Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

15

Swarnalata - Sri Aurobindo's Mother

In the middle of 1879 Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose, now thirty-four, again left for England, but this time with his family. Wife Swarnalata was twenty-seven; sons Beno, Mono, Ara were respectively twelve, ten and going on seven ; daughter Saro was not even two. The Doctor had taken a 'Privilege Leave' for three months from 6 June.

This second trip was not for himself but for his three sons who, decided their father, should be educated in England. Another objective in view was Swarnalata: the 'Golden Creeper' was withering. The worm of hysteria was eating the Rose of Rangpur. Akroyd, barely a month after her arrival in India (15 December 1872), was already aware of the situation of "my dear Dr. Ghose who is impetuous." She penned her concern to her sister. "The poor fellow has been in worlds of trouble —his wife ill with a most alarming illness—fits of some kind —his work in arrears owing to his own absence, and he himself has had fever.... He feels himself also very much alone and I am so afraid of his fretting himself into real illness, with all his present worry." The letter was dated 22 January 1873.

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Trouble ? He was engulfed in a morass of trouble. Going by the reaction of his own father-in-law, Rajnarain Bose, we can make an educated guess as to what he had to contend with socially; the treatment he got at the hands of fellow Brahmos was, to say the least, shabby. An undated letter¹ from the son-in-law to Rajnarain may bring home the pain of the man.

"My dear Father," he wrote, "I have received your note of Sunday last in due time but it had tortures along with it to pull down my heart. Did I give you any offence in any of my letters that you prevent me from stopping any religious discussions. I cannot describe the dreadful agony I am feeling on that account. The cholera which has not as yet allowed me to get up from my bed has not brought on such depression in me as [that] letter of yours. There is [one thing] in that letter that has hurt me [. . .] of the postscript of your note. All the world has become bitter and sad to me, everything has assumed a gloomy spectacle. I do not know how I am to console myself. I knew before and now find by experience that misfortunes never come single. Oft how many different things have combined to break down the sinful and impious heart of mine. Constant tears are become my only companion. Dearest Father have I no one to wipe away the tears of my eyes with even the border² of sympathy. I am doomed to suffer and to be tried by misfortunes. The cholera has given [me a] deadly blow but your [letter] a

1.In tatters; hence the missing words and date.

2.A Bengali mother uses the border of her sari to wipe away her child's tears.

"facsimile of Krishna Dhan's

etter to Rajnarain

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worse one. Oft do dear Father relieve my heart by a condescending eye of forgiveness. Your poor son is suffering and have pity upon his soul and forgive him from the very bottom of your heart. Every now and then I ask forgiveness of my God for my trespasses against you but meet with no consolation. Oft do relieve my soul dearest Father. I again repeat for God's sake forgive my soul....

"I am now passing my days in sadness and confinement. I have not sufficient strength to go out and divert my attention from the thousand and one vultures preying on my mind.

"Kindly give my pronams to mother and others. My love to my friends there. As also to Hem, Jogin, Shukumaree and Joteen.¹

"Shurnolota gives her pronams to you.

I remain with love

Your ever affn son

Krishna Dhun"

Worries? Aplenty. This beautiful wife of his, whom he loved to distraction, and for whom he had changed his religion — from a Hindu to a Brahmo —what was eating into her? She had been not only a social asset, an agreeable companion, she had also shared in many of his tastes including his literary ones. Indeed, Swarnalata could write stories and dramas, talents she had inherited from both her father and mother. But alas! All this was changing, and changing fast. Life was become a misery.

1. Rajnarain Bose's sons and daughters.

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The strong personality that melted at the sight of another's woe, the passionate heart athirst for love, that loving father who wanted to make of his sons 'giants,' he who healed the illnesses of others, was more and more a helpless spectator before this strange illness of his wife's. In 1877 (3 October), Henry Beveridge wrote to his wife Annette, who was in Darjeeling at the time to see the 'Doctor's boys,' that the Doctor "told me yesterday that his wife's eccentricity has entered a new stage and that she now is always laughing at herself." In that situation how could Krishna Dhan dare bring home his most favourite son, Ara, during the school vacation? He made up his mind finally to have a British doctor oversee Swarnalata's latest delivery. A change of scene would also do her a world of good, he thought. Hence the voyage to England in mid-1879 with his whole family. A typical act of an independent spirit.

The Collector of Rangpur, Edward George Glazier was, as we had occasion to see, a very close friend of Dr. Ghose's. He had a clergyman cousin, Reverend William Drewett, who lived in Manchester. It was to him that Dr. Ghose brought his family. He put the three boys in the care of the Drewetts. Rev. Drewett was Congregational priest of the Stockport (now Octagonal) Church, and lived nearby at 84 Shakespeare Street. Sri Aurobindo lived there from 1879 to 1884. It does strike me as rather symbolic that the first five years of his life in England should be spent at Shakespeare Street, N°84, and then that 4 Theatre Road, where he was born, should be renamed Shakespeare Sarani (Street) N°8! What whim prompted the Calcuttan authorities to so change the number and to rename the road?

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I am no believer in random chance.... What then is the link between the Bard of Avon and Sri Aurobindo?

After making all necessary arrangements for the education and lodging of his sons, and promising the Drewetts to pay £ 300 a year for the maintenance of the three boys, Dr. Ghose left for London with his wife and baby girl. In London he found the medical help he was seeking for his wife. Dr. Matthew was to supervise Swarnalata's last delivery. He hoped that the supervision by an English physician would help restore normalcy—if not completely at least in some measure —m his wife's condition.

K. D. 's protracted leave was drawing to an end, and he had a long voyage ahead, so leaving his whole family behind in England he sailed alone for home. He reached India in August 1879, just when his little Ara was completing his seventh year on this earth.

Barindra Kumar Ghose, the revolutionary-to-be, was born on 5 January 1880. His mother registered her last son's name at Corydon as EMANUEL MATTHEW GHOSE. "Matthew was her doctor's name," explains Barin, "Emanuel was because I was born just a few days after Christ, and Barin was because I was born almost on the seashore." Actually he was born in a suburb of London, "at Norwood, in front of the Crystal Palace."

In March 1880, with a three-year-old toddler and a two-month-old infant in her arms, Swarnalata returned to India.

By now she was firmly in the grip of her ailment. Barin was then a babe, but as he grew up he noticed that his mother was a prey to storms. "Storms came alternately. A storm of joy

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Krishna Dhan, Swarnalata, and their four children (left to right: Benoybhusan, Sarojini, Aurobindo and Manmohan) in England in 1879

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when she would laugh and laugh, followed by a storm of anger when she would pace about the room like a caged tiger, muttering curses under her breath." Seeing how utterly impossible it had become to live with her, her husband rented a bungalow for her in Rohini, a village not far from Deoghar where Rajnarain lived with his family.

Krishna Dhan was never again to see the three sons he had left behind in England.

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