The Wonder that is K D Sethna alias Amal Kiran

Editors' Note

The present work accompanies the main festschrift
volume Amal-Kiran: Poet and Critic edited by
Nirodbaran and R.Y. Deshpande

Foreword,

The following letter of mine addressed to Sri K.D. Sethna on July 1, '94 will sufficiently explain to the readers the story behind the genesis of this booklet.

Amal-da,

Bonjour\ A couple of weeks back Nirod-da, as one of the editors of a forthcoming publication to be brought out on your ninetieth birthday that falls on November 25, '94, asked me to write an article on you. I readily agreed. At first I thought of composing a piece of three or four pages. But very soon a new idea dawned on me and I gladly yielded to my inspiration. I chose a very large comprehensive frame for my composition and did not bother about the number of pages the piece was going to cover. The result is that in its final shape my article on "The Wonder That is K. D. S." has come to twenty-seven pages of typescript.

Amal-da, the process of writing this essay has afforded me great satisfaction. At the same time I have derived immense psychological benefit from a fresh study of your writings.

But before presenting my piece of writing to the editors, I strongly felt like first showing it to you. Amal-da, please go through the entire piece in a dispassionate and impersonal way and give me your free, frank and forthright opinion about how you evaluate it.

I know you are awfully busy. Yet I entreat you to do this favour to your younger brother and fellow-pilgrim on the Path. Yours affectionately JUGAL

After having perused my essay K. D. S. alias Amal Kiran made the following comment for which I remain profoundly grateful to him.

Jugal,

It is a splendid piece of work — wide-sweeping yet minutely attentive and penned with vividness and verve. I marvel at the range of your references and the apt way you have chosen your quotations. I could not help reading the whole thing at one stretch. You made that familiar old fellow KDS stunningly new even to himself.

AMAL " 3.7.94

I have no words to express my gratitude to the editors for having arranged for the publication of this booklet as my humble but sincere birthday tribute to Amal Kiran.

The Wonder That is K. D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran

A Peep into His Writings

[K.D.S. is the abbreviation of 'K.D. Sethna' otherwise known as 'Amal Kiran' — a name given him by Sri Aurobindo, signifying 'The Clear Ray'. The seniors in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram refer to him as Sethna or Amal while the juniors address him as 'Amal-da', 'da' being the abbreviation of the Bengali word 'Dada' which means 'elder brother'. In the following essay, K.D.S. will be indifferently referred to as 'KD. Sethna', '•Sethna', 'Amal Kiran' or 'Amal-da'.]

NINETY springs have crowded into Amal Kiran's life. But looking at him who can imagine he has become a nonagenarian? Except for his handicapped — or rather, to use his own coinage, leggicapped - lower limbs, he is otherwise a picture or robust and radiant health, possessing the energy of a young man of thirty and the creative alacrity of a genius in his prime. Amal-da is endowed with an exceptional intellect, an inquiring mind and a highly developed aesthetic sense. He is perspicacious and wide-awake on top of being sensible.

K.D.S.'s shining complexion, his delicate sensitive face, two eyes radiating a keen and kind glint of intelligence and a sweet smile as innocent as that of a child, cannot but captivate the hearts of his visitors.

Amal Kiran is a distinguished poet, a literary critic of high calibre, an admirable prose-writer on a wide variety of subjects, an artist of words and a thinker and a seer. He is very sensitive to the touch of earth while, at the same time, aspiring for the high Unknown.

For those who have not known Sethna intimately or have not had close acquaintance with his various writings, it is difficult to believe that such a radiant multifaceted personality and universal

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genius is unassumingly living in our midst in the small Ashram community.

The present essay is a humble attempt at offering to the reading public a short pen-picture — evidently inadequate - of the marvel that is K.D.S. For the facility of elaboration we propose to divide our exposition under the following heads:

(1) Amal-da on himself; (2) K.D.S. as a nature-lover; (3) K.D.S. as a poet; (4) K.D.S. as a critic; (5) K.D.S. — A specialist in Sri Aurobindo's poetry; (6) K.D.S. as a prose-writer; (7) K.D.S. as a correspondent; (8) K.D.S. as a debater; (9) K.D.S. as a journalist; (10) K.D.S. as a teacher; (11) Amal Kiran's hurnour; (12) Amal Kiran's cheerful humility; (13) K.D.S.'s radiant equanimity; (14) K.D.S. as an expositor and a counsellor; (15) K.D.S. as a Sadhaka; and (16) the journey continues.

1. Amal-da on Himself

"I cannot but identify myself with the 'elderly and handicapped'... except that I have a fire in my heart which age cannot quench and I do not look backward to muse on past irrecoverable joys but gaze forward to a future of more and more bliss of self- giving to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother."

"... the body itself has not kept pace in every feature. I indeed don't feel less fit in general at 85 than at 25... but the lower body has suffered, though without affecting in the least my day-to-day mood which... is touched by something of the light and de- light..."

"Sitting in the midst of profuse reading-matter and absorbed in the craft of endless writing and turned as much as his numerous human weaknesses allow towards the all-healing and all-fulfilling infinity of that dual divine presence - Sri Aurobindo and the Mother — such is Amal Kiran..."

"I am doing my best to live long both because I am happy and can give happiness and because I want as much time as possible to go nearer to Sri Aurobindo's luminous Truth and the Mother's radiant Beauty. All the same I am ready to say 'Hurrah' whenever they tell me, 'Your time is up.' "

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2. K.D.S. as a Nature-Lover

An intense love of plants and flowers, of hills and dales, rivers and sky has been an important trait of Amal-da's personality. He advises his friends to keep plants nearby and establish a communion with them.

As he himself has avowed, he opens in a very concrete way to the influence of leaves and blooms on his mind and heart. "The leafy greenery conveys great ease to my heart... And the many- coloured many-shaped flowers shoot into me little bursts of joy, bringing a smile to my face."

