Growing up with the Mother

Introduction

The Mother instilled in us a keen interest in the spiritual significance of flowers. She Herself had a deep contact with flowers all Her life; they were Her friends and She understood them. She could know all about a flower by identifying Her consciousness with it. In this way She named many flowers according to their inner significance. We, in the Ashram, grew up knowing many of the names the Mother gave to flowers. We knew that jasmine signified purity, that zinnias meant endurance, and so on. Let me relate how the Mother fostered in me a loving interest in flowers.

In the late 1940s the Mother started seeing Chum, Jhumur and Bubu every day at noon. They would go up the Meditation Hall staircase and wait for Her in the tiny room at the top of the stairs called “couloir”. The Mother called them “my three friends”. Some time in 1949, my little brother Promesse, who was only two and a half years old, and I, joined this group. Our group had a small ceremony every day. After we had offered our flowers to the Mother, She would carefully select flowers for each of us, and then give us each a big red tomato. We would then form a little circle by placing our arms on one another’s shoulders and place our heads together. Promesse would stand in the centre of the circle. The Mother would pull us close to Herself until each head came into contact with Hers. Then She would concentrate for some time in this fashion before bidding us au revoir. I was placed on the Mother’s left, with my right arm over Her shoulders. I always took care to place my hand gently on Her shoulders. Her arm extended over my shoulder as far as it could go. The pressure of Her arm was firm and strong as She pulled us towards Her. She called this little ceremony, Le cercle magique (the magic circle). She explained to us that while She concentrated thus with us, a golden thread came out of Her head and passed through ours and returned to Her. And thus, She knew exactly what was going on in our little heads.

In December 1950, after the passing away of Sri Aurobindo, we did not go to see the Mother for 12 days. When She started seeing us again She asked me not to bring Promesse as the force that was working at that moment was too strong for him.

At the beginning of 1951, the Mother asked Gauri to come and join our group and from 16^th May, 1951, Parul also joined us. The six of us, Chum, Jhumur, Bubu, Gauri, Parul and I, continued to see the Mother every day until December 1958 when the Mother stopped a number of Her activities. The Mother’s programme during these years kept getting delayed due to Her increasing workload. Sometimes we had to wait an hour before She could see us. Often we would amuse ourselves noisily to while away the time. By now we had moved to the corridor opposite Pavitra-da’s room. We must have surely disturbed him during his afternoon rest, for we were rather boisterous and noisy.

To keep us occupied, one day, the Mother brought us a game which She Herself had made. It was the game of ‘Precious Stones’. It had picture cards each representing a precious stone. The pictures were coloured by the Mother to show us the exact colour of the stones. Below each card She had Herself written the name of the stone. These cards would be distributed to the players and another set of cards with only the names of the stones were placed in the centre. Each player, in turn, picked up a card from the centre and if he had the corresponding card in his hand, he put both the cards aside. If not, he would replace the little card in the stack at the bottom. The player who finished all the cards first was the winner.

List of Precious Stones

It was very important for us to win because at the end the Mother always asked who had won the maximum number of games and the winner was always rewarded with a chocolate or a small gift.

The Mother loved games of skill. One day She told me that we should introduce the game to the children which demanded a certain amount of skill. To demonstrate the importance of developing this faculty She asked each of us (one after the other) to lift the cover of a crystal bowl and put it back without making any sound. We all tried but it was only the Mother who replaced the cover without making the least sound.

Whenever somebody brought Her a game of skill, She gave it to us. We soon had a small little corner for ourselves in the Mother’s corridor where we would keep the games that She gave us. Almost all the games demanded skill. We played the ‘Fiddle Sticks’ and ‘Flying Hats’ etc. but most of all we played the game of ‘Jonchets’—a Japanese game, which was the Mother’s favourite. The game of ‘Jonchets’ was played with pretty little sticks, resembling matchsticks. We held them all together in our hand and then let go or, to make the game more difficult, we arranged them on top of each other in a crisscross manner. Each player, in turn, would then pick up as many sticks as he could without moving any other stick. If any stick other than the one, which was being picked up moved, the player lost his turn. Whoever managed to get the maximum number of sticks was the winner.

Later, the Mother specially got made transparent ‘Jonchets’ sticks out of plastic for us. In this set we had two kinds of sticks. One was the ordinary kind and the other had a rounded head on one side. The sticks with the rounded heads were awarded five points and the ordinary ones were awarded only one point. There was also in this game a stick, which had a hooked end with which we could if we wanted, lift the other sticks.

The Mother liked this game so much that She would come and join us whenever She had a little time. She would sit on the carpet, on the floor and play with us. Later we brought Her a small table and when the Mother would come to play, there was a small cane stool for Her to sit on.