Reminiscences

v

Shyampukur

On coming out of jail, Sri Aurobindo found shelter in the house of his maternal uncle, Krishna Kumar Mitra; the place was known as the Sanjivani Office. Bejoy Nag and myself had got our release along with him, but we could not yet make up our minds as to what we should do next; we were still wandering about like floating weeds or moss. But both of us used to go and see him every afternoon.

About this time, he went out on a tour for a short while in the Assam area in connection with political work and he took the two of us along. I shall speak about that on another occasion. On return from the tour he told me one day that he had decided to bring out two weekly papers, one in English and the other in Bengali. The premises were ready, the arrangements were practically complete and we could both of us come and stay there. He asked me if I had any practice in writing. I said that I had never written anything beyond college essays, but I could try. "Then get hold of an English newspaper tomorrow," he said, "pick out some of the important items of news, write them out in Bengali and bring them to me. I shall see." I did that the next day. He seemed to be pleased on seeing my writing and said that it might do. He gave me the task of editing the news columns of his Bengali paper Dharma. Half of it would be articles, etc., and the rest would be news. Needless to say, I accepted the offer. He added that for this work he would give me a stipend often rupees per month and that I should not take that amiss. For, he explained, this was for him a matter of principle as he did not consider it fair to exact work without giving its due reward. That was why he offered this token payment and I should accept it as part of my pocket-expenses. This was the first time I was going to earn any money.

So we came to stay at Shyampukur, on the Dharma and Karmayogin premises. There were two flats or sections. In the front part were set up the press and the office, and at

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the back, in the inner appartments, so to say, we set up our household. There were three or four rooms on the first floor and downstairs there were the kitchen and stores and things.

Sri Aurobindo used to come here every afternoon from his uncle's place. He would first look to the work in the office and then come to our rooms. Till about ten in the evening he used to spend his time with us.

It is here that began our true education, and perhaps, nay certainly, our initiation too. Three of us were permanent residents, Bejoy Nag, Suresh Chakravarti and myself. But there turned up practically every day Ramchandra Majum-dar, Biren Ghosh and Saurin Bose (a brother-in-law of Sri Aurobindo) who came with us to Pondicherry and stayed here many long years. A frequent visitor was Ganen Tagore of Ramakrishna Mission who acted as the link with Sister Nivedita. There were a few others who came once in a while. Sri Aurobindo had his own novel method of education. It did not proceed by the clock, nor according to a fixed routine or curriculum, that is, there was nothing of the school about it. It went simply and naturally along lines that seemed to do without rules. The student did not realise that he was being educated at all. Is there not something very similar about his sādhana? Of fixed rules and processes determined in advance there is none; it moves by different paths and along different lines, depending on the time and circumstances; its form and movement vary according to the individual seeker. Even the seeker hardly seems to realise that he is doing any sādhana. Does a fish living in water know that it has learnt to swim?

By giving me that work of editing the news he made me slowly grow into a journalist underwriter. Next there came to me naturally an urge to write articles. Sri Aurobindo was pleased with the first Bengali article I wrote. Only, he made a slight change at one place, I remember. I had written "In the past, India held to the illusionist view. But in the present age, she cannot afford to reject life and the physical world; these she must accept." He corrected the first phrase to "At a particular stage in our past." This my first article

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was published in the 11th issue of Dharma dated 15th November, 1909. I was twenty then. Some of my other articles came out in Dharma afterwards. My writings in English began much later.

Now we started collecting a few books. At the very outset he suggested two tides: Carlyle's French Revolution and Green's History of the English People, perhaps in consideration of our taste for history and revolution. Arrangements soon came to be made, all of a sudden and it seemed as if by accident, for our coaching in Hindi as well. A Marwari gentleman who used to help Sri Aurobindo in his journalistic work had a Pundit as his protégé to whom he had to pay 70 or 75 rupees per month as an honorarium. So he asked Sri Aurobindo if instead of the Pundit being paid for nothing he could not be made to give some service. It was accordingly agreed that the Pundit would come and teach us Hindi for an hour every day. He was a Brahmin of the rigid orthodox type. But once in the grip of iconoclasts like us, his orthodox habits were soon broken to bits. For instance, he was made to drink water from taps in place of holy Ganges water brought from the river by a carrier; he even accepted to eat sweets obtained from the market instead of living entirely on his own cooking. Hindi has now embarked on its career of empire and perhaps it was in anticipation of this that Sri Aurobindo wanted to get us ready from that early date. But the Muse of Hindi did not prosper much in our hands.

