Sri Aurobindo - The Smiling Master

Chapter 4

Sri Aurobindo's Humour: An Analysis

Analysing Sri Aurobindo's humour? What a daredevil task we have been proposing to undertake! For, a chorus of protests will immediately arise, how can humour, of all things, be analysed? It is so soft, so delicate and so living. Its flow is as spontaneous as the flight of a humming-bird and you venture to analyse and classify* it! How can you hope to "weigh an argument in a balance, measure social forces with a slide rule, and resolve humour with a spectroscope"?' Has not Prof. Leacock rightly warned: "This process of analysis is like applying the microscope to the soft beauty of the flower wet with dew, or to the down on the ripened peach. It seems to threaten to turn it into something else."²

But this is just one side of the picture: there is another to it. For an untrained reader it is not always easy to understand and appreciate a subtle and intelligent point of humour when it comes from the pen of a truly master artist. To perceive the point intended, by breaking the riddle, often requires a great amount of reflection on the part of the reader or the listener. Has not Prof. Walter Jerrold spoken of someone who foolishly laughed out without understanding, also of one who remained grave for a long time and then suddenly burst into laughter? Here are the two incidents as narrated by the Professor:

1."A tea-table jest having been received with hearty laughter, one of the longest of the laughers being a young lady, who, when she had at long last discovered her speaking voice, set everyone else off anew by naively whispering: 'I don't see it yet.' "'

2."I remember making a joke after a meeting of the clergy in Yorkshire, where there was a Reverend Mr. Buckle who never spoke. When I gave his health saying that he was a buckle without a tongue, most persons within hearing laughed, but my next neighbour somehow sat unmoved and sunk in thought. At

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last, a quarter of an hour after we had all done, he suddenly nudged me, exclaiming: 'I see now what you meant; you meant a joke! That relieves me of my anxiety.' With this he started laughing."⁴

Hence arises the necessity of a proper training through deeper probe and acute analysis. This analysis, it goes without saying, should not be dry and dissectional: it must be, to serve its purpose, perceptive and illuminating. And this is what we propose to do in the present chapter. A taste cultivated in this way will, we hope, contribute to the readers' proper enjoyment of Sri Aurobindo's humour. May we in this connection quote with humility what Prof. Leacock once uttered:

"Personally I am quite sure that if I gave a course of lectures on the practice of humour, the students would go away from it, if not better men, at least funnier."⁵

Yes, even a simple verbal humour that depends for its effect on the subtle play upon the words and their sounds cannot be fully appreciated in all its beauty and richness unless the reader possesses a spontaneous or cultivated sense of a multifaceted perception which simultaneously seizes all the nuances intended by the author. Otherwise he has to be content with the bare skeletal meaning of the phrase which may perhaps furnish him with some information but will surely fail to enliven him with the rasa of joy. The two following examples of what is called 'humour of words' will make clear what we have been trying to convey. These examples have been taken from Stephen Lea-cock's Humour and Humanity.

Theodore Hook wrote: "A peer appears upon the pier, who blind still goes to sea." The informational content of this sentence is limited to the simple fact that a certain nobleman, although deprived of sight, was found upon the dock and he decided to go to the ocean. We may perhaps sympathise with the gentleman on his state of sightlessness but that's all, there is nothing further to it.

But when we contemplate on the sound-structure of the

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sentence, it at once shines forth and offers us the prospect of a lot of fun. One has simply to note the succession of sounds "A peer", "A-ppear" and "a pier" and remember the dictionary meanings (the sound "peer" - not the word - means at the same time a 'nobleman', 'to come into sight' and 'a dock'; the sound "see" refers indifferently to the 'ocean' or to 'vision') and the humour will be apparent.

The second example is still more interesting. Watching a fire raging, if someone exclaims: "Dickens! how it burns!", what does he seek to convey? The dictionary wryly notes: dickens (colloq., in imprecations etc.) devil, deuce. But is that all? Does the exclamatory sentence merely express the wonderment and irritation of the speaker and nothing more? Not so; as a matter of fact, it is packed with humour. To quote Leacock's words:

"When some great forgotten genius first said 'Dickens! how it burns!' the terrific amusement lay in the fact that the name of Dickens could be used as an expletive, and 'Burns' meant either conflagration or a Scotsman."⁶

Here is a third example - this time, an example of what is termed a 'humour of ideas'. It is a very intelligent piece of humour whose beauty will vanish if we try to explain it. So, we stop with merely reproducing it.

"There was a famous canon who had said to his brother: 'Brother, you and I are exceptions to the laws of Nature. You have risen by your gravity and I have sunk by my levity.' "⁷

As in all other fields of his literary creativity - philosophy, sociology, history, poetry, drama, criticism - Sri Aurobindo has been a master artist even in the domain of production of humorous writings. And being a true artist endowed with a genius of a very high order he had not to labour hard or take to any artificial device to produce the required comic effect. Rich humour used to flow out from his pen, if he so wished, in a continuous stream. Still the fact remains that when we try, out of curiosity, to probe deeper into the matter and seek to

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discover the essential techniques and basic devices which Sri Aurobindo spontaneously utilised in his humorous writings, we discover a certain number of core elements which meet us again and again in varying permutations and combinations. In the present chapter we propose to single out some of the more important literary devices and illustrate them with suitable examples chosen from Sri Aurobindo's writings.

But let us repeat it once again that Sri Aurobindo was not a mere technician who consciously and deliberately manipulated his devices to produce the comic effect. In his case it was the other way round. Being a creative genius he produced humour in a most natural and spontaneous way and it is only later on, when an analyst seeks to disengage the factors instrumental to the production of his humour, that one finds out the constitutive devices. What Sri Aurobindo wrote on the subject of "Figures of Speech" in connection with the difference between an inspired true poet and a mere poetaster who labours hard to create an ornamental effect, equally applies to the case of a writer of humour with consummate skill like his.

