Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

6

Deoghar

Although more than a year had passed since his return to India, A. Ghose had neither gone to his natal land nor met any member of his family.

Bengal now beckoned him.

"I was at Deoghar several times," wrote Sri Aurobindo, "and saw my grandfather there, first in good health and then bedridden with paralysis."

It was, we guess, sometime between April and August of 1894 —during the summer vacation —that Sri Aurobindo first visited his family at Deoghar, in Bihar.

Deoghar, 'God's abode,' has as its presiding deity Shiva. His consort there is known as Bagala; and Shiva himself as Vaidyanath, the Lord of physicians. So Deoghar is also called Baidyanath.¹ People affectionately call the God there 'Booro Shib' (the old man Shiva). When Rajnarain was alive, distinguished

1. It is one of the fifty-two sacred places, straddling India and Afghanistan, known as pitha-sthans — where parts of Sati's body are supposed to have fallen . Here it was that the heart of Sad fell . A pond called Harda Kund exists even now. Hārda is derived from hriday, or heart.

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visitors to the locality would say, "Deoghar has two Shivas: one is immobile, the other is mobile." It is a place of pilgrimage and its salubrious climate has made it a health resort.

How did the young man appear to his family? His sister Sarojini, in an interview,¹ recalled in 1940 a forty-six-year-old memory. She was a little hazy on some points, but remembered others quite clearly. "First came a telegram," she said, "then arrived Sejda [third brother]. A very young and delicate face, shoulder-length hair cut in English fashion, Sejda was a very shy person. When womenfolk surrounded him he shrank bashfully. Dadababu [grandfather] put his arms around him and embraced him in a warm welcome."

Both Sarojini and Barin were living with their grandparents after the death of their father, Dr. K. D. Ghose. Thus, it was at Deoghar that 'Sejda' found his sister Saro, quite a different person now from the little two-year-old he had last seen ; and for the first time he laid eyes on his youngest brother 'Bari,' already a youth of fourteen years attending the local school.

During that first visit, and subsequent ones, Sri Aurobindo would look out and get a pleasant view from the house at Purandaha. To the east, etching its three peaks against the blue sky in deeper blue lines, stands Trikut; to the west is the huge Digharia hill, like a hump-backed tortoise, lit up by the glow of the setting sun; on top of the Nandan hill to the north-west was a crumbling temple (since renovated), its walls covered with growing trees. The Nandan hills were inviting and the young

1. To Girija Shankar Roy Chowdhuri.

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people would go on climbing excursions, with their Boromama, Jogin as leader. But perhaps the most favourite walks Sejda took along with his brother and cousins and uncles and aunts and grandfather, were along the Daroa river, which looked like a silver ribbon from Purandaha, flowing leisurely through the undulating red earth, by the green paddy fields. It was during one of these walks that grandfather Rajnarain was found asleep ... standing.

What was the feeling of Sejda when he had to leave behind his new-found family and return to Baroda ? He expressed it in his inimitable way to his sister Saro in a letter dated 25 August, 1894. We quote it here in full.

"Baroda Camp

25 August, 1894

"My dear Saro,

"I got your letter the day before yesterday. I have been trying hard to write to you for the last three weeks, but have hitherto failed. Today I am making a huge effort and hope to put the letter in the post before nightfall. As I am now invigorated by three days' leave, I almost think I shall succeed.

"It will be, I fear, quite impossible to come to you again so early as the Puja, though if I only could, I should start tomorrow. Neither my affairs, nor my finances will admit of it. Indeed it was a great mistake for me to go at all; for it has made Baroda quite intolerable to me. There is an old story about Judas Iscariot, which suits me down to the ground. Judas, after betraying Christ, hanged himself and went to Hell

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where he was honoured with the hottest oven in the whole establishment. Here he must burn for ever and ever; but in his life he had done one kind act and for this they permitted him by special mercy of God to cool himself for an hour every Christmas on an iceberg in the North Pole. Now this has always seemed to me not mercy, but a peculiar refinement of cruelty. For how could Hell fail to be ten times more Hell to the poor wretch after the delicious coolness of his iceberg ? I do not know for what enormous crime I have been condemned to Baroda, but my case is just parallel. Since my pleasant sojourn with you at Baidyanath, Baroda seems a hundred times more Baroda.

