My Savitri work with the Mother

06 September 1961

The following message dated 6th September 1961 from the Mother uplifts our consciousness:

We are not here to do (a little better) what the others do.
We are here to do what the others cannot do, because they
do not have even the idea that it can be done.
We are here to open the way of the future.
Anything else is not worth the trouble
and not worthy of Sri Aurobindos help.

I used to read Savitri with Ambalal Purani according to the Mother's arrangement. We finished reading Book One. Meanwhile he went to the UK and the United States. After he had returned from abroad, he fell ill. In 1965 he passed away. So the Mother arranged for me to read Savitri with Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna) in 1962. Sri Aurobindo first introduced Savitri to Amal in private drafts, and wrote to him all the letters that are now published along with the epic. Amal and I met for the first time in 1961, upstairs in the passage which connects the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's rooms. I casually asked him about a chess board, because just then the Mother and I were doing something on that theme. He drew one and made me understand it.

When we started our reading of Savitri, some people warned Amal against me and asked him to discontinue. Amal cut them short, saying, "The Mother has arranged our reading. Besides, I have seen and felt Huta's soul. I cannot back out."

Amal made me understand Savitri intellectually and aesthetically. As soon as he left my apartment after our study sessions, I used to write down what he had explained to me in detail. I have numerous cherished notebooks which are of great value to me.

It was 7th August 1965 when I finished reading the whole of Savitri with Amal. I could not check my tears of joy. He too was moved. We shook hands over the long harmonious collaboration and absorbing discussions. That day in the afternoon I went to the Mother to inform her about it. She smiled, heaved a sigh of happiness, and said:

Ah, one big work is done.

Here are Amal's own words, published in the Mother India Monthly Review of Culture in May 1979, on page 276:

An appreciative treatment of Savitri in its poetic quality—an elucidation of its thought-content, its imagery-inspiration, its word-craft and its rhythm-impact: this [the Mother] did not consider as beyond another interpreter than herself. I can conclude thus because she fully approved Huta's proposal to her that I should go through the whole of the epic with Huta during the period when the Mother and she were doing the illustrations of the poem, the Mother making outline sketches or suggesting the general disposition of the required picture and Huta following her instructions, invoking Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help, keeping the Mother's presence constantly linked to both her heart and hand and producing the final finished painting.

It was a long-drawn-out pleasure—my study-sessions with the young artist who proved to be a most eager and receptive pupil, indeed so receptive that on a few occasions, with my expository enthusiasm serving as a spur, she would come out with ideas that taught a thing or two to the teacher.

I never knew he would write such a thing about me. I always marvelled at his modesty, selflessness and goodwill.

Here is Amal Kiran's (K.D. Sethna) letter dated 4th December 1974 to me about the Mother's visions of Savitri:

Dear Huta,

May I make a request to you? You are free to say "No" without feeling any embarrassment. I remember that in your diary there is a statement by the Mother that before she came here she went through all possible occult experiences. She never told them to Sri Aurobindo but later she found them all expressed in his Savitri. I should like very much to publish this statement in the February Mother India. Will you permit me and, if you do, will you please send me as soon as possible the exact words as reported by you? I shall be thankful and, of course, I'll mention that they are from you.

Yours affectionately, Amal

Later Amal gave the account of this matter in Mother India's issue of November 1982 and not in that of February 1975.

There was no precise work. I had nothing to do. My life seemed like dry husks—flying in any direction. There was no solidity in my whole being, which was shaken to the core. I was suffocated and longed to get out of my old self to achieve something higher, something new. There was no indication from the Mother to start doing the Savitri paintings. Once again I was worried and thought: how was it possible to express the whole Epic through painting?

Every day in the afternoon I went to the Mother to receive lovely flowers and her charming smile. But still I was not happy and peaceful. It was only for the Mother's Love that I continued to live, otherwise there was no point.

The Mother kept quiet regarding the Savitri paintings. My whole being was shaken and cut into pieces. The tremendous churning went on and on in me. Many a time I sat in my Meditation Room and wept bitterly—just to lighten my heart. I thought to myself: "Oh what to do, where to go, what will happen?" Not a single human being knew the truth except the Mother.