The devices should never b.e made ends in themselves, but rather they have to serve the Rasa and become means of its adequate realisation. They should spontaneously arise with the tide of the Rasa and their introduction should be absolutely natural and unobtrusive. And such is the case with Sri Aurobindo's humour.

With these preliminary remarks which should help us keep our study within the bounds of proper perspective, we proceed to the task of classifying the devices and techniques found in Sri Aurobindo's humorous writings.

Devices and Techniques

I. Humorous rhyming (with or without alliteration):

1. NB: But can you tell us what the experience of Self was like? Was it by any chance like the one you speak of in your Uttarpara Speech — the Vasudeva experience?

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Sri Aurobindo: Great jumble-Mumble! What has Vasu-deva to do with it?⁸

2.NB: As poetry also has come, I wouldn't like to give it up either. But how to harmonise?

Sri Aurobindo: No need to harmonise by any set arrangement — only keep up the concentration. One hour of packed concentration or even a few minutes can do as much as three hours less packed. Do you say yours is not packed? Well, striped, streaked, spotted, dotted or whatever it may be.^v

3.NB: A good piece of news: I find now three mules -mules, mind you, not horses - are trying to draw me on: (1) meditation, (2) silence (not of the mind but of the buccal cavity), (3) poetry.

The buccal silence I can keep off from clashing with the other two. But the collision between meditation and poetry is inevitable unless I favour one of them.

Sri Aurobindo: There are three ways of meeting the situation - (1) say "Yes, yes" to both parties, - but that may create trouble afterwards, (2) Be cryptic-cystic in your answers, so that neither will be sure what you mean, (3) silence with an occasional profound "Ah, hum, Yes, eh!" "Ah hum" always sounds unfathomable depths - and if "Yes" is too positive, "eh" tones it down and corrects it. You have not enough worldly wisdom.¹⁰

II. Humorous repetition of a single word:

1.NB: ... Where is the sincerity in me? So wouldn't it be better for you to let me go instead of wasting so much of your time and labour on me?

Sri Aurobindo: If you had some big object in ordinary life and nothing to hope for here it might be different, but as things are it would be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul's reward hereafter.¹¹

2.NB: Apart from this depression, these last two days I have

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been feeling unaccountedly rotten, sad, irritated, why?

Sri Aurobindo: No reason. If the Man of Sorrows gets grounds to wallow in agony, he wallows on the ground - if he doesn't he wallows in the waters - if waters are denied to him, he will wallow in the air. If no he will wallow in the void. But wallow he must. Even if you had written a poem as deep as the sea and as splendid as the sunrise, he would still wallow, if that was his fancy - "wallow and luxuriously wail to the world and its Witness."¹²

[N.B. Note the pun on "grounds" and "ground", and alliteration in "wallow", "wail", "world" and "Witness"; these have come so smoothly, almost inevitably!]

3. NB: God, alas! What a queer fellow your Supramental will be!

Sri Aurobindo: Can't be queerer than the mental human! But I suppose he will seem queer to the queer mental human just as the queer human seems queer to the queer vital monkey and the queer monkey to the queer material jelly-fish. All queer together! and to each other!¹³

III. Echo device: Responding in the same vein and style:

1.NB: You discover too late, Sir! No escape now but to drag us, the ignorant fools and for this very reason I was protesting that fools can't do what Avatars can. However!

Sri Aurobindo: Well, they can if they stop being fools. However!!!¹⁴

2.NB: By the way, after a long time I enjoyed two or three days' true Nirodian, i.e. unyogic, jollity; but the yogic Nirodian gloom has restarted! Goodness knows why these glooms and blooms come and go!

Sri Aurobindo: Goodness doesn't know why, nor does anybody else.¹⁵

3.NB: But even if you have no medico in you, it is high time that something opens up in you! Don't you see how so many difficult cases are rising, the nearer the Supramental is des-

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cending, if it is descending at all?

Sri Aurobindo: Let it open up in you then. Don't you see how all these things are coming just to make you bloom into a Dhanwantari [A legendary Indian doctor] overnight?¹⁶

4.NB: Today I shall request you to 'stand and deliver' on a different subject.... What shall I hear from the mighty pen as a remedy for my chronic despair and impatience?

Sri Aurobindo: Now look here, ... if I can be patient with you and your despairs, why can't you be patient with the forces? ...Now, sir, if my yuga-like persistence could work a miracle ... with such a one [as X], why can't you expect an earlier result with you? Stand and answer.¹⁷

5.DK: O Guru, I send you a Bengali poem of mine entitled Akuti which I translated last night into English. Can you revise it? Is it good? Mediocre? Worthless? Frank opinion, please!

But what about Raihana's letter? Won't return? You keep mum. What's up? Bridge-building? Supramental? Woolgathering?

Sri Aurobindo: I shall see if I can get a few minutes for revising your English translation. But you seem to have progressed greatly in your English verse - How so quickly? Yogic Force? Internal combustion? The subliminal self?

Raihana's letter and drawing which have unaccountably turned up again with me. Poltergeist? Your inadvertence? Mine?¹⁸

IV. Humorous alliteration and sound-sameness:

1.AK: In line 2 of the poem I have sent up, "utter" seems quite a clutter after "batter" of the previous line and "but" in the same. Is it advisable to substitute "perfect" for it?

Sri Aurobindo: "Utter" and "batter" may be a clutter and a clatter but "perfect" is much too flatter. So find something else which will fit more inevitably into the matter.¹⁹

2.NB: A, though "much more granite" than I, seems to

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receive very well in poetry.

