Sri Aurobindo to Dilip - Volume II

DILIP-DA

Sri Aurobindo, I heard, once said to Nirod-da that Dilip was among the four or five really beautiful men he had ever seen.

When I first saw him, though Father's senior and nearing forty, Dilip-da was quite handsome. But more than anything else, what left a lasting impression in my nine-year-old heart was his warm personality: affectionate, graceful, generous, a heart of gold. It is well nigh seventy years now but I can still vividly recall how at once he put me at my ease (I was rather shy, you know!).

My father, Prithwi Singh Nahar, had taken Rajabhai (my brother Abhay) and me to the Ashram for the darshan of 21 February 1935, for Mother's fifty-seventh birth anniversary. We were allotted a ground floor room in Dilipda's house, Tresor. He lived upstairs. And there, every morning of our stay, he gave us a big breakfast. The table in the veranda (see picture on facing page) was loaded with all sorts of eatables of which I remember best the piled up dishes of toasted bread—delicious! Around the table we sat. Father at the head, facing east, where the flight of stairs from the ground floor ended; Dilip da facing south, his back to his room; I was to his right between him and my father. Across the table were my eleven-year-old brother, flanked on either side by a black-bearded Anilkumar and a shiny-pated Manuda.

By the way, I spoke of Dilipda's "room". It would be more correct to call it a hall. Two big French windows opened onto a wide veranda with a magnificent view of the sea. It was in that hall, seated between the two windows, that Dilip da gave his weekly singing recitals—musical meditation—to twenty or thirty fellow disciples.

As we ate our breakfast, the elders talked; above my head of course. But the eyes seem to have clicked away and certain

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pictures remain unfaded. A sudden hush. Nolinida sedately coming up the stairs. Dressed in white dhoti, kurta and a cap on his head. He mounts the stairs, gives us a smile or a nod, declines the offer of a tea. "Dilip, here is a letter for you." His work done, unhurriedly he goes down the stairs and out of the house. Such was Sri Aurobindo's "Postman".

Dilipda reads the letter silently. The others sip their tea or empty the dishes. Then Dilipda hands over the letter to my father, who too reads it silently then passes it on to Anil-kumar. Suddenly we hear the sound of running footsteps. We all look. It is a breathless Nirod-da, bounding up the stairs. He is warmly welcomed. "Here, Dilipda" he says and puts his letter in Dilipda's extended hand. He too has been visited by Sri Aurobindo's Postman. While others are reading the letter, Nirod-da does justice to the tea. Then an animated conversation breaks out. I listen uncomprehendingly.

My incomprehension did not stem from any language barrier—they were all Bengalis and spoke in Bengali—but from the subject matter itself. As I grew up, my mental faculties developed, my comprehension enlarged, I began to appreciate Dilipda's wide-ranging interests. He was, to boot, an

omnivorous reader (including Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse!).

Many of Sri Aurobindo's letters to Dilip da have been published, though partially, often subject-wise. It was Satprem who mooted the idea of publishing them in their entirety. Often enough he told me that Dilipda's Sri Aurobindo Came to Me was the best book he read on Sri Aurobindo. So I was very happy when the present work came my way. Here we have the complete letters as Sri Aurobindo wrote them. The editing has been kept to a minimum as we were loath to change even a comma—except conceding a point to the present usage of deleting the comma before a dash.

Consistency, it is said, is the hobgoblin of little minds. Dilipda's mind was by no means little, quite the opposite in fact. This book of letters offers us by far the most intimate glimpse we have been granted of the Guru. For, more than

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to anyone else, it was to Dilipda that Sri Aurobindo chose to disclose many details of his personal life. As well as confiding in him secrets concerning other disciples, over which we draw a curtain.

Dilipda had a bugbear, though: the Supramental. Because at the time he had not grasped Sri Aurobindo's revolutionary aim. I understood that the animated discussion on that February day was about the possibility of the Supramental descent. To my father's question Sri Aurobindo wrote back "I don't think you need attach any value to what Dilip professes to think about the Supramental." And explained why that descent was "an inevitable necessity in the logic of things and is therefore sure."3

Variety, Sri Aurobindo says, is also the spice of Yoga. The reader can therefore look forward to a tasty fare.

Sometimes it does make for a painful reading. But we let them stand as they are, since we all share alike certain human weaknesses, so that every reader may profit by these letters. Some letters, like that of 17 February 1934, tug at our heart. The years 1934-1935 were crucial years for the world. Little noticed by the common man. Hitler and Mussolini, Nazism and Fascism were gathering force before breaking into a furious, whirling maelstrom that would soon hit the world, sweeping all before it. And in the invisible, occult plane Sri Aurobindo and Mother were fighting the rising of the Dark; so that the children of Wotan do not wholly possess the world.

We all harbour in us conflicting persons. In Dilipda's case, there was a constant tussle between his western educated disbelieving intellect and his ancestral Hindu emotion of Vaishnava bhakti.

What shines through these letters is Sri Aurobindo's immense patience of guiding Dilip da through his turbulence, his despondency, and nurturing with such tender care his latent talents. And the infinite love Sri Aurobindo and Mother poured on this over-sensitive but exceptional Being for his full blossoming.

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When Sri Aurobindo and Mother speak of a person's beauty it is as much of the inner as of the outward beauty. Dilipda was indeed a beautiful person.

Mother and Dilipda? When Dilipda "pranamed" Mother it was a feast for the eyes of the onlookers and the gods. During the general pranam held on the ground floor meditation hall in the morning, when Dilipda went to Mother it was almost ritualistic. He would comfortably sit on the floor, take off his spectacles, put them aside, and lay his head on Mother's lap. Mother would put her hand on his head, stroke it gently, and then both of them go off into some unknown world with her right palm on his head. We would look on entranced at the Tenderness incarnate of Divine Love;

Sri Aurobindo and Dilipda? An infinitude of Knowledge answering finite's myriad questions. Never linear, always spherical. Each droplet sparkling like a many-facetted diamond. Always unassuming, never imposing. Reason's logic is countered with sounder logic. A gentle irony like a cool breeze blows away mind's cobwebs. No insistence to toe his line. No judgment, always a clarity of vision. Comprehension. Compassion. Rarely, a sigh escapes the Guru's lips, "It is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear."

Sujata Nahar

19 October 2004

(Mahasashti 1411)

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