Among the Not So Great

Manibhai

My belief is that to have no wants is Divine.

Socrates

Manibhai hailed from Old East Africa. He was a Postmaster there, well respected for his work and as a person. He happened to read some literature on Sri Aurobindo and the Ashram and decided to come over — way back in 1929. He visited this place and then pulled out his African roots and set them here in 1930. He ventured out for a short duration, but came back around 1945. That’s when I first set my eyes on him. Before he arrived here, he was, it seems, very fastidious as far as his dress was concerned. When I saw him he was anything but fastidious (in dress) — rather its negation.

He was a big, powerfully built man, slow of speech and action, but sure of both. The first look at him was not very reassuring. Big, dark, bushy eye-brows with deep-set eyes, further deepened by high cheek-bones and a sharp nose — nothing to relieve the feeling of foreboding — not until he smiled. His face creased up and his eyes shone and lit up the face. This was the outer man. He was in charge of the Smithy. The Smithy was where now stands the Post Office delivery section. A man of iron, he worked on the same metal. Let’s now take a peep inside — maybe you could find some gold!

I go back a few years before I met Manibhai and recount at random a few anecdotes of his life. These have been told to me by others who knew him. They all agreed upon this — that his sincerity was unquestionable as was his simplicity complete. These two complemented each other to make a tremendous worker but they often complicated matters. I just recount, you may draw your conclusions. In charge of the Smithy — as mentioned before — he adhered strictly to one rule, “No chit from the Mother — No work” — as good a practice as any. One day the Bakery Room lock was jammed, and it had to be opened to start the work early to have the bread ready. So Manibhai was called. He came, saw and shook his head negatively, “No chit, so no work.” The Mother could be seen only later — so? Manibhai was as obstinate as the lock. What to do? Someone took up courage, and did need quite a bit of it to rub Manibhai the wrong way, and broke open the lock. Manibhai was very displeased, to say the least. But the Mother later said it was alright, so that appeased him.

Once even Pavitra-da was at the receiving end. He wanted to get some work done — and he did not bring the Mother’s chit. “No” was the answer, until the Mother wrote that henceforth he could do Pavitra-da’s work when he asked for it.

There was once a servant-strike at Padmasini-amma’s, some trouble was brewing (Electric Dept. where maids now wait, seeking domestic work). The Mother told Manibhai to go there and shout. He did just that, and the strikers ran away. It seems sound could break walls, so why not a strike!

In those days the Bakery made loaves of bread of bigger dimensions — maybe a foot long, about 12cm-15cm broad and 8cm high tapering towards both ends and rounded up. It cut up to about 36 slices. Well, Manibhai would have one of these loaves for dinner! No extra milk or vegetable. Ravindraji offered extra milk, but Manibhai would have none of it. He softened the bread in water and gulped it down. It seems someone told of this phenomenon to Sri Aurobindo and he jokingly remarked, “Oh, humanly impossible!”. When Manibhai heard of it, he in his simplicity and limited knowledge of English missed the “joke” part of it and thought to himself, “I am not human.” He stopped eating the full loaf. This was again reported to Sri Aurobindo. The Lord was moved and sent someone to explain to Manibhai that the remark was all a joke, and he should revert to his old diet.

There was this strange happening (to Manibhai, M1) back in 1942 or 43 (War Time). He got into his head to go out. He told the Mother and went to Bombay. There he met another Manibhai (M2 for our reference — he was Kumud’s, Chandrakant’s father). He asked M2 for some money, which was given. He went and bought himself a big basket, filled it with mangoes and went round hawking them. Why? I don’t think even he knew. Then he enlisted himself in the army. In a few days he developed an acute pain in the lower abdomen. The army doctor diagnosed it as appendicitis and said an immediate operation was necessary. Manibhai would not be rushed. He said, “No, I have to first inform the Mother.” The doctor was nonplussed — he tried to persuade the patient to consent. The patient would not budge. The doctor let him be. Manibhai then sent a telegram to the Mother. A reply “blessings” was wired back to Manibhai. All this took 3-4 days. Manibhai was now ready for the operation and surrendered himself to the doctor. The doctor examined and to his amazement found no cause for an operation. Gone was the pain too. Manibhai was all smiles. All’s well that ends well.

There is an an interesting story about Manibhai-2 (of Bombay). He was a businessman and was still “busy” there though his three daughters and a son (Kusum, Kumud, Mridula and Navin) were in the Ashram. The others of the family settled later on. Manibhai came and went on occasions. He was a devotee of long standing. He came to know that Sri Aurobindo was partial to pomegranates. The fruits were hard to come by locally in those days, more so in that War-period. Manibhai made contact with some Middle East merchants and somehow kept an unbroken supply of the fruit for Sri Aurobindo — who promptly prefixed (for identification purposes) Manibhai with the fruit he supplied. Pomegranate Manibhai. (There seem to be a surfeit of Manibhais in Gujarat.) This Manibhai also known as “Pehelwan”— it seems had done some wrestling — he did look like one, big and burly, quick-tempered too. Curiously pomegranate in French is grenade — appropriate.

1945 — Manibhai came back, changes were taking place — Harpagon got started — so no old Smithy. He was now transported to Ambabikshu Garden. At that time it was considered a far-off place, a rural area, on the outskirts of Pondy. He had a pet monkey which searched for lice in your hair if you put your head in front of it. Once two bullocks were locked in a fight, Manibhai pulled them apart and was rewarded with a broken arm. He then shifted to Cazanove and finally to the third garden of Le Faucheur.