Sri Aurobindo: Ah, you think so! My dear sir, I have to do boring operations like digging an artesian well before I can get a few poems out of him - And afterwards it is one long wail "All gone! all gone! I am damned, doomed, dead, deteriorated, degenerated" for a whole day period. Sir, A is twice the Man of Sorrows you are.²⁰

3.NB: Guru, I fear you will find the poem suffering from the first signs of flu!

Sri Aurobindo: Well, sir, your flu has made you fluid and fluent, and the hammering headache has hammered out a fine poem. Wa Allah!²¹

4.NB: If you advise me that one has to go on sitting and racking one's brain - inspiration or no inspiration and then only the grey matter can open up, I'll say it is not a very royal road that you show me.

Sri Aurobindo: I don't think the inspiration usually comes in that way! It is better to put yourself in receptive attitude and let it come. If it doesn't come, try, try again but no need to sweat and swear and writhe.²²

5.NB: My friend Jatin Bal, whose photo I sent you the other day, expressed a desire for Darshan. Is permission possible?

Sri Aurobindo: No recollection of it at all! But the Mother remembers and she has given me a glimmering and gleaming reflection of a recollection. Yes, it was the photograph in which you qualified for Abyssinia. Right.

It is the only thing possible for a beginning.²³

6.NB: You have said to X that my natural bent is pessimistic. But why then is there such an ambition, such an aspiration to be pure and perfect in life ...?

Sri Aurobindo: It is two different portions of your being. One wants to climb mountains, the other which stands at the foot or is climbing or rather being hauled up the first step of the

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ascent, pulls back, groans, grunts, growls, wails and cries "That? all that height? Tchah! pooh! I'll never be able to negotiate one ten-thousandth part of that! Let me sit down and lament."²⁴

7.NB: Z does not claim to know any sadhana but still to have an inner peace and joy. It must be true, for I find Z very happy and cheerful.

Sri Aurobindo: Well, yes, many people are like that. Calm or peace or happiness or cheerfulness, so long as there is no cause for disturbance, but immediately there is, then boil, seethe, simmer, growl, howl, yowl! The calm which causes of disturbance cannot disturb is the thing.²⁵

8.NB: What do you say, Sir, about this poem? Somewhat forced and artificial, no rhythm?

Sri Aurobindo: I am afraid so. Rather dream-dream-dreamy-brang-clangy.²⁶

9.Sri Aurobindo to Dr. N: ... Tradition demands that a doctor should be soft like butter, soothing like treacle, sweet like sugar and jolly like jam.²⁷

10.NB: A screen examination ia advisable. These things are intractable and there is a hereditary taint.

Sri Aurobindo: Well, you can do the screen exam, but if there is any scream on the screen, be discreet and let us know first before S is informed. After we know what's the matter, can fix medicine.²⁸

11 NB: Good Lord, the fellow is harbouring all sorts of organisms! Of course, it is in a way expected, for diabetes diminishes resistance to infection. But ... he doesn't seem to be taking Insulin treatment.

Sri Aurobindo: The Civil Surgeon Fisher who fished him into the hospital, talked vaguely of a possibility of Insulin in the future if the examination proved the necessity, but the new Civil

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Surgeon Kapur who is making him caper out of hospital, positively forbids the use of Insulin. So!²'

V.Humorous double perception and link-up:

1.NB: Guru, day after tomorrow is my blessed birthday. The year has gone round and the prophecy that at the age of 32 my trouble will be over has well —!

Sri Aurobindo: Thirty-second year over? Perhaps in the "will be over" over has a different significance!³⁰

[Readers, do you catch the point and thus enjoy the beautiful humour?]

2.NB: Have you brushed aside Surawardy's poems?

Sri Aurobindo: No, I have combed thern only. I send you the results.³¹

VI.Humorous play upon a word with two significations:

NB: Tomorrow, by the way, I am going to burst a little -Attention!

Sri Aurobindo: Eh what! Burst? Which way? If you explode, fizz only - don't blow up the Ashram.

NB: The Ashram is quite safe! My explosion will burst me alone, but I will see if the Divine can as well be exploded. I expected very much that your touch would relieve my burden, a little even, or would do something somewhere by which something at least would be tangible outwardly. Well, illusion it has been all ...

Sri Aurobindo: Man alive (or of Sorrows or whatever may be the fact), how is it you fell on such a fell day for your burst? There has been an explosion, as D merrily calls it, beginning on the 14th (August) but reaching now its epistolary climax and I have been writing sober letters to excited people for the last few years. Solicit therefore your indulgence for a guru besieged by other people's disturbances (and letters) - until tonight. Send back the blessed burst and I will try to deal with it.³²

NB: The boil paining all the time. Please do something, otherwise I can't do anything.

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Sri Aurobindo: Why so boiled by a boil?³³

VII.Inversion device:

1.NB: You have made me very happy by your comment on my poem I had sent you. But I doubt if the same sustained level will be maintained.

Sri Aurobindo: Very few poets can. The best poetry doesn't come by streams, except in periods of extraordinary inspiration. It usually comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four drops at a time.

Of course there are exceptions — Shakespeare etc. — but that kind of spear doesn't shake everywhere.³⁴

2.NB: S's same trouble continues or worse. Why are you silent on liver extract?

Sri Aurobindo: Extract liver — no objection. ... since it is his liver - let's see if it extracts him out of his agonies.³⁵

VIII.Humorous linguistic licences:

NB: You said "circumstances are exceptional" as regards my early success in English versification. It must be so, but please

Let me know

How 'tis so

A dullard like me

Bursting like a sea

With the heart of the Muse

Makes his rhythm fuse?

