Down Memory Lane

The Magnet Draws

In the pre-1971 period my visits to Mother did not relate to any work. There was little to speak and that was done through correspondence, since published under the title En Route (On the Path). Yet there are certain things which it will be interesting to say and which I can remember.

I begin from the time when I was not going to Mother.

On 27.4.64 I wrote to Mother,

How can I express my gratitude to the Divine?

She answered,

Grow in consciousness and in consecration. On 28.8.64, I wrote,

How to grow in consciousness? Is aspiration the way?

Mother answered orally,

Yes, evidently, and a steady effort.

On 11.10.66, I wrote,

How can I perfect the effort to serve the Divine?

Mother answered,

To will for it more and more in all the parts of your being. Blessings.

On 29.7.67 I sent Rs 3000 to Mother with my letter saying, "I expected Rs 1000 as my income from a company at Patna, but I have received Rs 4000. Here are Rs 3000 for the Divine."

Mother replied,

"It is good.

Blessings."

There were several mistakes in my French in this letter which she corrected.

On 27.10.69 Mother said,

"I wish to tell you one thing. Yesterday I had no time to see your note-book. This morning I took a piece of paper and wrote down something on it that was coming to me. I was in the other room. When I came to this room I saw your note-book and read

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it. What I had written there was an exact answer to what you had written!"

My previous day's letter said,

"The mind is very active now, but with a difference—it is no longer pleased with itself."

And this was Mother's answer,

"It is in the silence of a complete identification with the Divine that true understanding is gained."

One afternoon Mother asked me, "Did you do Durga-puja (worship to Durga) before coming to me?"

"No, Mother, I did meditation."

"You have never done here as you were doing before coming to Pondicherry?"

"No, Mother."

"Durga came to me this morning and spoke about you."

I tried to recollect and said, "This morning I said to myself that it is Durga's day and that I will be going to you."

"Ah, It is because of this remembrance", said Mother, "that Durga spoke to me this morning about you."

Mother called me closer to her and after advising me not to disclose it, told me what Durga had spoken about me.

Then she also spoke about Durga and the universe.

That was on 11.10.1967.

Mother had received as gift, long ago, some shares of New Horizon Sugar Mills Ltd. from the founder of the company, Laljibhai Hindocha. When due to some family problems Laljibhai needed to have these shares back to increase his voting power, he requested Mother for transfer of the shares to him. She at once agreed and Laljibhai asked me to prepare the papers for the transfer. I was his legal adviser then.

There was a problem in this otherwise simple matter. Laljibhai wanted to pay some amount to Mother for the transfer, but she wanted to give back gratis. In law, it amounted to the Ashram, a public charitable Trust, gifting away its assets to a rich person, and that is an act not permitted by law. Somewhere within me there was also the feeling that when Laljibhai wanted to pay and the Ashram was short of money, why should it be forgone. Navajata had cautioned me that Mother did not like to be told that she had no authority to do something she had

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decided to do, but in spite of it I gave my honest legal advice that it was not within her legal powers to return the shares free.

On getting my advice, Mother said, "C'est charmant!" (It is charming!). She rejected it outright and reaffirmed that she wanted to make the transfer without monetary consideration.

When the transfer papers were made ready I suggested that I should be there to witness Mother's signature. She agreed and I got an opportunity to go to her! That was in 1968.

Later I came to know that when the shares were offered by Laljibhai to Mother, she did not give the scrips to Amrita to keep, which it was her practice to do, but kept them in the drawer of her desk. From the same drawer, after years, the scrips went back to Laljibhai.

Perhaps the shares had never gone into the Ashram Balance Sheet.

*

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Replying to a letter of mine, Mother struck off the word 'Remembrance' used by me and replaced it by 'Souvenir'. She used to kindly correct or improve my French whenever needed. I was given to understand that Mother had said that 'Remembrance' was not French. I told Vasudha that before using the word 'Remembrance' I had consulted a dictionary, and she offered to show it on my behalf to Mother. I hesitated a bit, but then agreed. At home I did not find the word in two dictionaries, but then in a third one the word was there, and I sent it through Vasudha with a sense of relief and expectancy. Mother turned to Pavitra and exclaimed, "See, see, what this boy is teaching about French!". Pavitra consulted the dictionaries and it was noted that it was an archaic word.

*

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When for the Aurofilms unit of the Sri Aurobindo Society Tarachand Barjatya (whom Mother had given the name Dwij) wanted to borrow money from the Banks, I was asked to draft the Society's resolution authorising him for the purpose. Mother had made it a condition that every borrowal will have to be first approved by her. When the resolution was read out to her, she said that the Resolution was negative in its wordings (I had adopted the conventional form) and it should be restated in the

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positive way. I made a fresh draft accordingly and saw the nice difference brought about in the reading by the positive wording without affecting the intention.