Le Faucheur consists of three gardens. Two are close to the main road. The third is quite a way in, reached in those days by a very sandy pathway, bordered with cacti. (Now the road is tarred.) Once, as a group of us was going there ploughing our way on cycles through the sand, Dhanavanti landed in the cacti. Manibhai applied some age-old medicinal powder kept in an open earthen saucer. She survived the treatment without complications. A trained doctor would have been mortified.

The third garden was actually a large field — a lonely place. Casuarina trees filled most of it. A portion consisted of rice paddies. A number of coconut trees bordered two sides. The Ariankuppam river and its back waters formed its eastern border. A very picturesque place it was and still is. Near the entrance was the local crematorium. Snakes including some cobras co-existed with Manibhai. The other denizens of the place were half a dozen dogs: Brownie, Mousy, Kakudi, etc. His and the dogs’ abode was a small mud-walled hut — 3m x 4m. At the centre the thatched roof stood at maybe 2.5m. You had to bend double to enter. A charpoy (rope-cot) was the main and only piece of furniture. Pots and pans and a primitive stove occupied one corner. The other corners were filled with a few clothes, hurricane lanterns (1 or 2), 2-3 lathis of various sizes, a coconut knife etc. An old lady’s cycle had also to fit in. The few clothes were the simplest the Ashram supplied — dhotis, shirts and gamchas (gamcha is a very thin usually coloured, very absorbent towel, popular in Bengal, Bihar, etc.). He himself sometimes fashioned and stitched an extra shirt out of a gamcha. He just folded it in half, cut a hole for his head to go through and stitched up the sides (by hand) leaving a gap on either side to let his arms through. He remodelled a three-cell torch into a six-cell one by bandaging up a long tin to the original barrel. The switch was a piece of GI wire. He hung it when in use on one of his shoulders much like a submachine gun. His duties were only at night as a watchman. You can well imagine the apparition — a big dark man, lathi in one hand, the torch hung on the other, draped in all those nondescript clothes. 3-4 dogs trailing him completed the picture. This is how we met him when we went to help him out after a paddy harvest or any such time when extra personnel were required as night-watchmen or when we just chose not to waste a beautiful moonlit night at home in bed. He received us with a warm “Hello, Captain Mona”. (Mona used to be quite a night-watchman in his younger days and led us on these night forays.) We entered his hut and he would offer us everything: tea, some blankets (given to him by some kind-hearted friend) and some pillows. The last were gunny bags stuffed with coconut fibre and sawdust. If guests were more than the pillows, he would gently say, “Kakudi, Mousy, please give your pillows to the guests.” And our canine hosts would get up and go lie under the charpoy. We accepted such hospitality with as much sangfroid as each could muster. Personally I had no problems.

Manibhai was conscience-driven and a man of duty. A batch of us were at his place on “night duty”. We plucked a few coconuts on one of our rounds and left them on the path to be picked up on the way back. As we moved on, much to our consternation, we saw Manibhai coming along with his retinue of dogs and his search-light-torch. He would certainly see the coconuts (it was a moonlit night too). We tried to talk him to going back to his hut — showing some concern for him, saying “Why do you want to go round when we are here? You can rest this one night peacefully.” etc. etc. At first he was insistent in doing his duty. Then it must have hit him — the false note in our concern for his wellbeing. He reluctantly turned back with a parting shot, saying, “If you want some coconuts, you may take some.” It must have been very hard for him to bypass his conscience to allow us to pilfer those nuts.

Once — at day time — two of us went cycling to Le Faucheur. We asked Manibhai if we could have a coconut apiece. Again he was in a dilemma. He mulled over it (our request) and came up with a circumventive answer. He said pointing to a corner of his hut, “There is a knife” and pointing outside, “there is a coconut tree” and then added an after thought, “I am only a night-watchman.”

Norman Jr. and I were frequent visitors to Le Faucheur. Manibhai would offer tea in a chipped old cup, along with his brand of ‘Rothi’. Rothi was a thick chappati-like affair made of dough which itself was Dining Room bread resoaked (a reverse process). If Norman refused the Rothi he would say “O, don’t be so British, come on, have one.” The lantern had a chimney like a jigsaw puzzle of a dozen pieces stuck with cement. I asked him why he couldn’t get a new one. He smiled and asked me: “Can you say the new one will not break?” I just returned his smile, having no guarantee card for a chimney.

The man was of such a brand, that when he said, “Batti, nothing can happen without the Mother’s permission, not a leaf can fall without Her permission,” one could well believe that he was convinced of it, whatever one’s own belief.

One day I heard that he had fallen and broken his thigh bone. He was taken to Madras to have it set right and get a steel pin put in. The setting was not well done. He was in great pain and came back home, back to Le Faucheur, smiling. (By now he had a larger room with brick walls and a tin roof.) He could not walk, but was advised to do so. He set up a waist high parallel bars-like apparatus with casuarina poles to learn to walk. All his efforts failed. The pain increased. He used to drag himself on his seat, legs stretched out in front. He was confined to his hut. For his evacuation, he had a small pit dug in a corner of the room, did the job on some paper sheets, to be thrown out later. The paper sheets were of note-book size, so I supplied him with old newspaper — The Hindu. He appreciated my help and remarked, “Batti, I get all the World-news and better packets afterwards.” The papers were of course a month or so outdated. Some time later, he suddenly left trying. The decline was rapid, and soon on 12th January 1967 he passed away without a ripple. We were 4 or 5 at his funeral. This was but in conformity with his life.

What say you? Was he a great man or at least a man worth knowing, worth remembering? He left nothing behind — no book, no disciple, just fond memories in a handful of people.

In his real life he could not impress any sign of his passing — the path he chose was bare and hard but straight. Maybe straight paths tend to be hard and bare. So only in our minds may we invoke him and his kindred for that moment of pleasure.