It was here at Shyampukur itself that Suresh Chandra had his first inspiration for poetry.

One day, in the midst of all this, Sri Aurobindo asked me all of a sudden if I had any desire to learn languages—any of the European languages, French for example. I was a little surprised at the question, for I had not observed in me any such ambition or inclination. None the less, I replied that I would like to. That is how I began my French. He said, "At the National College (National Council of Education, now Jadavpur University) they have got the books I loaned to them. You take this note from me. They will give you a volume of Moliere's Works." I started right away with

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a play from this volume, L' Avare. At several places in the margins he wrote out in his own hand the English equivalents for my convenience. I still possess that volume with the marginal notes in his handwriting.

Sri Aurobindo himself began about this time his study of the Tamil language, with a Tamil gentleman who used to come to the Karmayogin office. A rather amusing incident has been narrated in this connection by Suresh Chakravarti. You should read Suresh Chakravarti's account along with mine in order to get a more complete picture of our life at Shyampukur. His Reminiscences (in Bengali) have just been published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. While taking up the study of Tamil, Sri Aurobindo did not have the faintest suspicion that he might have to go to Tamil Nad one day and make that his permanent home.

Here in Shyampukur and about the same time, there began for us another kind of education, another type of experience, a rather strange experience I should say. Everybody knows about automatic writing, that is, where the hand of the writer goes on automatically writing without any kind of impulsion, desire or direction on his own part; he remains neutral and lets himself go.

It is said that through this kind of writing are brought down spirits or bodiless entities. The Western savant may say that all this is a play of the subconscient mind as the waking mind then abdicates. But that is a matter for argument. Let me here describe what actually happened. Sri Aurobindo showed us, or rather made us hear, not examples of automatic writing but of automatic speech. About eight in the evening, we would take our seats around him. The lights were put out and all was silent. We kept still for a while. Then slowly there came a voice from Sri Aurobindo. It was clearly not his own voice, there were many voices each of a different character and tone. The voice itself would say who it was. Some of them I remember very well. Once someone came and said many fine things about education, about literature, about our country. We got eager to know his name. After putting us off for a while he finally gave out

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that he was Bankimchandra. The talks were in English. He had used a word, "obfuscated", and as none of us knew the meaning of this unusual word we asked him the meaning. His reply was, "In our days we knew better English than you do." Another day, somebody else appeared and immediately announced himself in a terrible voice, "I am Dan ton! Terror! Red Terror!" He went on discoursing on the need and utility of all that bloodshed of the French Revolution. Another who came introduced himself thus, "I am Theramenes." Theramenes was a political leader of ancient Greece. He spoke in a calm and subdued tone and gave us a lesson in political matters. So many others came like this, day after day, and taught us many things on various subjects. Someone even raised the question of Hindu-Muslim unity and offered us a solution as well.

Who are these beings? Or, what are they? Do supra-physical beings exist in fact? And do they come and disclose their identity before men in this manner? It is a very obscure and complicated affair indeed. Supraphysical beings do exist. But the supraphysical world is not of a single piece. There are worlds upon worlds in a regular series, from the most gross to the most subtle; above the physical is the subtle-physical, above that is life, and above life mind, the series continues above mind also; and in each of these there are several layers or planes. Any of the beings from any of these worlds or planes can manifest himself. But he has to manifest through the instrumentality of the human medium, through the substance of the medium's mind, life and body. Therefore he cannot easily manifest his real nature or true being, he has to gather his materials from the medium's own substance. Very often it is the make-up of the medium that predominates and the being that manifests preserves very little of his own. But it may on the other hand be quite otherwise. All will depend on the capacity of the medium. With an impure or unfit medium there will be a greater possibility of charlatanism and falsehood.

