Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

3

The Arrival

Sri Aurobindo had landed on the Coromandel coast in 1910. What happened at the Guest House—his fifth house— happened from 1914 onwards. During those four preceding years at Pondicherry what type of life did Sri Aurobindo and, incidentally, his young companions lead? Let me try to be logical—chronological should I say?—and begin at the beginning.

S.S. Dupleix had left her berth, N°l Esplanade Moorings, on the Hooghly river on Friday the first April, at 6:30 a.m. Under the command of Captain Musseau, the French mail steamer made steady progress as she steamed down the Bay of Bengal with her precious 'cargo.' On 4 April 1910, around four in the afternoon, she cast anchor at Pondicherry's harbour. Those who were in the know wanted to give Sri Aurobindo a very special reception. Moni dissuaded them from their project with the argument that as Sri Aurobindo was coming here in secrecy, and would be living here secretly, their planned public reception would be a big leak. What Moni said made sense, so, although disappointed, they dropped their plan.

Moni, who had come by train, had reached Pondicherry in the first hours (at 2:30 a.m.) of 31 March, and passed the

Page 27

rest of the night in the station's waiting room. In the morning as soon as he could, "I got onto a strange man-driven contraption called a push-push." The young Bengali was sorely disappointed with what he saw of the town. He had heard so much of the "beauty-loving French people and their renowned capital Paris." His destination was the office of the weekly India, N°10 Rue Valdaour (later changed to Rue Dupleix, and now Nehru Street), which proved to be a printing press. The owner did not live there. A local man directed the newcomer to another part of the town: a house on Muthumariamman Koil Street. It was to the master of the house, Srinivasachari, that Moni handed over Sri Aurobindo's letter of introduction.

Srinivasachari was a Tamil Brahmin. Moni saw in front of him a man of thirty odd years, of medium height, fair, large-eyed, with wide forehead, sharp-nosed, clean-shaven, most of the head shaved except the top from where sprung a long lock of hair (tikki), in a word "a pure aryan appearance.*His forefathers hailed from Mysore. It was the great-grandfather of Srinivasachari who had first migrated to Madras; he was appointed a District magistrate. His son, Srinivas's grandfather, became an advocate at the Madras High Court. By then the family began to perceive the ills of the British rule. So the father of Srinivas went away to Pondicherry and his children were educated there. Thus, Srinivasachari was no stranger to Pondicherry. The family however had returned to Madras after the father s death, and the boys went to college there. It was Tilak s advent on the national scene that attracted the family to work for the country.

Srinivas had come back to Pondicherry to help Subramania Bharati against whom the Madras government had

Page 28

issued a warrant—but Bharati had slipped away to Pondicherry before he could be arrested. When Srinivas heard that Bharati was being harassed by the French Police at the instigation of the Madras government, he followed his friend there. It was the Tamil weekly paper India that had brought the ire of the British rulers on the editor, the printer and the contributors.

Page 29

When the editor of India was jailed, the others packed up their gear, slipped through the British dragnet, and went to the French enclave. From there they again began publishing India. A reporter from India had even interviewed Sri Aurobindo in Calcutta. We do not know who exactly it was, but Sri Aurobindo had met both the younger brother and the brother-in-law of Srinivasachari at Calcutta when he was residing in his Na' Meso's house. The brother, S. Parthasarathi Iyengar, was probably the "Secretary Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company" with whom Sri Aurobindo had an engagement at "3 o'clock" on 20 July 1909, as he noted in his diary. Parthasarathi had gone to North India to canvass for his Navigation Company. Moni, for his part, recognized the brother-in-law Rangachari as somebody who had met Sri Aurobindo at Calcutta. So it seems likely that it was to Rangachari that Sri Aurobindo had granted an interview which was published in India in September 1909. Introducing the article, the reporter did not forget to give his own impression of the revolutionary leader. "He lived a very simple life, and put up an ordinary appearance with his dhoti and shirt; but his eyes were afire with grace and knowledge and a halo of mysterious peace pervaded where he lived." It was to the same reporter during the interview that Sri Aurobindo had given his 'prediction' on India winning her freedom amid worldwide upheavals and revolutionary changes, giving his answer in "gentle, sweet and dynamic accents," as the scribe put it.