"I dare say Beno may write to you three or four days before he leaves England. But you must think yourself lucky if he does as much as that. Most likely the first you hear of him will be a telegram from Calcutta. Certainly he has not written to me. I never expected and should be afraid to get a letter. It would be such a shocking surprise that I should certainly be able to do nothing but roll on the floor and gasp for breath for the next two or three hours. No, the favours of the Gods are too awful to be coveted. I dare say he will have energy enough to hand over your letter to Mano as they must be seeing each other almost daily. You must give Mano a little time before he answers you. He too is Beno's brother. Please let me have Beno's address as I don't know where to send a letter I have ready for him. Will you also let me have the name of Bari's English Composition Book and its compiler? I want such a book badly, as this will be useful for me not only in Bengalee but in Gujerati. There are no convenient books like that here.

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Sarojini

"You say in your letter 'all here are quite well'; yet in the very next sentence I read 'Bari has an attack of fever'. Do you mean then that Bari is nobody ? Poor Bari !That he shouldbe excluded from the list of human beings is only right and proper, but it is a little hard that he should be denied existencealtogether. I hope it is only a slight attack. I am quite well. Ihave brought a fund of health with me from Bengal , which, Ihope it will take me some time to exhaust ; but I have just passedmy twenty-second milestone , August 15 last, since my birthdayand am beginning to get dreadfully old.

"I infer from your letter that you are making great progress in English. I hope you will learn very quickly; I can then write to you quite what I want to say and just in the way I want to say it. I feel some difficulty in doing that now and I don't know whether you will understand it.

"With love,

Your affectionate brother,

Auro

"P.S. If you want to understand the new orthography of my name, ask uncle."

Uncle is his 'Boromama' Jogindra, Swarnalata's younger brother. He may have explained to his nephew that his name spelled A-R-A did not give the correct Bengali pronunciation. That may have brought about the change in the spelling. In any case this —in 1894 —was the first time that Sri Aurobindo adopted the new orthography of his name: AURO.

It may well have been in late September 1894 that Benoy-

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bhusan returned to India from England. His ship anchored off the Chandpal Ghat at Calcutta Port. From there he took a hackney-coach to go to the house of his father's lawyer friend Manomohan Ghose at Theatre Road. The coachman did not understand any English, and Beno could not then speak any Indian language, with the result that for hours they went up and down the street, till a kindly Brahmin priest, who was watching interestedly, asked Beno some questions and then directed the coachman and even accompanied Beno to the right house.

Benoybhusan quickly found a job as tutor to the Prince of the Coochbehar State. According to Barin, Beno who had gone to Ajmer with his pupil, borrowed Rs.1500 to send to Mano so that the latter could also return to India. Benoybhusan seems to have been in Ajmer for a long time as we gather from a letter of Sri Aurobindo's to his grandfather.

"Gujaria

Vijapur Taluka

N. Gujerat

Jan. 11^th, 1895

"My dear Grandfather,

"I received your telegram and postcard this afternoon. I am at present in an exceedingly out of the way place, without any post-office within fifteen miles of it; so it would not be easy to telegraph. I shall probably be able to get to Bengal by the end of next week. I had intended to be there by this time, but there is some difficulty about my last months' salary without which I cannot very easily move. However I have written for a

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month's privileged leave and as soon as it is sanctioned shall make ready to start. I shall pass by Ajmere and stop for a day with Beno. My articles are with him; I will bring them on with me. As I do not know Urdu, or indeed any other language of the country, I may find it convenient to bring my clerk with me. I suppose there will be no difficulty about accommodating him.

