Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

26

Nandanam

In the 1970s we, Satprem and I, lived for a few years in Nandanam. Nandan in Indian parlance means a heavenly garden where gods have a perfectly happy time. We not being gods did not have a 'perfectly' happy time. It was rather turbulent.¹ But no matter. The orchard was indeed a pleasure to behold. A very large property with a big furnished bungalow, it had a small pond at the entrance. Inside were two wells at some distance from each other. There were stands of coconut palms, breeze or wind playing soft or loud music on their fronds. Big, old tamarind trees drew patterns of lace against the evening sky. Cashew bushes full of juicy fruits. Satprem told me that in Brazil they make a very fine spirit distilled from cashew apples. Let us not forget those mango groves.

Mother had taken that property of about ten hectares on lease for eighteen years in November 1968. Decades of neglect had left the garden overgrown with nettles and thorny planer. The bungalow was inhabited by ghosts and bats. It was to my brother Abhay that Mother gave the responsibility of developing the property. He was then in his mid-forties and was the

¹ Interested readers may read Satprem's Comets d'une Apocalypse, vol.1. It is in French though.

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chief of 'Atelier' (Ashram's Workshop). By nature Abhay was very dynamic. He also had many bright and practical ideas. As chief of Atelier he had the manpower to execute his ideas. Working with him at the time was a retired engineer from the Indian Air Force. Bhadurida, as we called him, came up with the design of a machine which, when fitted to a tractor facilitated and accelerated the uprooting of the thorny plants.

Once cleared, one could see walks around the bungalow —which had to be cleared of bats and rats! The bungalow contained quite a few old etchings and paintings. Behind the building was an alley with a row of sculptured images in granite, such as Vishnu with Sridevi and Bhudevi, six-faced Kartik with his consort, and other gods and goddesses. A little away, all alone under a canopy, there was an exquisitely carved granite image of Buddha, seated in Padmasana posture, deep in meditation.

Within the year, under Abhay's able direction, the orchard begun to show its full potentialities. Several rose beds yielding beautiful roses—which became a daily offering to Mother. Several varieties of jasmine perfumed the air. A vineyard was planted with rows of grapevines. Pineapples too. Papayas and bananas of different types found their places in the garden. Guava from Benares soon turned into fruit-laden trees. And, oh, many, many other trees and shrubs delighted one's senses.

Once the underthicket was cleared, a motorable road was laid. It ran all round, and was built from the debris of demolished buildings; a special mention must be made of the debris from the seventeenth-century Manakula Vinayaka Temple, in the 'white town.' Nandanam is near Muthialpet, a northern suburb of Pondicherry.

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The three-hundred-year-old temple was, at first, very small, and was on the bank of a tank full of sand, from which it derived the name Manakula. The temple is also known by the name of Vellakara Pillayar.¹ It is said that in bygone days a European tried to remove the deity. Several times he tried but each time Ganesha was back in his old place! Consternation. Then admiration. Finally devotion.

I don't know whether the European devotee had seen or not Ganesha as he really is. Mother who had, told brother Noren that Ganesha is more handsome than he is represented. We of course know how Mother had met Ganesha and how they were "on very good terms, very friendly."² So it is not surprising to hear that she came to his rescue on one occasion. It was late 1960s, the Manakula temple trustees prayed to the Mother to help widen the narrow southern perambulatory path which was but one metre wide, causing difficulty to the devotees. The temple did not have the land to do it. The temple trustees also offered to bear the entire cost. But Mother arranged the matter in her own way. "Thanks to the munificence of 'Mother' "³ the temple got an extra space of 130 square metres. The old boundary wall was demolished, a new wall was constructed—all cost borne by Mother—and everything handed over to the temple trustees on 21 January 1969. Mother had given this job too to Abhay. A few days later he had a visit from Ganesha himself! "A radiating golden Ganeshji with a football in his hand ..."

¹Vellakara in Tamil means a white man. Ganesh, Ganapati, Pillayar, Vinayaka, and so on are names of the same god.

²See Mothers Chronicles, Book two.

³The New Indian Express, 20 January 1999.

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The god looked fondly at Abhay and invited him to play football with him! Abhay was a good football player. A delighted Abhay played with Ganesha till he was tired. The kind god smiled and said, 'You see, I am now able to move about freely because of the extra space. I am pleased with you and I want to bestow upon you a boon." A surprised and happy Abhay replied that he had no personal need "as you know, the Mother gives us everything even before we ask Her. But I pray to you to grant me that the work of growth and development at Nandanam Garden does not suffer from paucity of funds." Abhay described to us his dream. "A smiling Shri Ganeshji looked at me with love and affection. I bowed down to him. He raised his hand and blessed me and disappeared." Ganesh kept his word. The work at Nandanam never suffered from lack of money.

But all this was still in the womb of the future. Let us go back a few decades.

