Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

21

Steal the Boy

From Sri Aurobindo and Manmohan we have understood clearly enough their father's financial difficulties. Yet it is on record that from 1884, when Dr. Ghose was first posted at Khulna as the Chief Medical Officer of the District, he was drawing a salary of Rs.625. By 1890 (by then he was also officiating as an Honorary Magistrate of Khulna and Satkhira¹), his monthly earnings had risen to Rs.775 —a considerable sum in those days when one paisa was enough for a man to satisfy his hunger. So what was the matter?

There was, naturally, the Doctor's own establishment at Khulna to keep up in the European style he favoured. Apart from the main house where K. D. lived —a thatched cottage set

1. A look at the records reveals that Dr. K. D. Ghose had completed nineteen years of service by July 1892. By then he was holding several offices: "Drainage Commissioner, Member of Municipal Board; In-charge of Intermediate District Jail of Khoolna; Honorary Magistrate of Khoolna Sadar Independent Bench with Powers of 2^nd Class Magistrate, Power to try summarily offences under Section 261; Empowered to take down evidence in criminal cases in English language and also authorized to sit singly."

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in a large ground — there were several outbuildings consisting of a kitchen, a poultry, a cowshed, a stable for the horses who pulled the tandem when the doctor made his daily rounds; and, of course, quarters for a bevy of servants he employed. A big front garden full of smiling flowers nodded cheerfully to the doctor's patients. Dr. Ghose bestowed his personal attention on the animals and the garden instead of leaving their care entirely in the hands of his retinue. In that he was different from most of his contemporaries.

But it was his own generous nature that could well be faulted for the financial straits of his sons. "He had his sons educated in England," writes B. C. Pal. "But his charities made such constant and heavy inroad into his tolerably large income, that he could not always keep his own children living in England, provided with sufficient funds for their board and schooling. Sons of comparatively rich parents they were brought up almost in abject poverty in a friendless country where wealth counts so much, not only physically, but also intellectually and morally."

Let us not forget that over and above the rest, Krishna Dhan had to maintain his wife and the two younger children, Sarojini and Barin. In Rohini, a village not far from Deoghar where lived Swarnalata's parents, he had rented a bungalow set in an extensive ground, with fruit-bearing trees, flower and vegetable gardens. There Saro and Bari were growing up wild. Their father seems to have been a rare visitor. Barin's first memory of his father is almost dream-like. One day the two children were playing outside in the garden when a distinguished-looking visitor came and went in. Sometime later the children were called

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in. "At first," recalls Barin presenting us with one of the earliest images that had remained engraved in his memory, "Didi [elder sister] and I kept running along the walls, to escape the outstretched arms of a big-bearded man, who kept coming towards us to clasp us to his heart. Then, I don't remember when, under a huge mass of toys and biscuits our sweet surrender took place. A faded, half-forgotten memory still lingers: I sitting in Father's lap, and his long beard falling over my body."

It must have gone right through the father's heart to see his two children so neglected, so timorous, so thin, half-starved, and then wearing such outlandish garments — Bari in ill-fitting knickerbockers and Saro in a peculiarly cut frock that their mother had made herself. And both completely illiterate. Barin says that he knew not how to write or even read until the age of ten.

Then one day in 1888, when Barin was going on eight, to put it in his own words, "a tiger fell amid the herd," and his Didi was gone. Swarnalata had let Saro be taken away to Khulna by her father. Barin was left all alone with his mother. For two years.

Krishna Dhan's heart's desire was the education of his children, about which he had written to Mano. It was unacceptable to the father that his ten-year-old son should remain unlettered. In late November or early December 1890, greatly distressed by a letter from Rajnarain Bose, the doctor replied to his father-in-law from Khulna where he was stationed.¹

1. This letter, dated 28 Agrahayan, is written partly in Bengali and partly in English (the latter in italics).

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"Respected Father," ran the letter, "I have just received your letter. I write in mental distress; if you are hurt by any words please pardon me . . .

"Man is responsible for his own action. Spending one's life simply calling God is not religion. The world may go to hell, let my duty be done; it is not my creed that salvation, comes by repeating God-God. Duty is my creed, duty I must do. I have produced a son, he must be properly brought up.

"I have made my three sons lamps not only of India but of the world.

"I have vowed not to let my Barindra stay unlettered. It is my resolve that the son of Krishna Dhan Ghose shall not keep his head bowed in the world.

"The way Sarojini is now being educated gives me good hope that she will be able to introduce herself as her father's daughter. Poor Bari has no more time —now or never is the case with him. A girl's education is ornament, but a boy's is his life.

"In such a situation I cannot comply with any request. I shall try to do what I must, even if I die in the attempt. What consolation shall I have in my deathbed if I leave such an important duty unfulfilled? Your son."

But Swarnalata obstinately refused to part with her youngest son. Her husband, not one to give up either, planned to kidnap his Bari. He disclosed his plot in a letter (in English) to his brother-in-law —Sri Aurobindo's Boromama —as he needed the latter's connivance. The letter is full of despair and determination. We quote liberally from it.

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Khulna, Dec. 2, 1890

"My dear Jogen,

I got two letters from you last month and one from father enclosing three scraps from Swarna.... I don't write in reply to father as I could not forgive myself if anything that slipped from my pen or tongue offended him. I lost my father when I was first twelve years old and I went to the length of offending a dear mother by marrying as I did to get such a father as Raj-narain Bose. It is true, circumstances over which neither he nor I had control made me lose even him. But I would sooner cut my tongue off than offend him by any word.

