Champaklal Speaks

Library House

When I first came here in April 1921, Sri Aurobindo was living in the Guest House.¹ When I came for good in June 1923, both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were living in Library House.² Sri Aurobindo used to see people in the morning in the verandah upstairs. At that time it was an open verandah, covered on three sides (east, west and south) with big curtains; the windows you now see on these sides were put in much later. The hall to its north, where Mother distributed Prosperity³ blessings, was then her Stores. The room to the north of this hall was Mother's room (it was later to be my room). The corner room (to the east of the hall) was Sri Aurobindo's. The room to the left, on the top of the staircase, was Datta's⁴ (later Rajangam's).

The new house (28, Rue Francois Martin), the last that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother occupied, is called Meditation House. Later, in the hall outside Amrita's room, Mother used to preside over collective meditations. For many years she also distributed flowers etc here.

There were three doors (the upper halves had shutters) connecting the Stores and the verandah but only the middle one was used; the easternmost door was kept shut. Three chairs were placed along the eastern side of the verandah, leaving sufficient space between them. The centre one was for Sri Aurobindo, it had a small table in front. Along the southern side of the verandah, there was a row of chairs.

As I said, Sri Aurobindo used to meet visitors in the morning. Amrita would come up with the newspaper and tell him who were due to meet him that day. Then Amrita would go down and announce the order in which people had to come up. After the interviews were over and while Sri Aurobindo read the newspaper, those sadhaks who were permitted would sit there in meditation. Usually it was Tirupati, Rajangam, Kanai⁵ and myself. We used to sit on chairs. Now, who would not like to meditate in Sri Aurobindo's presence? But in those days people did not ask for something just because it was given or permitted to someone else.

The shutters of the three doors in the verandah were kept open. And, as I heard later from Mother, whenever she was in the Stores, through those open shutters she could watch the visitors as they walked across the verandah to meet Sri Aurobindo. That was how she had first seen me and, it appears, she told Sri Aurobindo: “This boy will help me in my work; he will be very useful.” That was long before I took up work with her. I may add that she said something similar of Pavitra⁶. Seeing him she told Sri Aurobindo: “He will be very useful; he will do all my foreign correspondence.” And that is exactly what happened.

Now regarding the rooms on the ground floor of this house: the room which is at present the office of the Reception Service (where photographs are sold) was Moni's⁷. He had a humorous and happy disposition and his poems reflect this nature. When he left, that room was given to me. The present Reception Hall was Nolini's room and the present reading room was Amrita's. What is now the Publication Department display and sales room was Bijoy's⁸ and its office under the terrace leading to Ravindra's rooms in the back courtyard was Barin's⁹ room.

When Sri Aurobindo came down to the dining room (the present fruit distribution room) to have his food, he came down the Prosperity stairs, passed through Nolini's room, Bijoy's room and then entered the dining room. (This dining room was only for (the inmates of Library House; the inmates of Guest House, where I Stayed in the room that Mother had lived in, had a separate dining room.) It is specially interesting to me that everybody receives fruits from the very room where once Sri Aurobindo had his meals.

An interesting feature of those days: Cows were brought by their owners to the customers' houses and milked in their presence, Another unusual custom I saw here for the first time was that a crudely stuffed calf-skin tied to four sticks was kept in front of the cow which licked it while being milked! In Gujarat no cow would lick a dead calf stuffed in this way. After the Mother was informed that the cows had been brought to the front courtyard, she would send a vessel downstairs with a cloth strainer over it and then herself come down and hold the strainer over the vessel.