Champaklal Speaks

Dilemma

In the early days, as you know, Sri Aurobindo used to smoke cigars. It was my work to collect the empty boxes and sell them in the market. Each time, on the way to the market, I wondered: the boxes in which Sri Aurobindo's cigars have come, which have been handled by him and also touched by the Mother, how can we give them away to people who don't value them for all this? So I was always tempted to keep them and pay their market price to the Mother, but I managed to resist the desire and control my wish.

One day Mother brought an old timepiece from Sri Aurobindo's room, gave it to me and asked me to sell it to a watch repairer at whatever price he offered. Dutifully I took it to the shop and he offered a rupee and a quarter or perhaps two rupees and odd. I could not bring myself to part with the timepiece. So I brought it back and told Mother what had happened.

“May I keep it?” I asked her with trepidation.

She smiled beautifully. “All right,” she said, but took it back.

Imagine my surprise when the next morning Sri Aurobindo took the timepiece in his hand and smiling sweetly asked me:

“Champaklal, you want the clock?” And he placed it in my hands.

Thereafter it stayed with me. Once, however, Dikshitbhai who had come on a visit had no watch with him and Punamchandbhai suggested I give this clock to him. Naturally I was reluctant, but finally, thinking that my reluctance was due to what many called my 'bugbear of selfishness', I yielded. And the tragedy of it was that the clock was stolen from Diskshitbhai's room. When occasion arose I mentioned the incident to the Mother. To my mind the clock was invaluable because it was used by Sri Aurobindo—it used to be kept on the table near him when he saw people in the mornings in the verandah of Library House.

From childhood I disliked anyone using my things. Instead when possible I used to buy books, pens etc. and give rather than loan the ones I used to others; in fact I did this several times; only I could not understand why I behaved like that. But when I heard that Mother too did the same thing, I was sure that this behaviour was not rooted in selfishness. And when I asked Mother about it she explained everything to me very nicely, in detail, and finally said, “There was no selfishness at all in your not wanting to lend the clock to Dikshit.” Then she added, “It was a lesson.”