Srinivasachari opened the letter brought by Moni, read the contents, and came to know of Sri Aurobindo's plans. He extended his hospitality to the eighteen-year-old youth from

Page 30

Bengal. "I passed the four and a half days before Aurobindo's arrival in Mr. Achari's house doing nothing but eating and sleeping. Every day a little before sunset I went with three or four people to the beach, and after spending an hour or two at the pier came back with them." He was also closely questioned by these gentlemen. Only ... well, the trouble was that although Moni was a matriculate and could read English fluently, he had no fluency in speaking it. His vocabulary consisted of 'yes,' 'no' and 'very good.' That was the general case of Bengali students. South Indians, on the contrary, talked quite fluently in that tongue. I remember being utterly amazed to hear in Madras a rickshaw-puller speak in English! However, though the Pondicherry gentlemen tried to extract information from the Bengali youth by interrogating exhaustively, they could not make much headway, and remained suspicious of him: was he indeed a messenger from Sri Aurobindo or a government spy? On his side Moni was worried. To his disquiet he was not even told where they intended to lodge their Guest. Each time he dared to bring up the subject with Srinivasachari he found his host evasive. Moni would be warded off with a noncommittal answer: "Oh, we'll see," "all in good time," and so forth.

April four dawned. From the Messagerie Maritime Office at the sea-front Srinivasachari and friends had obtained information of the time Dupleix was expected to dock at Pondicherry harbour. In the afternoon Moni and Srinivasachari went together on the pier. Pondicherry harbour is too shallow for a sea-going ship to dock near the shore, so S.S. Dupleix was anchored a quarter to half a mile away from the pier. The two men got down to a landing platform and somehow managed to get into

Page 31

a rocking rowing boat... by doing some gymnastics: "My! How it's rocking and tossing!" felt Moni. The boat was manned by eight to ten oarsmen. In Bengal Moni was used to see on the Padma or the Ganges covered boats, but the boat he now got into was open. It and they set out towards the ship. When they neared it they made out Sri Aurobindo and Bejoy standing on the deck, their eyes fixed on the approaching boat. Bejoy Nag was the young revolutionary from Calcutta who helped Sri Aurobindo in his clandestine voyage. Moni and Srinivasachari went up a rope ladder. From the deck all the four descended to the second-class cabin which the seafarers had occupied. While the boys were getting the luggage packed and the two elders were talking, they were all served with tea and "a plate of small, crisp, fish-shaped biscuits." Being a Tamil orthodox Brahmin, Srinivasachari did not partake of the ship's food. But the others enjoyed it. After their tea in the cabin, the boys took the three trunks and bedding and then all the four men got down into the boat which took them back to the pier. From there they walked down its length to the sea-front road, Cours Chabrol as it was then called.

Srinivasachari took Sri Aurobindo with him in a horse-drawn carriage which he had procured from a friend for the occasion. Subramania Bharati, who was to become the famous Tamil nationalist poet, accompanied them.¹ Moni and Bejoy² followed behind in push-push with the luggage, and a Tamil guide. To Moni's great surprise the house to which the guide

1 Both Purani and Amrita mention Bharati's presence. Not so

2 Moni. Moni does not quite remember about Bejoy.

Page 32

The old pier at Pondicherry,

where Sri Aurobindo landed

took them was not the clingy one situated in a dirty street which he had been shown the previous day. This house was big and respectable! "Escorted by my guide, I went up to the third floor of this house and found the place clean, neat and uninhabited." At the time Pondicherry boasted of no other three-storeyed house, adds Moni.

The second floor, which was fixed as Sri Aurobindo's lodging, was not at all large. "For that very reason it was an excellent place to stay in hiding." There were two tiny rooms nine or ten feet square, and another smaller one which, were you suddenly to enter it, brought to mind a light railway carriage. The house faced north and it had a small open terrace with a railing round it. "At the back, on the southern side, was a long covered verandah." On the west, if you went down two or three steps from the verandah, was a kitchen. This second-floor portion was built over the back of the house, and was not visible from the main road. It made a compact unit. The toilet was on the first floor though, "clean, neat and sparkling." But the one drawback was the lack of a bathroom. Arrangements for bath were on the ground floor. So Sri Aurobindo had to go down there once a day. Of course, the main door would remain closed during his bath.

That was the residence of Calve Shankar Chettiar. A prominent citizen of Pondicherry, he was an honorary magistrate, an important businessman, and one of the richest men of the town.

When Moni, escorted by his guide, went up to the second floor of Shankar Chetty's house, "on entering a small room I saw Aurobindo sitting in an easy chair, while Srinivasachari

Page 35

along with four or five others were standing deferentially in front of him." Among them was also Rangachari who had come before the 4^th. And Subramania Bharati whom Moni had already met.

Thus it was that from 4 April 1910, as a happy sun plucked flowers from the clouds to shower upon the Earth before retiring for the night, Sri Aurobindo, Moni and Bejoy made N°39 Comoutty Street their shelter in Pondicherry for the next few months.

Was it a coincidence that Sri Aurobindo's first base had earlier sheltered Swami Vivekananda when the latter visited Pondicherry? That was in January 1893, just a few weeks before young Aurobindo reached Indian shores at the end of his voyage from England.

Page 36