"Yet you know I am not a child. I understand the responsibility of my own actions. If ever I had known what it is to procreate chidren, I am sure I could not have mustered courage enough to marry. ... As far as my reading goes I think that Darwin was an addendum to Moses. Moses said, Go and multiply; Darwin said 'Mind, only the fittest of those you multiply will survive.' Now turn and twist the principle of ethics as you like. Even your devotion to an Almighty God will not justify your procreating beasts or idiots. Look how far-reaching the consequences will be. You will not only be the progenitor of one beast or one idiot but, by their natural passions, you will multiply their kind to infinity. If brutes by instinctive sexual selection improve the breed,. should man who has attained the age of reason so far forget himself as to procreate a species behind his own? Two maxims I have followed in my life and they have been my ethics and religion, i.e. to improve my species by giving to the world children of a better breed of your

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own and to improve the children of those who have not the power of doing it themselves. That is what I call devotion — not attained by empty prayers which mean inaction and worship of a god of your own creation. A real God is God's creation, and when I worship that by action I worship Him. It is easy to propound a plausible theory but it is difficult to act in a world where you are hampered by a stupid public opinion and stereotyped notions of religion and morality. My life's mission has been to fight against all these stereotyped notions. God Almighty has strewn thorns in my way and I am ready to fight against his will. The three sons I have produced, I have made giants of them. I may not, but you will live to be proud of three nephews who will adorn your country and shed lustre to your name. Who knows what the next generation will achieve and if I can make three products of mine to take the lead in that achievement, what more can I expect in the action of a lifetime." Prophetic words.

Then the father made some predictions on his three sons. "Beno will be his father in every line of action. Self-sacrificing but limited in his sphere of action. Mano will combine the feelings of his father, the grand ambitions of a Cosmopolitan spirit that hate and abhor angle and corner feelings, with the poetry of his (great) grandfather Rajnarain. Ara, I hope, will yet glorify his country by a brilliant administration. I shall not live to see it, but remember this letter if you do. I tell you what Oscar Browning the great son of the great father said to him when he was at tea with one of the dons of his College. (He is at King's College, Cambridge, now, borne there by his own

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ability.)" We shall present Ara's letter to his father a few chapters hence.

Dr. K. D. continued his impassioned plea. "My dear brother, do tell me shall you not be proud of such a nephew? I have sacrificed my all to produce him and no less ones, and do you not think that you should feel it your duty to produce another ornament to your country? If the future is to be judged by the past, you can depend upon it that you shall have no reason to rue the day that you separated a product of my brain from your sister for your country's sake. Poor Saroj, decrepit in health as she is, I have recovered from at least an untimely grave. Do —do, do if you can, save a boy who may yet be the grandest nephew that you could boast of. Why sacrifice the living for the dead. Your sister is dead to the world, to you, to all who have sacrificed anything for her sake. Now shall you sacrifice a boy who in your opinion is brilliant and may be the means of doing good to the world, for the sake of a brother's feeling towards a sister ? I have sisters and I can sympathise with you, but your sister's son is your own flesh and blood and what feeling is it that will enable you to sacrifice one whose claims to posterity are greater than of those who have lost their usefulness ?"

There is a postcript to the above letter, added on 4 December. "Since writing above I got a severe attack of fever. I also got your letter. I have sent my friend Baboo Chintamoney Bhanja. He will hand over a c. note of Rs. 500 to you to quiet down urgent creditors. This will be my last remittance if Barin is not sent, and I will wash my hands of the matter for you

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after this. You know very well that I cannot bring Swarna to me, having to work for the livelihood of a horde of people and the education of my sons and daughter.... I am no longer young and able to undergo all trouble and privation for anything in this world.

"Do all you can. I have sent my friend depending on your promise of serving me. He will go well-armed to steal the boy away if that were possible, and in that you must not resist. The father has absolute right over his children, so the police cannot interfere when they are commissioned by me.

"Believe me,

Yours affly."

Dr. K. D. 's friend duly went to Rohini and met Swarnalata. He tried to persuade her to let Barin join his father and offered her a large sum of money. But the mother absolutely refused to part with her youngest son.

Great had been Barin's astonishment to see a fatty gentleman in an overcoat come one morning to their bungalow. Because nobody ever dared to visit them as his mother was known all around for her unpredictable temper. The gentleman conversed for some time with the boy's mother. Then, having failed in his mission he turned to the boy. "He gave me fruits and sweetmeats and so many other things," recalls Barin in his autobiography. "And before leaving he quietly put many searching questions and elicited several facts."

Next morning, the sun had just risen like a plate of gold on a wintry morning. Swarnalata was standing in the veranda

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sunning herself, and Barin was seated a little away from her enjoying the warmth of the sun. "I heard some crackling noise of footfalls. Suddenly a muscular man looking like a ruffian came along and said to Mother, 'Memsahib, will you take flowers?' Throwing a basketful of flowers at her feet, he grabbed my hands, and dragging me with him, ran. Behind us some ten or twelve rowdies ran making a racket. Mother was furiously angry. She ran inside and snatching a knife chased the pack of rowdies. These men were so afraid of Mother that they did not stop a moment to pick me up. As I was hauled over thorny bushes and rough ground, my feet got terribly scratched and, oh, how they hurt! The men stopped only when we got to the mango grove, beyond the compound, which was fifteen to twenty acres. They were panting. The fat gentleman was waiting there with a palanquin of eight bearers."

Thus Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose got his son kidnapped.

A new life began for Barin. He came to know a father's love and care. He found his lost Didi. And, for the first time, the two children became acquainted with their paternal grandmother Kailasbasini, and aunt Birajmohini, when their father took them along to Benares.

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