Sri Aurobindo:

You are opening, opening, opening

Into a wider, wider scopening

That fills me with a sudden hopening

That I may carry you in spite of gropening

Your soul into the supramental ropening.³⁶

IX.Deliberate but seemingly 'innocent' misconstruing:

1. NB: A is bleeding from piles. It has to be stopped. V

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seems to be very enthusiastic over him!

Sri Aurobindo: What's that? Enthusiastic over his bleeding? V's enthusings are generally catastrophic to the enthused over."

2.NB: My friend Jatin Bal and his wife visiting the Ashram want rooms given to them in the Ashram. Why no reply? I was almost going to tear my hair but your "delightful time" prevented me from doing it! I wait till Sunday after which I will tear my hair certainly.

Sri Aurobindo: Preserve it — preserve your precious hair. Be calm, be patient.

NB: I don't understand whether it is the yogic or accommodation trouble that stands in the way of putting them together.

Sri Aurobindo: Who is "them" - your hairs? What an abrupt Tacitean writer you are.³⁸

3.NB: My big photo requires Sanjiban's treatment. Granted permission?

Sri Aurobindo: What? which? where? how? what disease? what medicine wanted?

NB: By 'my big photo', I meant your photo which would be drawn by Sanjiban.

Sri Aurobindo: You are always plunging me into new mysteries. If it is a photo how can it be drawn by anybody? And what is the tense, connotation and psychological and metaphysical annotation of "would be" here?

NB: You see the photo is being eaten by insects, so it has to be treated. So all interrogations answered. Permission granted?

Sri Aurobindo: Yes.³⁹

4.NB: Now let me tell you how an Englishman named Thompson visiting our Ashram, looks at our versification in his tongue, which has thrown cold water on it.

Sri Aurobindo: I am not interested in the looks of your Englishman.

Thompson's tongue has thrown cold water on it - or what?

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This sentence is almost as unintelligible as Thompson's own English.⁴⁰

X.Using a word in an unconventional context:

NB: Dr. Sircar has a touch of cold! Please save me; no more patients, especially big and bulky ones!

Sri Aurobindo: Well, well, prevent the cold from becoming bulky.⁴¹

NB: Self - Pus still coming out. Nose also angry! Sri Aurobindo: What a bad-tempered "pussy" cat of a nose!⁴²

XI.Humorous focussing on etymology:

1.NB: Opinion on the poem, please.

Sri Aurobindo: All right except for a rather amorphous rhythm. I have tried to morph it a little.⁴³

2.NB: I thought that it was not possible for us to have spiritual experiences, especially major ones, without your previously knowing that so and so will have such and such experiences.

Sri Aurobindo: Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time prevising the sadhaks' experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise.⁴⁴

XII.Humour centering around ellipses and elisions:

1.NB: I asked also Dr. R but he has no time. Hence those two, thinking that they understand at least better than I.

Sri Aurobindo: Which two, Great Heavens, O Aeschylus? R&Z?orX&Y?I suppose the latter. And the elliptical "Hence those two" - Hence I asked about those two? I shall become quite a skilful Aeschylean scholar at this rate.⁴⁵

2.NB: S is suffering from neuralgia, no doubt but 2 ry to the joint trouble.

Sri Aurobindo: This is worse than Aeschylus. Is it an

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Egyptian hieroglyph? English? Bengali? Shorthand?⁴⁶

NB: Now all symptoms are subsiding. Pt. will soon become all right.

Sri Aurobindo: What the deuce is pt., O Aeschylus?⁴⁷ NB: D better; pain.

Sri Aurobindo: Is it that he has a better pain? or that the fact that he has a pain shows that he is better or that he is better, but still has pain? An aphoristic style lends itself to many joyfully various interpretations.⁴⁸

3.NB: The word 'focus' was unintelligible? But you understand all right. I adopt the device and 'your attention' to save your time and mine as well, as it is obvious.

Sri Aurobindo: Good God! Is this Hebrew or Aramic or Swahili? I can't understand a word. Which device? Which attention? Some reference to something I wrote?...⁴⁹

4.NB: I have checked one wave so far. Any more coming on the top of it?

Sri Aurobindo: Wave of what? Wave of genius? Wave of poetry? Wave of the blues? For Heaven's sake write comprehensively!⁵⁰

[NB writes a long account of G's uncertain medical case.]

Sri Aurobindo (replying): ... Please clear this point and don't write Delphic oracles. Leave that to me as my monopoly.⁵¹

NB: As for K, no, Sir, not in Paradise but in hell of agony, suffering, fever, brown [red] hepatisation, grey hepatisation etc., etc. (nothing to do with liver, though).

Sri Aurobindo: What on earth is this hepatisation? Where? Lungs? pneumonic? What etc.? Kindly be less cryptic.⁵²

NB: What does Mother say about making S a hospital bird for some days? I think he will benefit by it. This neurotics do you know.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined the last sentence.] Sri Aurobindo: What on earth does this cryptic sentence mean?⁵³

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XIII. Humorous neologisms:

1.NB: Have you asked Dr. R's opinion on this matter about the new patient?

Sri Aurobindo: Haven't asked him. Afraid of a resonant explanation which would leave me gobbrified and flabbergasted but no wiser than before.⁵⁴

2.NB: But let me add that my roasting has already begun, not in your spiritual oven, but in the barometric oven. Dilip and myself have decided to cycle off to the Lake in the early hours of the morning. As it is not possible to get a cycle at that hour from outside, what about getting it from here?