Somehow the Resolution did not work out.

*

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One afternoon Mother asked me if I could make some special blessing packets of her choice. I was naturally very happy over getting a piece of work directly from her. She spoke to Vasudha about the specific blessing packet she meant and wanted one piece of it to give it to me as a specimen. Vasudha reminded her that it was being made by X and she had wanted only X to do it. But Mother still wanted it to be done by me and when the specimen came, I was told to take care of some points while making it.

I am reminded here of two Ashram girls asking me what special envelopes and blessing packets I was making that I was allowed to go to Mother regularly. I had simply replied that it was not for that that I was going to her.

I am also reminded of how Bansidhar came one afternoon to my house with all his attention centred on a tin carton in his hands. It was the same carton in which I used to send blessing packets made by me, but this time it contained Mother's symbol made by herself out of some of these blessing packets. She was not seeing people at that time and she had given the carton to Champaklal asking him to take care that the contents are not disturbed on the way. Handing it over to me, Bansidhar cautioned me equally and he left only after I opened it and found it intact. I kept it with care but after some days I dismantled the symbol and resumed using the carton. A stupid act of mine, I should say.

*

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One afternoon, referring to the Ashram, Mother remarked that the number of inmates doing Yoga could be counted on fingers. And then she asked me, "According to you, how many here are doing Yoga?"

"Thirty," I made a guess and told her.

She smiled and said after some moments, "But you are doing Yoga."

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Vasudha, who was nearby, heard these words of Mother and reminded me of them in later years when I was in difficulties.

*

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Mother asked me at what time I went to bed. I told her, "By 8.30." She said, "Oh, you have a long night!" Then I told her that I got up about 4.30. She smiled, saying, "It is all right."

I did not remember to speak to her then about the addition of more than an hour of my siesta.

*

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In those days when I sent flowers to Mother through Vasudha, I once fell sick. So I gave the flowers to Savita to carry. Vasudha asked her the reason of my absence and took the flowers. After some moments she came out to usher Savita in. Mother inquired of her firstly about my sickness which was only fever and then if I was simply lying in bed or doing some work also. Mother was happy to know that I was active.

On an earlier occasion when I got fever, I was advised by Navajata that Mother did not like to receive people suffering from flu or even flowers from them. He reported my sickness with much concern. Mother wondered why that much of fever was disturbing us and expected me to move out next day with the flowers. And I resumed from next morning.

*

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In November 1970, when I was expected by a mediator to go to Calcutta for the settlement of an important financial matter of ours pending from our Calcutta days, I asked Mother about my going there. She was not keen about my going, but she gave her approval for it, and I booked my seat accordingly. That day the plane did not take off, and although Pradyot, a Trustee of the Ashram, who also was to go to Calcutta in the same flight for his work, stayed overnight at Madras for the next day's flight, I came back to Pondicherry with willingness to go next day after making inquiry. Next day the position was still uncertain and late in the day Pradyot returned from Madras as no plane left that day also for Calcutta.

I was then called at Calcutta in January 1971. Again the plane

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didn't take off. I wanted to know why things happened that way.

Mother replied, "It is because you should not go to Calcutta. It is clear. Blessings."

Well, nothing was lost by my failure to go. In the end the mediator wanted to settle my dues of more than a million rupees for an offering of Rupees ten thousand to Mother. The party concerned was one of the richest families of the country. She immediately said No. There the matter ended.

*

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In October 1968, I wrote to Mother about the printing of the book The Destiny of Man, a compilation done by Rishabhchand and myself with her approval, the question was about the place of the printing, viz, the Ashram Press or somewhere in America through Duncan or Ida Patterson. The question had arisen because the Ashram Press would take more than a year. Amrita brought Mother's answer, "The time taken by our Press does not matter."

In September 1967 I met a responsible officer in the Ministry of Education at Delhi who said that the Government would like to introduce the study of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the Indian Universities in English as well as in Hindi.

For translation into Hindi the Government had prepared an English-Hindi dictionary containing philosophical words, as a model for the Universities. I told him that Sri Aurobindo had used certain English words in special sense and that from time to time he had indicated equivalent words in Sanskrit and some other Indian languages. The officer appreciated my suggestion that these words ought to be incorporated in the dictionary and expressed the hope that if we send a compilation of these words to the Governmental committee, the words will be put in the dictionary.

I wrote to Mother that if she thought it to be useful for us, I could follow this matter up, or someone else might be chosen by her for it. She answered that I could do that work with the help of Nolini and Madhav, Ravindra and Kireet, according to need.

I was also engaged in the translation of Sri "The

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Life Divine" into Hindi. The Government of India had decided to purchase a thousand copies of it with the approved terminology. I prepared a glossary of terminology in Hindi, put it at the end of the volume, and the same was accepted.

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