Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

20

Hard Realities

"But what strange ideas again I —that I was born with a supramental temperament and that I know nothing of hard realities!" Sri Aurobindo replied to Dilip's complaint ("it is after all we who suffer, not you ... so aloof from the hard world of fact," etc.). "Good God! My whole life has been a struggle with hard realities —from hardships, starvation in England and constant dangers and fierce difficulties to the far greater difficulties constantly cropping up here in Pondicherry, external and internal. My life has been a battle; the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no difference to its character. But of course as we have not been shouting these things, it is natural, I suppose, for others to think that I am living in an august, glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland where no hard facts of life or nature present themselves. But what an illusion all the same!" Oh, the poignancy of it!

Even before the Drewett couple left for Australia in 1884, the remittances from Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose had become irregular, and as time went on they grew increasingly

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rare, till finally they almost stopped. Thus, for years, the three brothers were thrown mostly on their own resources as their father was unable to provide them enough for their most necessary wants.

When the question of Manmohan's entering the University arose in 1887, instead of raising objections, Dr. Ghose encouraged his son to stand on his own feet. In one of his letters to Binyon from Hastings, Mano quotes his father. " 'However,' he says, 'I am ready that you should take your chance and depend on your own enterprise in the literary world. There is not much danger in one of these appointments of your starving, if you do not marry. But you must not give up the scholarship in the prospect of getting an appointment. You have to pass in Sanskrit and you must learn that. So I will try my best to give you a year or two at the University.... So you see I have no objection to this, provided you can be sure of getting speedy promotion. Perhaps if you can do that and have a home for your brother and sister in London they will have excellent facilities for education.'" Mano added, "I have given this in my father's own words, as you will be able to understand the position better. Perhaps you did not know I have a little sister (she is almost eleven years old now) and a brother eight years old in India at present. My father's character may well be called 'thorough'. He is determined to give them a good education, the' he is toiling under difficulties. He must be a man of iron nerves. I could not tell you half the things he has suffered, but he is bent to go on. Indeed he says, 'My body is as stern as my mind to have survived all the trouble which I have endured.' I cannot but be proud

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with admiration at the sight of such dauntless self-sacrifice and heroic perseverance."

He asked his friend what he thought about his prospects, expressing his anxiety: "You see my aim is also to gratify my father in one project —try my best to make a home for my sister and brother as he suggests (after I have been to Oxford) — for I know their education is closest to his heart, tho' he does not say much about it. At the same time I want to get myself off his hands, and lessen his burden. So I would rather not stay too long at Oxford for this reason, tho' it would be an advantage if I could get a degree."

Manmohan Ghose's father was perhaps stern, but he was a reasonable man too. As Sri Aurobindo said, "He had great hopes of his sons, expected us to be Civilians,¹ and yet could be quite reasonable. When Manmohan wrote to him that he wanted to be a poet, my father made no objection; he said there was nothing wrong in that. Only, he didn't send any more money."

Sri Aurobindo once told Barin that one year their father sent only £ 100 instead of £ 360.

At any rate the brothers could no longer afford their old apartment at St. Stephen's Avenue. Sir Henry Cotton² was

1.Members of the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.).

2.Cotton, Sir Henry John Stedman (1845-1915): entered the Indian Civil Service in 1867, rose to be the Chief Secretary in Bengal in 1891, the Home Secretary to the Government of India in 1896 and the Chief Commisioner of Assam which post he held from 1896 till his retirement in 1902. Upon

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a friend of Dr. Ghose's. His brother, James S. Cotton lent a helping hand to the three foreign students. He was the Secretary to the South Kensington Liberal Club, and offered Benoybhusan the post of assistant, with a salary of five shillings a week and lodgings in the Club's office at 128, Cromwell Road. They lived there from September 1887 to December 1889.¹

In an undated letter about that time Manmohan describes the office of this Club. "I write to tell you my new address to which we have just moved from St. Stephen's Avenue. I will show it to you some day. It is very different from the old place, but I dare say my brothers will get accustomed to it in time. Of course, I (probably) will go to Oxford in a month's time. There is a confounded railway behind but as the trains go more gently than I have right to expect I can put up with that. There is here a reading room, a Club room where members meet and lectures are heard, and I don't know what not. This place you must remember is off Gloucester Road which is of course opposite the Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens."

Beno and Ara had their rooms at the top of the building. There was no heating arrangement or fire in the office where

assuming the last post, Sir Henry immediately took steps to improve the miserable condition of the tea-garden labourers of Assam. He was a most liberal Civilian and became a leading champion of Indian nationalism. He is the author of a book, New India. India. He was elected to be the President of the 20th session of the Indian National Congress held in Bombay in 1904. It was in his Presidential address delivered at this session of the Congress that he visualized for the first time the ideal of "a Federation of free and separate states, the United States of India."

1. Manmohan's letter dated 20 December 1889 is from the same address.

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they slept. In fact, there was hardly a bedroom worth the name in the office. No overcoat to protect fifteen-year-old Ara from the harsh London winter. Their food? "During a whole year a slice or two of sandwich, bread and butter and a cup of tea in the morning and in the evening a penny saveloy formed the only food," as Sri Aurobindo succinctly put it.

Sri Aurobindo gives a graphic description of the way he and his brothers had to live. "We lived for one year on five shillings a week that my elder brother was getting by helping the secretary of South Kensington Liberal Club, who was a brother of Sir Henry Cotton's. We didn't have a winter coat. We used to take tea, bread and ham in the morning and some sausages in the evening. Manmohan could not undergo that hardship, so he went to a boarding house where he managed to get his food though there was no money to pay." Sri Aurobindo did his entire Upper VIII studies while living there and under the conditions just described. And he passed the final examinations with flying colours.

The brothers held their father in high esteem and great admiration. Only on two occasions did Sri Aurobindo express pain at his father's ways.

"Once when I was unable to pay the college dues," Sri Aurobindo continued, "the principal called for me; I told him that my father had not sent my allowance. He sent a letter to my father, on receiving which he sent just the amount of the College dues and a lecture on my extravagance. It pained me to a certain extent, as we were living on such a meagre sum."

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