Sri Aurobindo: Can't ask Benjamin for a cycle at that time. He would eat our heads off and yours too. This cyclomania is becoming too epidemic - we won't be able to supply at that rate.

NB: And this time it's not a "melancholiac" that asks but a maniac, you may say!

Sri Aurobindo: Melancholomania.⁵⁵

3.NB: The Divine writing has made me a little peaceful. But the way you are hammering the 'Supramental' on us in everything, one would almost think that its descent will make all of us 'big people' overnight.

Sri Aurobindo: My insistence on the Supramental is of course apodiaskeptic. Don't search for the word in the dictionary. I am simply imitating the doctors who when they are in a hole protect themselves with impossible Greek. ...

Of course, I am not asking you to become supramental offhand. That is my business, and I will do it if you fellows give me a chance, and which you are not doing just now (you is not personal, but collective and indefinite) and will do less if you go blummering into buzzific intensities. (Please don't consult the dictionary, but look into the writings of Joyce and others.)⁵⁶

4.NB: When a person with few or no friends comes to see you, how to turn your face away? If any disturbance results

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from it I can bear if it is helpful, but when it becomes too frequent it'll be unbearable.

Sri Aurobindo: Let us hope it will not be too frequent. Don't want you to fall again either into the flummocks or flumps or into the dumps. Don't look for these words, at least the first two in the dictionary, they are not there - my own Joycean neologisms.⁵⁷

5.NB: It is proposed to include me in an Ashram anthology of Bengali poets. But won't my work look pale and anaemic beside something like Nishikanta's, all splendour and glow?

Sri Aurobindo: No. Besides, there must always be varieties in an anthology which is like a museum or a botanical collection. So a modestum Nirodicum inside will do no harm even beside a flaminga Nishikantica.™

6.NB: I send you the poem again. How do you find the effect, on the whole? I have very little credit though, this time.

Sri Aurobindo: ... I think between us ... we made a rather spendaceous superrealist poem out of your surrealist affair.⁵⁹

XIV. Fun with Greek/Latin expressions:

1.NB: [A's case] Anemie cerebrale! Good God, no! It is anaemia hepaticus.

Sri Aurobindo: Who is this hermaphrodite? [Sri Aurobindo changed "hepaticus" to "hepatica".]⁶⁰

2.NB: M's is not a pimple. It looks like a Myobeian cyst. Sri Aurobindo: What the hell is that? I don't know bad

Greek.

NB: I send you a diagram of M's condition, drawn by Nishikanta. I hope the "hell" is clear now! Meibomian cyst is an enlargement of one of the glands in the inner coat of the eye-lid.

Sri Aurobindo: This is more intelligible. You have not explained your bad Greek, though - myoboemian* which

* It is mock-Greek, a play on the word "meibomian", which is a legitimate medical term and is not Greek. Myo

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seems to have something to do with a mystically silent shout.⁶¹

3.NB: Dr. Andre says that anti-anaphylactic injection is very good for eczema and asthma.

Sri Aurobindo: I don't know what anti-anaphylactic means (my proficiency in quasi-Greek is not very great) but it sounds swell. No objection.⁶²

4.NB: S's stomach is no more 'gloomy' - bright and cheerful today. I am tempted to dance in glee. Is it the [Yogic] Force or Pancrinol, or both?

Sri Aurobindo: What's this Pancrinol? All-hair? AU-what? or has it to do with the Pancreas?⁶³

XV.Making fun of X having used a wrong word or having made a slip of pen:

1.Dr. NB: The first portion of this poem I wrote almost dosing.

Sri Aurobindo: 'Dosing'? this is a medical spelling!⁶⁴

2.NB: We are really getting tired and hopless.

Sri Aurobindo: [Underlining the word "hopless"] That is a good word. To be hopeless means to have no hop left in you.⁶⁵

3.NB: I don't know what to do with R.K. There is virtually no improvement in his trachoma. Today he says he has great pain in right pain and wants to be reported.

Sri Aurobindo: You are certainly a born supramental. "To have great pain in right pain" is of a supramental depth.⁶⁶

4.NB: A carpenter beaten by a rat ...

Sri Aurobindo: Say, say! I never heard of a rat beating a man before! He ought to go to the criminal court instead of the hospital.⁶⁷

5.NB: Since the soul descended into Ignorance through a process of devolution, it has to go back through evolution.

Sri Aurobindo: What is this devolution? Let me hear more about it, - for it is new to me. I know of an involution and an evolution, but not of a devolution.⁶⁸

XVI.Making fun of X's queer expressions/sentence-structures:

1. NB: I saw Madanlal going about with bare clothing. Not good for asthma.

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Sri Aurobindo: What the deuce is bare clothing? I have heard only of a bare body etc. Your Aeschylean expressions are sometimes very puzzling.⁶⁹

2. NB: About The Life Divine class, I would have loved to read with Z, but his Purushalike bearing scares one. You know he refused even to take up and only by Mother's order he did it.

Sri Aurobindo: Take up what? You have already asked him for the L.D. and been sent banging? Or is it something else indicated by an Aeschylean ellipsis?⁷⁰

XVII.On the incomprehensibility of language:

1.Sri Aurobindo to Dr. NB: Mahendranath telegraphed about his mother - "appendix affected fall" - couldn't understand. Asked for exact nature of illness, got this telegram in reply. Kindly perorate.⁷¹

2.NB: Jaswant writes: "Deepest Love to Sri Aurobindo. Do convey it if Papa writes blessings, if Jaswant comes up in memory."

Sri Aurobindo: Don't understand. What is to be conveyed? And how do the two ifs relate together or with the "convey"?⁷²

XVIII.Parts of words retained and humorous effects created:

1.NB: You have kept the type-script? I am finished then! I know it will have the same fate as the previous one [on Avatar hood]! However, I send the book in the off-chance of an expatiation or a divagation.

