Mother's Chronicles - Book Two

To pull her out of that tomb

was somehow our ambition.

Sujata — Satprem

April 30, 1984

A Word With You, Please!

Greetings, friends! It is a pleasure to have you join me for another stretch of Mother's road.

I imagine we have already met and you know me. But just in case this is our first meeting, let me say that I am now an 'elderberry' lady, as a friend of mine wants me known, with a score of sixty runs. Yet I was only nine when I first saw Sri Aurobindo and Mother.

And I was but four years old when my father P.S. Nahar took his family to Santiniketan, the educational establishment of the Poet Tagore.

The Nahars' acquaintance with the Tagores was of long standing. My grandfather Puran Chand Nahar was one among the train-load of people who went from Calcutta to Santiniketan in November 1913 to felicitate the Poet on his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

My father, Prithwisingh, was a very fine sitarist. He was equally conversant with both Indian and European music. But it was his literary talents and appreciation of art that brought him closer to the Tagores and on more intimate terms with them. He was in the group of young talented writers of Sabuj Patra, a magazine which had very close links with the Tagores.

From the end of 1929 up to the end of 1934 we spent our impressionable ages surrounded by trees. The Nichu Bangla area, where we lived, was like a big orchard with just a few small houses dotted here and there. The houses had neither

electricity nor tap water. But who cared ! Petromax and hurricane lanterns lighted the houses. A well provided water. Everyone was welcome to draw the water he needed. Even I insisted on drawing water for my bath —that is, I tipped the tiny bucket over my head —for I must do as my brothers did!

What wonderful times we had! So many pictures were taken by a child's eye for the album of her adulthood. Always the shutter was clicked by a surprise or a wonder. Like walking along with Father on the narrow earthen ridges between paddy fields, my small hand grasped firmly in his strong one. I can almost smell the refreshing odour of ripening paddy, see whole fields dappled by the sun's golden light and swaying in waves as the breeze ran gently over them. At the end of the road was C.F. Andrews whom Father was going to meet.

We were a happy family. I don't remember even one heated argument between Father and Mother! We did have our ears tweaked by Father, for none among his brood was goody-goody. So there we were. Father, mother, the five elder brothers, me and my young sister who had not yet learned to speak. Suprabha, our youngest sister, was born about a year later.

My brothers —Dhir, Bir, Noren and Nirmal —joined the school as students. Abhay, the youngest, ran wild. Agile as a monkey, he was always on the topmost branches of mango trees or guava trees, or ... or chasing squirrels. He also made friends with the Santals, the local inhabitants. He went to their houses, which were always spick and span, and drank the fresh palm-juice the tribals had collected. Later, when he was old enough, he too went to school.

As was the prevailing custom, exactly at the age of five

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I was initiated to the world of learning by writing the first letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. It was my father who taught me Bengali. Very soon I could read fluently. Then, instead of reading himself the Indian epics, as he used to do, he began asking me to read the books aloud to him. I never went to any school.

After our mother died in 1932, my father often went travelling. So as soon as I was seven, he put me in the Art section, the Kalabhavan. Acharya Nandalal Bose was its Principal.

Art and culture were not abstract ideas in Santiniketan in those days; their refinement —beauty in daily living— became ingrained in us. A clean living, clean thoughts and a clean body were an essential part of life. Good health. Cleanliness.

That is why when I first saw the high cleanliness that was the Ashram's norm under Mother's care, I liked it very much. And I was charmed by the simple elegance of those houses all washed in pearl-grey.

Enough of introductions.

Quickly on the track of Mirra.

Mirra's tracks will yield us a collection of clues to Mother.

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