Champaklal Speaks

Mounting Darshan Photographs

1952-02-12

It was Kamala's birthday. Mother gave her a silver dish with a picture of Saraswati playing the Veena and said: “I am here.” She also gave a kerchief saying it was used by Sri Aurobindo in last August's Darshan. Nolini had brought a German magazine¹ sent from London, containing Cartier-Bresson's photographs. Mother took out the pages with the pictures and gave them to Kamala.

I cut out those pictures; they were printed on both sides of the pages. Then I cut out the middle portions of some mound as precisely as I could and framed the pictures back to back between the two mounts so that they could be seen from both the sides.

On seeing my work. Mother said: “Very cleverly arranged.” She went on to praise it very much.

C: “Mother, please sign it.”

Mother: “I don't feel like doing it.” In those days she was not autographing Darshan photographs.

C: “Don't do it, Mother, if you don't feel like it. It is all right.” Even so, she wrote “Blessings” on the pictures.

Mother had liked the mounted pictures so much that the next day she asked me to fetch them from Kamala as she wanted to show them to Pranab. While showing them to him she remarked: “How nicely they are arranged by Champaklal! Isn't it so?”