Sri Aurobindo: None, none, none! I prefer to excavate instead.⁷³

2.NB: As for J's case, you seem to be much behind time, Sir! You don't favour these new discoveries!

Sri Aurobindo: How is that? About the blood injection juggle? I told you it was fashionable and you could fash along with it if you liked or rather if J liked - provided Dr. Andre did it.⁷⁴

3.NB: They will say - Sri Aurobindo gave expositions of

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this poetry? - ha, ha! and he praised it and gave Force for it! The poetess was undoubtedly "queer", but the Guru?

Sri Aurobindo: But do you then find that it is bad poetry? for at fine poetry posterity will not say ha! ha! but at most "Oof! how difficult!" It is only contemporary opinion that is foolishly contemptuous of grand poetry.⁷'

4. NB: With great difficulty I have deciphered your Supra-mental writing. Now it requires to be metabolised. But one point remains to be clarified.

Sri Aurobindo: Which diabolical point was that? Some point of a pin on which the whole universe can stand?⁷⁶

XIX.Break-up of a word to create a humorous effect:

We know when Richard Bentley started his periodical "Miscellany" the famous wit Theodore Hook commented: "An ominous title - Miss-sell-any." Here is a piece from Sri Aurobindo:

Dr. NB: A has finished 3 Takadiastase bottles. He finds good effect from it. We require another bottle now. Should we buy it?

Sri Aurobindo: Buy the take-a-distaste and keep his liver quiet for God's sake. He shows signs of starting his lamentations again. The bottle to keep the baby quiet.⁷⁷

XX.Humour with illegible handwriting:

1. NB: There was no drowsiness - understandable?

Sri Aurobindo: [Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "drowsiness", which was written rather badly.] Your writing is sometimes no more understandable than mine. It took me some time to understand whether this word was Bengali, Sanskrit or English with a mixture. But I suppose it is drowsiness?⁷⁸

[Readers will surely enjoy the undercurrent of subtle humour involved in N insisting that there was no drowsiness while Sri Aurobindo affirming that it was probably so. Here 'drowsiness' appears at two different levels: how sweet!]

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2.NB: Guru, what do you say to the poem of J's? I am damned if I understand anything of it. Blakish, Mallarmic? ... Have you any more of these mystic members to compare her with?

[Sri Aurobindo put a question mark above "members" which was not very clearly written

Sri Aurobindo: What's this mystic word?⁷⁹

3.NB: S has profuse "w.....". [This last word was illegibly

written.]

Sri Aurobindo: What on earth is this word? Winter? wintes? It may be profuse but it is not legible. For God's sake don't imitate me.

NB: The word you stumbled against, is "whites", Sir.

Sri Aurobindo: Great Lord! What an h! I could not do worse myself.⁸⁰

XXI. A word or an expression used by the correspondent leads to humorous follow-up:

1.NB: Guru, you hardly take an initiative and ask people to do this or that. Your principle is to give a long rope either to hang oneself or have a taste of the bitter cup.

Sri Aurobindo: I am to put everybody into leading strings and walk about with them - or should it be the rope in their nose? Supermen cannot be made like that - the long rope is needed.⁸¹

2.NB: The laws of its [of the glimpse of the Presence etc.] coming and going are as unknown to me as Einstein's law of Relativity. It comes of its own sweet will, at its own sweet hour.... The tragedy is that I know nothing of its reason of arrival and departure.

Sri Aurobindo: No reason. Only unreason or superreason. Keep your end up and it will arrive again, and some day perhaps after jack-in-the-boxing like that sufficiently, one day it will sit down and say "Here I am for good. Send for the priest and let us be married." With these things that is the law and the rule

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and the resson and rhyme of it and everything.⁸²

3.NB: I am thrown out of joint at two miracles, Sir: (i) R's treatment or yours; (ii) NK's English poetry, though Madam Doubt still peeps from behind.

Anyhow, no chance for me! Kapal [Fate], Sir! What to do?

Sri Aurobindo: Why out of joint? It ought to strengthen your joints for the journey of Yoga.

Not at all Kapal [Fate], sir. Mind, sir, mind. Madam Doubt, sir, Madam Doubt. Miss Material Intellectualism, sir! Aunt Despondency, sir! Uncle Self-distrust, sir! Cousin Self-depreciation, sir! The whole confounded family, sir!⁸'

4.NB: I am at the end of a long poem; have been working at it for many hours, but could not extract anything.

Sri Aurobindo: But what did you extract? Not even words? What a constipation!⁸⁴

5.NB: ... In that case Music should have the greatest gift. I won't dilate any more, but ask you to do it.

Sri Aurobindo: Why should I dilate either - at the risk of bursting? Besides to-night I have other dilatations (I can't call them delectations) occupying me.⁸⁵

6.NB: How do you find the poem I am sending you? Does it deserve incineration?

Sri Aurobindo: ... You needn't incinerate, but bury it in a drawer somewhere for the moment. Read it again after ten years (Horace's advice).

NB: What about the refrain?

Sri Aurobindo: Refrain? Man alive, if all were like the refrain, I should say "Bury, bury - burn, burn."⁸⁶

7.NB: J doubts that her poems have enough poetry. Our saying and feeling don't matter much, you see. Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, etc., etc. must acclaim. Please acclaim, acclaim!

Sri Aurobindo: Clamo, clamavi, clamabo. [In Latin: I

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acclaim, I have acclaimed, I shall acclaim.]⁸⁷

8.NB: "My soul keeps its wide calm

Amidst the surge ..."

