Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

45

One Day

The bad shape of the economy made Sri Aurobindo move to a small house in the centre of the "native" quarters: N°59 rue de la Mission Etrangere, or Mission Street; Mata coil Street to the locals. Sri Aurobindo lived in this fourth house for six months, from April to October 1913. With him were Bejoy, Moni, Nolini, Saurin and V. Ramaswami. Two Bengalis, Nagen Nag and Biren Roy, joined them in July 1913.

With no improvement in their pecuniary state in sight, Sri Aurobindo wrote to Motilal detailing their plight.

"Our position here now is at its worst; since all efforts to get help from here have been temporarily fruitless and we have to depend on your Rs. 50 which is insufficient. We have to pay Rs. 15 for rent, other expenses come to not less, and the remaining Rs. 20 cannot suffice for the food expenses of five people." There Sri Aurobindo forgot to count himself! "Even any delay in your money arriving makes our Manager [Nolini] 'see darkness'. That is why we had to telegraph....

"There is no 'reason' for my not writing to you. I never now-a-days act on reasons, but only as an automaton in the hands of Another; sometimes He lets me know the reasons of

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my action, sometimes He does not, but I have to act,—or refrain from action,—all the same, according as He wills."

Well, to give our readers a graphic view of the living condition of the household of those Bengali Nationalists, we reproduce a sampling of some daily accounts' kept by Sri Aurobindo in May-June 1913.

Miscellaneous Expenses

¹ From an article by Nirodbaran, "Sri Aurobindo's Bazar Account," published in Mother India, November 1977. Sri Aurobindo wrote this account in a notebook he called "Record of Yogic details." The figures are: rupees, annas, paisas.

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Dear reader, rest assured that all this does not mean that they always went without food. Sri Aurobindo's 'domestic' time-vision—still a bit uncertain, a bit mixed up—showed him what they were going to eat at their various meals. "As it turned out," says his note dated 25 January 1913, "there were both prawns and fish for the night's meal, bread for breakfast & prawns and fish again for the day's meal."

Not much is known about this red-tiled house as no traces of it could be found later on. What we do know has come down to us from K. Amrita, who was to become the manager of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1913, however, all that was in the cave of futurity. Amrita was but a callow youth then. He recalls the past in his book Old Long Since.

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Let me briefly introduce him. All the same I wish you had met him. Such a delightful man! Pleasant and humorous. He was born on 19 September 1895 in a high caste Brahmin family His name was Arumuda Iyengar. His father, Rajagopalachari Iyengar was the munsiffs of Kazhipervenbakam where Amrita was born (hence the K. before his name). The village was not far from Pondicherry. Amrita's uncle was living in Pondicherry. At the age of ten, in 1905, Amrita came there for his studies and joined the Calvé School.

Bharati took refuge in the French enclave in 1908, and other revolutionaries followed suit. Politics was in the air. Amrita's uncle himself was a politician. He, like other adults, talked about it a great deal at home. Four names occurred again and again: Tilak, Bipin Pal, Lajpatrai—the famous Lal-Bal-Pal—and Aurobindo. Those were the men who dared to ask publicly independence from the foreign rule. Strange are the ways of destiny. Because, said Amrita, of the four names "only one name caught my heart and soul. Just to hear the name—Aurobindo— was enough." He was thrilled with delight when he heard that Sri Aurobindo had come to "the very town where I had come!" Through his politician uncle he had come to know about Sri Aurobindo's arrival "on the third day itself." A strong desire took hold of him that he must see his Hero. However, his repeated requests to Bharati were met with silence. His repeated requests to his uncle brought evasive replies. He was being taught patience. It was only two years later, in 1912, that Amrita got his first glimpse of Sri Aurobindo. It came about in this way.

' Munsiff = an officer trying suits at the lowest civil court.

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Amrita had a neighbour, Krishnaswami Chettiar, a well-to-do man who was a great devotee of Bharati, to whom he rendered all possible help. Because of Bharati, Chettiar had intuitively formed a profound respect for Sri Aurobindo. But he spoke only Tamil. That being so he would, now and then, go and have Sri Aurobindo's darshan from a distance.