"I got my uncle's letter inclosing Soro's, the latter might have presented some difficulties, for there is no one who knows Bengali in Baroda —no one at least whom I could get at. Fortunately the smattering I acquired in England stood me in good stead, and I was able to make out the sense of the letter, barring a word here and a word there.

"If all goes well, I shall leave Baroda on the 18^th; at any rate it will not be more than a day or two later.

Believe me

Your affectionate grandson

Aravind A. Ghose"

By then the third brother also was back from England. But unlike his younger brother, who had booked his passage in a mail steamer, Mano chose a big liner named Patroclus to return to an unknown home. His uncle Krishna Kumar Mitra was at the port to receive him when he landed in Calcutta. He first brought his nephew to his house and later took him to Deoghar. Mano's first impression on his arrival and of his own family was happy. "I arrived on October 25^th," he wrote contentedly to his friend Binyon, "and have been staying at a beautiful country

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place called Baidyanath, in my grandfather's house, all among the mountains and green sugar-cane fields and shallow rivers. My own people I found charming and cultivated folk, and spent an extremely pleasant time among them. This, I think very fortunate indeed —to find at once friends, and that of one's own blood, so congenial and interesting as soon as I landed." However, he had not completely forgotten Bengali and could converse in it with his aunts and other members of his family. But, observed his daughter Lotika, "My father and mother used to correspond in Bengali written in Roman script." He had married Maloti Bannerjee, a girl of 16, in 1898, and had two daughters —Lotika, the younger one, was born in September 1902.

Manmohan found himself a job before long (1895) as Professor of English Literature at Patna College. For the poet-at-heart it was a dull, tiring, ill-paid work. He was transferred to other places, including Dacca, where he was professor for some five years and "soon became a living legend." He was promoted as Inspector of Schools from 1902, and transferred to Purulia in the Chota Nagpur District. In those times India was well covered with extensive forests where wild animals roamed about freely. M. M. Ghose had to undertake long, uncomfortable journeys to remote parts of the district, often by night, in an ox-cart, the then usual mode of transport, in which he would lie jolted and fearful of tigers. Finally, in October 1902 Mano was appointed Professor of English at the Presidency College, Calcutta. "He was very painstaking," recalled Sri Aurobindo. "Most of the professors don't work so hard. I saw his books interleaved and marked and full of notes." At the College Manmohan carved

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out a niche for himself. It was such a treat to hear his lectures on poetry that those who were not in the class passionately envied those who were, and students from other colleges would sometimes steal into his class. His melodious voice, as he read or recited poetry, took them with a spell, as he weaved exquisite patterns of romance and beauty. "With his wonderful poetic gifts," said Poet Tagore, "and power of imagination Manmohan could take his pupils to the inner soul of poetry and make them enjoy its beauty." It was indeed a different Professor Ghose at his desk from the one often seen going up and down the stairs of the College hat in hand, eyes downcast, and wearing an absorbed, unsmiling, and pensive look. No, he did not invite familiarity. Lamented Tagore, "The gift with which Manmohan was born was the gift of song: that he used it for teaching involved undoubtedly great personal loss. This is what he himself told me when I went to Dacca to attend a conference."

In the interview given by Sarojini on 5 July 1940, she recalled: "Sejda went to see Mother at Rohini. Mother did not recognize him. She said, 'My Aurobindo was small, he was not so big!' She said again, 'My Aurobindo's finger had a cut on it.' As a matter of fact Sejda, in his childhood, had cut his finger on a glass bottle, and since then he had had a cross mark on it. Sejda was identified by showing his finger to Mother. Borda [Benoybhusan] was also recognised by her in a similar manner. His identity was accepted when she was shown a cut mark on his chin. But trouble arose when it was the turn of Mejda [Manmohan]. Seeing his moustache, Mother said, 'But my Manas Kumar did not have any moustache !"

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