Sri Aurobindo: For heaven's sake don't bring calm in at the end of a line. One has to rhyme with balm, palm or psalm, and to bring any of these in without an obvious effort of manufacture is a Herculean feat.

Of course if you slam in an Imam or warm up to an alarm, it becomes easier but at the cost of an uneasy conscience.⁸⁸

9.NB: You compare your nights with mine! God above! Yours, Sir, is a labour of love -

Sri Aurobindo: Love under protest then or at least labour under protest!

NB: And mine - labour of Yoga?

Sri Aurobindo: A labour of Bboga? [Bhoga - Enjoyment]⁸⁹

10.NB: Suddenly at 5 p.m. B's pain vanished. So I justify his epistle [to you], Sir! His thundering scowl burst your ear!

Sri Aurobindo: It wasn't a scowl, even a thundering surrealist one - it was a tympanum-piercing howl - so one had to do something.⁹⁰

11.NB: Guru, do you see the Overhead reflected in this poem [of mine]? I've hammered it.

Sri Aurobindo: I don't know but the overheadache is also reflected, which accounts for the number of alterations that have to be made.⁹¹

12.NB: The other day Dilip said to M. Baron, "But one can't understand this surrealist poetry." He replied, "Why should you understand it?"

Sri Aurobindo: Exactly — why should you understand? When you can instand, overstand, roundstand, interstand, what's the need of understanding?⁹²

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XXII.Humour with initials / abbreviations / acronyms:

1.NB: Absolutely in the physical consciousness! Don't find any trace of the psychic anywhere, Sir! Are you handling the blessed subconscient physical or what?

Sri Aurobindo: I am handling the handle. Sticky! If you are absolutely in the physical consciousness so much the better. It shows you are on the way. If you were in your uproarious mental or tragic vital then there would be little chance for the psychic to emerge. But now that you are in the physical, there is some prospect of your finishing the circle M. V. Ph. Afterwards possibly there will be a chance for the line Ps. HC. S. Rejoice!

NB: What are these abbreviations - Ps. HC. S.?

Sri Aurobindo: Psychic — Higher Consciousness — Supra-mental.

NB: You are trying to adopt shorthand now?

Sri Aurobindo: Of course! what to do? Shorthand lessens the labour of the writer, even if it increases that of the reader. Besides, the attempt to find out what the abbs, mean should stimulate your intuition and sharpen your intelligence.⁹³

2.NB: [My new poem:]

"The scented air your gold locks leave

Haunts like a heavenly piece of art."

Plenty of romanticism and incoherence and outburst, perhaps?

Sri Aurobindo: R and I are there in plenty, but O is not in evidence.⁹⁴

XXIII.Humorous exploitation of a quick procession of terms:

1. NB: What does Mother say about sending S to the hospital for a few days? ... If vetoed, I may try Tonekine injections - (containing arsenic, eau de mer, etc.)

Sri Aurobindo: But is this dried liver curable by treatment? Mother says she had an acquaintance who suffered from it, but nothing could cure him. There was nothing left of him but bones and some appearance of skin. Only he kept it up to the age of 80 and died after burying all his relatives and most of his friends.

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But this S takes just the wrong attitude, making the most of his illness. Just read the letter I send you. What is all this jerks, hammerings, beatings, lumpings, movements? Neurotics? facts? ...⁹⁵

2. NB: I have again the same chronic trouble. At Pranam I felt Mother was serious with me and the reason was, I thought, she did not like my comparing the sadhaks in the way I did yesterday. I have no intention of belittling anyone. ...

Sri Aurobindo: Rubbish! Mother did not think anything about it at all. Why the hell or heaven or why on earth or why the unearthly should she be displeased? You all seem to think of the Mother as living in a sort of daylong and nightlong simmering cauldron of displeasure about nothing and anything and everything under the sun. Lord! what a queer idea!⁹⁶

XXIV. Leaving an 'offensive' word unfinished but making the intended dig transparent:

NB tried to argue with Sri Aurobindo on some sadhana matter. His reasoning was all fallacious. This is how Sri Aurobindo counter-argued:

"[tea and talk] were granted by me as a concession to D's nature, because by self-deprivation he would land himself in the seas of despair — not as a method of reaching the Brahman. ... Is it so difficult to understand a simple thing like that? I should have thought it would be self-evident even to the dullest intelligence.

Because I allowed him to talk and objected to his making an ostentatious ascetic ass of himself does it follow that talk and tea were given as part of his Yoga? If the Mother allowed butter or eggs to Y for his physical growth does it follow that butter and eggs are the bases of the Brahman? If somebody has a stomachache and I send him to the Dispensary, does it follow that stomach-ache, the Dispensary, Dr. Nirod and allopathic drugs are the perfect way to spiritualisation?

Don't be an a I mean a ... logician!⁹⁷

[How sweet and sudden is this last line"!]

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XXV.Humour out of improper grammatical grafting:

NB: "Lonelily like a sheep I go

Along the watermark of time..."

How is this sheep? And "lonelily"?

Sri Aurobindo: It is certainly impossible. Sheep is too sheepish, - you might just as well say, "like a mouse".

The word "Lonelily" simply doesn't exist, any more than "lovelily" or "silily" or "wilily"....⁹⁸

XXVI.Ingenious twist given to an expression:

Sri Aurobindo closed a rather long discussion with these words: "... In this case the experiment is to see whether what extraordinary minds can do, cannot be done by Yoga. Sufficit -or as Ramachandra [a disciple] eloquendy puts it' 'Nuff said!'

[What an unexpected but delectable elision! - " 'Nuff said."]

XXVII.Humour arising out of wrong pronunciation:

NB: P's operation tomorrow at 9-30 a.m. Please circulate some Force!