Said Amrita, "Finally one day, at about six in the evening, my friend Krishnaswami Chettiar and I started from Muthialpet, a suburb of Pondicherry ... and proceeded towards the beach where Sri Aurobindo's house stood." That was the Raghavan House in rue St. Louis. They walked the whole distance, the teenaged boy and the adult. Krishnaswami wheeled his cycle as he walked alongside. The evening had set in so he proposed to leave his cycle in Sri Aurobindo's house before going to the beach. A cycle would have hampered their walk. But as they came to it, they found the door bolted. Hesitatingly they knocked on the door, and suddenly the door opened and was left ajar. "Sri Aurobindo had come quietly and turned back immediately

as the door opened In that fading twilight only his long hair

hanging gracefully upon his back and his indescribably beautiful small feet caught my eyesight! My heart throbbed within me as though I had been lifted up into the region of the gods!"

But soon he came down to the earth and his longing for a glimpse of the face of his Hero increased with each passing day. Days passed into months. There did not seem to be any opening anywhere. "In the core of my heart burnt a living faith incessant and unwavering, that somehow some day I would have his Darshan."

Then one evening as Amrita was strolling on the beach

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he met Ramaswami Iyengar, "who a few years later became well renowned as Va. Ra." Pretty soon an intimacy grew up between the two men of disparate age. After their walk Amrita would leave Ramaswami at Sri Aurobindo's house in Mata coil Street and return home all alone. He always felt sad to break off their conversation. "His remarks were always trenchant and scintillating. Never would he speak of anyone with respect. His face had charm. His eyes beamed." And a hope was kindled in Amrita's heart that through Ramaswami he may yet meet Sri Aurobindo. "It became a habit with me to meet Ramaswami Iyengar on the beach every evening at about 5-30 just after leaving school. It was natural for my school friends also to accompany me." After some time Va. Ra. began to welcome his young friend to his room. On the weekly holidays, Sundays and Thursdays, at about 4 p.m. the schoolboy would go to Va. Ra's room for a tête-à-tête. After 5 o'clock both would set out for the beach to join their other friends. As he began to feel at ease, Amrita could drop in whether Ramaswami was at home or not. "But I never took courage to go farther than his room...."

Although over fifty years had gone by, and the very spot where the house stood had become unrecognizable, Amrita could still picture it vividly. "In the Matakoil Street, called Mission Street, Sri Aurobindo lived for six months in a house with a tiled roof." The house N°59 was close to the Dupleix Street, and faced west. It extended from the Matacoil Street backward down to the Rue de la Cantine on the east. And bread was supplied from a bakery—"called Boulangeriein French"—that stood on the crossing of Mission Street and Ananda Ranga Pillai Street. The house "consisted of three courtyards. Each courtyard had four

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verandas around it; Sri Aurobindo's room was in the third block.¹ The front block was occupied by Nolini, Sourin, Bejoy; Moni was in the second block. I heard it said that Sri Aurobindo would daily walk round and round the courtyard from about five in the afternoon till the other inmates returned from their playground at about eight or eight-thirty in the evening."

The police and the CID who kept a watchful eye on the Swadeshis commented on the games played by the Bengalis. "His Bengalis spend their time in a reading room and are apparently shining lights at the local games clubs, football and hockey especially, as far as I hear, being their favourite," reported the police chief. Nolini: "This man plays football well." Sourin: "Picks up quarrels like a mad man sometimes." Moni: "Plays football well." Joseph David: "Studying in B.A. Class. A close friend of the Bengalis.... It is learnt that letters for the Bengalis come addressed to this man."

Amrita soon became familiar with the names of the 'Bengalis.' "Among the inmates Nagendranath was laid up with tuberculosis." The doctors in Bengal had advised N. N. Nag for a change of climate. The hills brought no improvement. So then he wanted to try the sea, and who knows, Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help might cure him! Bejoy, his cousin, encouraged him to come to Pondicherry. Nagen Nag came in July 1913, accompanied by a helper, Birendra Nath Roy. "Some evenings," Amrita continued, "when engaged in conversation with Iyengar

' In 1967 Nolini paid a visit to the house of a Bengali, Hernial Mitra. To Nolini's surprise he recognized the house as a portion of a larger house where they had lived long ago. The portion was where Sri Aurobindo lived. There was a well and two young coconut trees.

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on the verandah outside his room I would see Sri Aurobindo come out from the back portion of the house to the hall in front, take his seat on the same mat with the sick man, put to him some questions and return to his room. I was lucky to have Sri Aurobindo's Darshan in this manner several times without going near him." Amrita then had no inkling that Sri Aurobindo was studying the action of the Yogic Force he was applying to cure that disease, and training himself in its application. "There is no miraculous force and I do not deal in miracles," said Sri Aurobindo.