In many cases it is not the true soul of a dead person that comes; what comes is some portion of him, some fragments

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of his mind, life or subtle body that may have survived in the corresponding worlds or in some other worlds. By animating these parts and using them as vehicles, some other being or entity or force may come, as if a representative of the whole man. Or else it might even happen that an entirely different being presents himself under a false name. There is really no end to the complexities that may arise in these supraphysical worlds. There may also be a medium who knows how to keep under his control the action and modality of such appearances, that is to say, determine in advance the particular beings or types of beings that will come or will not come, the kind of things they will say or will not be allowed to say. Or he may, if he chooses, open the g^tes for anyone to appear, simply in order that he may watch and examine what takes place. Needless to add that when Sri Aurobindo made himself a medium, something like this used to happen.

As a record of one of his experiments along this line, Sri Aurobindo himself has said or rather left in writing something that \ve all know. The book entitled Yogic Sādhan was written entirely in this manner through his hand by somebody else. And judging by the fact that at the time of the writing Sri Aurobindo had seen the subtle presence of Rammohan Roy around, it may be inferred that the book was written or inspired by Rammohan Roy. Sri Aurobindo has likewise told us that the subtle being of Vivekananda came to him in Alipore Jail to give him certain instructions.

Meanwhile there came to us running, one afternoon, a young man—Satish Sarkar—to give Sri Aurobindo the news that Shamsul Alam, the Police Inspector who had been the mainstay of Government in the Alipore bomb case, had just been shot down, on the steps of the High Court, by Bifen (Birendranath Dattagupta). He added that he too had been with Biren, but had managed to escape, although he doubted if Biren could have escaped. Biren actually got arrested and was hanged. Satish himself absconded. Afterwards he came to us in Pondicherry and stayed here for some time, perhaps for a year or so. We christened him "Junior

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Sinner"—as he was, as it were, a younger brother to us. But he developed into a māyāvadin (illusionist) and finally left us as he could not reconcile himself to our viewpoint. Afterwards he became a sānnyasin. He has an ashram and receives an allowance from Bengal Government as a political sufferer.

Our life in Shyampukur went on in its regular course, when, one evening as we gathered for our usual stance, our friend Ramchandra suddenly appeared with the news that the Government had decided to arrest Sri Aurobindo again; everything was ready, he said, and it might even be that very evening. Sri Aurobindo listened to him in silence. Then he said, "Come, let us move out just now." He had received the Divine Command, as he told us later, to leave immediately for Chandernagore. He came out of the house and made straight for the river-side, accompanied by Ramchandra, Biren and Suresh Chakravarti. Suresh has given an accurate and full account of what happened next, and I shall not repeat that here. You should read it in his Reminiscences.

The story of this sudden exit or disappearance of Sri Aurobindo has appeared in several versions, with many distortions and not without a touch of colour. For instance, someone has said that it was on Nivedita's advice and at her insistence or request that Sri Aurobindo took shelter in French territory. Another has given a vivid cinema-like picture of how Sri Aurobindo had to jump a wall, how he lost his way among the narrow lanes and finally landed on somebody's doorsteps and the dramatic dialogue that ensued, and so on. But all this is sheer myth and romance. Sri Aurobindo himself has left his record on the point, and his companions of that evening have also written out the true facts.

Those of us who were left behind continued to run the two papers for some time; Nivedita was of particular help in regard to the English journal. But afterwards, we too found it impossible to carry on and our pleasant home had to be broken up. For news came that the police were after our blood; it became imperative therefore that we too should disperse and go into hiding. I have said that there were three

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permanent residents in that house. Of these three, Suresh Chakravarti, at Ganen Tagore's instance, disappeared among the Tagore family, in the house of Gaganendranath Tagore. Bejoy removed to a friend's in Calcutta itself. And I decided to leave for an obscure little village in distant Barisal; there I put up with a friend of mine, Satish Chandra Sengupta who afterwards became professor of philosophy at the City College in Calcutta.

That expedition of mine was not less romantic than any Antarctic trip. First I went by train; next came the ferry steamer that carried me across rivers; then I had a country-boat that paddled along the little channels of East Bengal; and finally I had to walk the last lap of my journey before reaching the destination, Kumeru.² Perhaps I shall tell you about that romantic episode in more detail later if there is luck. I spent a couple of months there, enjoying all kinds of delicious dishes and fine hospitality and lorded it over in the football fields out there. Then I got the news that the time had come for starting on my travels again—this time on a far distant trip, to the verge of Cape Comorin almost.

1 If "Sumeru" could stand for the North Pole, surely "Kumeru" has a claim on the South. - Translator

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