span for another 20 years. He did not like to suffer, he did not suffer,—he was never bed-ridden. Even on the final day of his departure, while he was relaxing at noon in his arm-chair, K approached him, asked him how he was feeling. He answered in a humorous way, that everything with him was alright except his sweet-heart! He was ailing from heart trouble. On 31st January night he went and washed his face and feet and returned to his room and left his body at 8-40 p.m.

When some people were trying to fill up that gap, the Mother told them, that Amrita was the first and the last Manager of the Ashram.

Nolini: Amrita, I have been to Pranab's place for a medical check-up. Dr. Vyas says that I have improved in every way. Even

my chest has increased!

Amrita: That is fine. Wonderful, wonderful!

Nolini: But you know, for a long time I have not been able to increase one thing.

Amrita: What is that?

Nolini: My height. No improvement.

Amrita: I know a good cure for it.

Nolini: A cure to increase my height?

Amrita: Yes. Just raise your heels slowly and secretly, but more secretly than slowly.

Every day Chinmoy fetched water for Amrita at four o'clock. One day Chinmoy was late.

Amrita: Chinmoy, I am dying of thirst. You know my name is Amrita, which means nectar. Since I am not fortunate enough to

drink amrita, I have to depend on your water.

Chinmoy: I am sure, Amrita-da, you have drunk amrita quite a few times during your meditation.

Amrita: You are mistaken. Amrita is meant for the Cosmic Gods, and not for this mortal.

Kailas

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Amrita around 1930