Anyway Amrita could follow Sri Aurobindo's movements with his eyes. "On his way to the front part of the house and back from there, Sri Aurobindo's preoccupation seemed to be wholly with what he had come for. He would pay little attention, as it were, to any other thing around him. And yet, I was told, nothing could escape his notice."

Surely, the young Brahmin boy had not escaped Sri Aurobindo's notice. So when Ramaswami asked Sri Aurobindo if the Tamil teenager could pay his respects to him on his birthday, Sri Aurobindo consented. August 15, 1913. A day imprinted in the heart of Amrita, in gold.

He was asked by Ramaswami to come at about 4:30 in the evening. The teenager was there even before. "All the invitees started coming one by one from all sides. By about 5 or 5:15 all of them had arrived. It was probably one hour before sunset. This I surmised by the dimness of the light inside the house." Among the invitees were the local friends of the boys from Cercle Sportif, like Joseph David, Sada (we shall meet him later), and others. Amrita takes up from here. "In the hall of the front

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portion of the house some twenty or twenty-five banana leaves were laid out on three sides just as it is done during a marriage feast."

When all the guests had arrived, the main gate was bolted from inside. Immediately "Sri Aurobindo came into the hall and stood on one side; some one garlanded him with a rose garland; all present clapped their hands and Sri Aurobindo spoke something in English." Amrita's heart was leaping with overwhelming joy, so he took in all this but vaguely. "All of us sat down before the banana leaves as we do at a collective dinner. I was one of the guests; with eyes full of delight I saw Sri Aurobindo as he stood before each banana leaf, looked at the person seated there, gently passed on to the next and thus to the last person—meanwhile someone walking by his side served various kinds of sweets and other preparations."

After seeing the last person seated before a banana leaf, Sri Aurobindo went to the verandah of the middle portion of the house and "sat there in a chair kept for him before a table covered with a cloth." Sri Aurobindo had fever that day. Moni read out a Bengali poem he had composed for the occasion. Sri Aurobindo gave Moni a garland to show that he liked the poem.

When the guests finished taking their refreshments they went to the big jar of water kept in the courtyard along with a small tumbler to wash their hands. Then they stood and chatted for a while. "By then it had become dark. In each section of the house one or two lighted hurricane-lamps were put up. The guests took leave one by one or by twos and threes and went home." That is to say, all but one. Our Amrita waited "not

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knowing what to do." Then Ramaswamy came and told the youth that Bharati, Srinivasachari, V. V. S. Aiyar, were going to pay their respects to Sri Aurobindo. He asked Amrita, "Do you intend to see Sri Aurobindo with Bharati and others? Or with the inmates?" Amrita was in a dither. It was already past seven, and if he delayed longer what would befall him at home ? A few moments' hesitation. Then he said firmly, "When the inmates are there."

It was 8 p.m. when the big three left. They peered at the boy as they went out, not expecting to see him there so late. But they did not speak a word. Fifteen minutes later Ramaswami came to the waiting boy and said: 'You may get Sri Aurobindo's Darshan as you pass before his table. Go with folded hands. But no permission to speak with him. While passing by his right just stand in front, stop awhile, join your hands, silently take leave of him and go home."

A few minutes later Amrita was called. "I got up and approached Sri Aurobindo's table. From the ceiling hung a hurricane-lamp that served to dispel the darkness only partially. Going round Sri Aurobindo by way of pradaksina I stood in his presence with joined palms and made my obeisance to him. Sri Aurobindo's eyes, it seemed, burned brighter than the lamplight for me; as he looked at me, in a trice all gloom vanished from within me, and his image was as it were installed in the sanctum sanctorum of my being. Nothing was very clear to me. I went behind him, stood again in front, offered my homage to him and not knowing whether to stay or go I staggered perplexed. Sri Aurobindo made a gesture with his heavenly hands to one of those who stood there. A sweet was given me once

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again. I felt within that he had accepted me though I did not quite know it. I left Sri Aurobindo's house and proceeded towards my own."

A day seen through a teenager's eyes.

*

* *

That is how Sri Aurobindo's forty-first birth anniversary was celebrated. His fourth birthday in Pondicherry. The first one, 15 August 1910, was in Shankar Chetty's house; the second and the third—15 August 1911 and 1912—were both celebrated in the Raghavan House.

It was but one day among the many he spent in that fourth house. And what was he doing during those six months?

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