Poet Bharati, during his exile, often went to offer worship at the dilapidated Manakula temple. He strung a garland of forty verses to the God in his Vinayakar Naanmani Malai. With his poetic vision he saw that the God would inhabit a golden temple. It actually came to pass in January 1999 when the main tower over the shrine was covered with gold, and a golden crown and a golden shield adorned the God.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, orchards and plantations were normally not walled in. People often used them as shortcuts or for pleasant strolls. They were more honest and the owners were more generous. Bharati who lived in Muthialpet with his wife and young daughter Sakuntala would take a five-minute walk and reach the estate. This was one of his favourite haunts.

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Often he had like-minded friends with him, and a great admirer of his, Nagaswami Aiyer, his brother-in-law. Sitting under the shade of mango trees, his head thrown back, he would look up at the sky trying to draw inspiration. He might have seen now and then the flight of a wedge of cranes from the distant Manasarovar honking some message from Saraswati. A good singer, Bharati could lose himself in Nature's concert: the buzzing of bees, the chirping of birds, the sough of wind in the trees. The melody would make him doze. It was in such a half doze that he got the inspiration for his famous poem Kuyil Pattu (the Song of the Koel. This is one of his narrative poems in blank verse of 750 lines. It tells the story of a koel, a bull, a monkey, and the poet himself—and what had happened in their previous births. In fact, the period between 1910 to 1913 was Bharati's most creative period. He wrote Panchali Sapatham, Kannan Pattu, composed numerous devotional and patriotic songs during these years. He also made many translations from the Sanskrit into Tamil.

The reason for this creative output is not far to seek. We shall be coming to it.

Well, Subramania Bharati, 'the most dangerous member' of the India group had escaped to French India. When Mandayam Srinivasa Iyengar the then editor of India, was arrested, convicted and sentenced to five years' transportation, his brother Mandayam Tirumalachari, India's proprietor—against whom also a prosecution was launched—removed himself to Pondicherry along with his office equipment, and printing press, lock, stock, and barrel. That was in October 1908. On 10 October the first issue of India came out from here. Early in 1909 Tirumalchariar went to the West, ostensibly to study photo-

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engraving. By the end of the year all trace of him was lost.

Among the several journals Bharati edited, the weekly India enjoyed a great popularity. On the one hand its style and content made India a treasure in Tamil journalism. On the other, the government and the bureaucrats who were made the objects of its butts were enraged. Neither did the Moderates escape its pen-lashings. The public lapped it all up.

Bharati, we know, was a great admirer of Sri Aurobindo's. In the middle of 1909 he sent one of India's correspondents to Calcutta to interview him. The interview was published in India in its issue of 18 September 1909. It was this type of reporting that made India a treasure in Tamil journalism. Sri Aurobindo had also met at Calcutta S. Parthasarathi, 'Secretary Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company' That is why when Sri Aurobindo received the adesh (Command) to go to Pondicherry from Chandernagore, he had sent Moni with a note addressed to S. Parthasarathi Iyenger, c/o 'India' Press. Parthasarathi was away from Pondicherry, so at Moni's request Parthasarathi's elder brother Srinivasachari had opened the envelope and learned that Sri Aurobindo "was coming to Pondicherry and wanted a quiet place of residence to be engaged for him where he could live incognito without being in any way disturbed." That is what Srinivasachari noted. That is how he and Bharati went to receive Sri Aurobindo on 4 April 1910.

Then in November 1910 Varanganeri Venkatesa Subrahmanya Iyer, or WS Iyer in short, managed to land at Pondicherry, straight from a French ship. He had been one year in France. From India he had gone to England to be trained as a lawyer. But called to the bar, he refused to take the oath of

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allegiance to the British king. He had many adventures in Europe playing hide and seek with the British police. Mind you, he may not have looked for adventures, but adventures were attracted to him like a magnet!

With the coming together of these four men, a nucleus of Swedes his was formed in the French enclave. More importantly, it seems to me, three of them did their most precious works there. Sri Aurobindo, Bharati and WS were all men of letters. They were immensely drawn to Indian culture. They sought to express, each in his own way, India's soul.

It was here in Pondicherry that WS Iyer wrote in Tamil the biographies of Chandra Gupta Maurya, Rana Pratap, Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Napoleon. When he was in England Iyer had become an 'extremist'—especially after the Curzon Willie¹ episode—and in France he came close to Madame Bhaicaji Cama, Shyamji Krishna Verma and Veer Damodar Savarkar, revolutionaries all. In France WS Iyer learnt French and read in the original the War Memoirs of Napoleon. At Pondicherry, based on Napoleon's method of warfare, he produced a treatise on military strategy which could be used in India to counter the British. To top it all, he translated into English the Tirukkural... just in four months, while waiting to be deported at any moment from French India. Even now WS Iyer's translation of Tirukkuralis considered as one of the best, if not /A<?best.

It was here in Vedapuri that WS Iyer, Subramania Bharati

¹ On I^s' July 1909, Sir Curzon Willie, an ADC for the Secretary of State for India, was shot dead in London by Madan Lai Dhingra (who was subsequently hanged).

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and Sri Aurobindo produced their best works.

Sri Aurobindo?

We shall be coming to him. But before that we would like to look at his life in the beginning of the Pondicherry days.

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