Sri Aurobindo: P in order to facilitate matters for tomorrow, has started ...What cheer brothers!

NB: 'What cheer brothers!' or 'bothers!'? Never heard of such a phrase, Sir! Most 21st century, I am sure. Even Wodehouse hasn't that!

Sri Aurobindo: It is both. You don't know the story of Pavitra and Khitish and the bother? Pavitra who had just come here [to the Ashram] with a rather French pronunciation of English said to K "I am a 'brawther' to you all" and Khitish, [understanding 'bother',] cried out "Oh, no, no!" Pavitra insisted but Khitish still cried out with pain and politeness in his voice "Oh, no, no!"

It turned out K had heard all through "I am a bother to you all!" So brothers are bothers and bothers are constant brothers to us insisting on inhabiting the Ashram - or at least visiting it, like the vaccination, P's needle, etc.¹⁰⁰

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XXVIII.Humour out of confusion of words:

1.NB: In P's case I must give more credit to the Mother for P's quick recovery. Good he believes in her Force, for you will have a disciple of the Warriorland of which you have none.

Sri Aurobindo: Have several (not here, but there) but they are almost all neurasthenics!

NB: (not being able to read properly this last word of Sri Aurobindo): Under P, you wrote: "...they are almost all nervous thieves"? Gracious!

Sri Aurobindo: I didn't. I wrote "neurasthenics" - neurasthenic Warriors, sir!¹⁰¹

2.NB: Dilipda has asked for a poem. I am sending the one enclosed...

Sri Aurobindo: ... But there's something wrong. What's "this brief mystical experience" coming in without any syntactical head or tail? Either I have dropped something or you have dropped or else missed. Please look again at my original hieroglyphs.

NB: I am sending you 'the original hieroglyphs' of your poem. I think you have dropped one 'of before "this brief mystical experience".

Sri Aurobindo: I haven't, but as I thought you have transmagnified what I wrote - it is not mystical but mortal and not experience but existence? "this brief mortal existence".¹⁰²

3.NB: You wrote me that we should drop the mixing together and cooking. How to drop the mixing, Sir?

Sri Aurobindo: I did not write "mixing" - I wrote "messing" - food, sir, food; eating in common, sort of psycho-gastric communion forming a 'spiritual' culinary joy. If you want occultism, you shall have it with a vengeance.¹⁰³

XXIX.Names intentionally twisted:

Sri Aurobindo, then a young officer in the service of the Baroda State, wrote to his uncle in 1902:

"... I have received Rs. 90 promotion. The story goes that a

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certain officer rejoicing in the name of Damn-you-bhai* wanted promotion, so the Maharaja gave him Rs. 50, he then proceeded to remark that as this would give Damn-you-bhai an undue seniority over Mr. Would-you-ah! and Mr. Manoeu (vre) bhai,** the said Would-you-ah and Manoeu (vre) bhai must also get Rs. 50 each, and as Mr. Ghose has done good work for me, I give him Rs. 90."^1M

XXX.Unintentional muddle of names:

1.NB: Manubhai (in the smithy) has conjunctivitis.

Sri Aurobindo: Manibhai is the Smithy Superintendent -Manubhai is the Lord High Gardener. Don't mix men and vowels supramentally like that.¹⁰⁵

2.NB: A worker from Cycle House — Cassel — has conjunctivitis.

Sri Aurobindo: Another of the dictionary? I suppose you mean Keshavalu?¹⁰⁶

3.NB: Rambhai complains of severe pain in the abdomen, due to constipation. Had to give a dose of castor oil.

Sri Aurobindo: Rambhai is in Gujarat, if you please. If you are administering doses of castor oil to his abdomen direct from here [Pondicherry], you must be a siddha Fascist Yogi. But perhaps you mean Ramkumar? Or whom do you mean?¹⁰⁷

XXXI.Puns:

1. NB: You must have seen in today's paper the great news: Prof. Sanjib Chowdhury of Dacca has got the Nobel Prize in literature - for his book Songs from the Heights.

Sri Aurobindo: Didn't see it. Who the devil is he? The title of the book doesn't sound encouraging; but I suppose it can't be merely Noble Rubbish.¹⁰⁸

* Perhaps Dayabhai, an officer of the Baroda State. **Manubhai, private secretary to the Maharaja of Baroda in 1902.

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2.NB: U's neck tumour can be operated upon under local anaesthetic. Now all this question of operation is useless, because he says he is afraid. After all he has no discomfort and neither is it very big, he says, so let it be. Only I was thinking that if it grows bigger, as undoubtedly it will, unless your Force prevents it, what will be done then?

Sri Aurobindo: No use doing it if he is afraid. Let us wait on the Gods and hope they won't increase the lipoma till it deserves a diploma for its size. An American skyscraper on the neck would be obviously inconvenient.¹⁰⁹

3.NB: (Dilip's telegram: Nirod Ashram, arriving tomorrow evening train. Heldil.) Guru, this is from Dilip - heldil is not he, of course. But what is it then? Can your Supramental Intuition solve? But mine has: it is H for Hashi, e for Esha, 1 for Lila, -Dil of course, you know. [It's Dilip himself.]

What do you think, Sir, of my Intuition? He perhaps thought he'd beat us!

Sri Aurobindo: I don't see how he could with the Dil there to illume the Hel.¹¹⁰

4.NB: I should say Avatars are like well-fitted, well-equipped Rolls Royce machines.

Sri Aurobindo: All sufficient to themselves — perfect and complete from the beginning, hey? Just roll, royce and ripple!¹¹¹

REFERENCES

N.B. For what the abbreviations stand for please consult Bibliography on page 439.

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