He wrote in his Diary of March 9, '53:

"My bed is situated in an ideal position. I lie and look through the two window^on the two sides. Each presents a different view. That to the left shows an unobstructed sky, a vast star- quivering darkness during night and a blue with depth beyond depth during day. The window to the right shows in daytime a swaying jungle of palms, a South-Sea Island picture. At night the palms become mysterious presences lit with little glints. I find myself extremely happy gazing through the two windows alter- natively."

Elsewhere he reminisces: "I remember the joy I used to experience on the hill-station of Matheran where I felt that, instead of my having to move towards Yoga, Yoga was coming on its own towards me in sight of the mountains and the thick woods and with fresh unpolluted air steeped in silence all about me. Pondicherry was almost forgotten."

In this connection, readers are referred to the two following poems of K.D.S., appearing on pages 526 and 531 of his recently published The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems —

(i) A Vision of Purbal;

(ii) Two Peaks.

3. K.D.S. as a Poet

It is well recognised in knowledgeable quarters that Sethna's is a distinghished name in the field of Indo-Anglian Poetry. He had dabbled in verse-making even in his school days. But an earnest self-dedication to poetry came only under the guiding eye of Sri

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Aurobindo, when he joined his Ashram in 1927 at the age of twenty-three.

It is a wonder how much time Sri Aurobindo graciously gave to his disciple in discussing all the minutiae of poetic creation and expression. Sethna received so much from his Guru, especially in insight into mystic poetry.

Amal Kiran gratefully remembers how Sri Aurobindo was insistent on his disciple's writing always at his highest. Though quite charitable about Amal's less inspired efforts, he never wavered in urging him "to be dissatisfied with anything less than the mot inevitable". The disciple too on his part used to appeal to his Guru: "I want perfection — so be unrelentingly critical if there is any drop." K.D.S., as he has revealed, was aspiring to write systematically — with the help of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual influence, critical guidance and sometimes personal example — what the Master has called 'Overhead Poetry' and distinguished as the most important element of what he has designated in general 'The Future Poetry'.

K.D.S. has been the author of the following books of verses:

(1) The Secret Splendour, (2)The Adventure of the Apocalypse, (3)Altar and Flame and (4) ^Overhead Poetry": Poems with Sri Aurobindo's Comments. Only recently, in 1993, has come out (5) Collected Poems of K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran). It is a sumptuous volume of eight hundred pages containing almost six hundred poems.

Here is a poem of Amal Kiran, being an example of a poetry seeking — in his own words — "a new intensity of vision and emotion, an illumined inwardness that would catch alive in words the deepest rhythms of the human soul evolving towards infinite beauty and eternal joy".

TRUTH-VISION

How shall you see

Through a mist of tears

The laughing lips of beauty,

The golden heart of years ?

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Oh never say

That tears had birth

In the weeping soul of ages,

The gloomy brow of earth!

Your eyes alone

Carry the blame

For giving tearful answers

To questionings of flame.

What drew that film

Across your sight

Was only the great dazzle

Of everlasting Light!

Frailty begot

Your wounded gaze:

Eagle your mood, O spirit,

To see the Golden Face.

4. K. D. S. as a Critic

Amal Kiran is a genuine lover of poetry. He has what he has called a "poetry-packed memory" from which he can quote at will verses in profusion.

K.D.S. possesses not merely a fine, developed aesthetic sense or a mere intuitive grasp so far as the appreciation of poetry is concerned. He has in addition a consummate knowledge in the field of technical subtleties connected with metre and rhythm. He fully knows what true poetry should be. To adapt his own words used in another context, his "insight" tells him precisely "how do imagination, feeling, thought, language and rhythm combine in a living whole" and "what is the general suggestion they spark off about the source of that totality".

Look with what mastery does the connoisseur in him analyse the following poem, bring out the beauty of its form, the cogency of its thought-content and the technical excellence in its execution:

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NEW COUNTRY

[A poem by Arjava (John Chadwick)]

Precarious boat that brought me to this strand

Shall feed flame-pinnacles from stem to stern,

Till not one rib my backward glance can find —

Down to the very keelson they shall burn.

Now to the unreal sea-line I would no more yearn;

Fain to touch with feet an unimaginable land....

The gates of false glamour have closed behind;

There is no return.

K.D.S.'s Analysis: "Arjava is rather compact in his language and subtle in the turns of his expression.... 'Precarious boat': we come to the spiritual life, the "new country' of the title, through events and circumstances that have both a forward and a backward tension: hence the "boat' is 'precarious' - that is, dependent on chance, uncertain, insecure, exposed to danger. It is also a possible means to go back, a temptation for a reversal of the voyage. Therefore, it needs to be destroyed wholly, from the front part ('stem') to the hind part ('stern') - subjected to the fire of the soul's aspiration, the inner flame that rises upward: its horizontal body offered up to the 'pinnacles' which that psychic intensity forms by its aspiring movement. But the destruction is done not only because the boat may tempt one to retrace one's way: there is also a firm resolve, a command from the inmost being. That is the suggestion of 'Shall'. And the totality of the destruction is driven home by mention of the boat's ribs. A rib is one of the curved timbers of a boat to which planks are nailed. 'Not one rib' will escape the fire, which means that fire will consume all the ribs. It is with the sense of all of them that the next line uses the plural number 'they'. Not content with saying this, the poet goes on to say that they shall burn 'Down to the very keelson'. The phrase points to the sheer bottom of the boat. 'Keelson' or 'kelson' is the line of timber fastening a boat's floor-

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timbers to its keel. A keel is the lowest piece of timber running lengthwise in a boat, on which the framework of the whole is built....

. "Arjava's 'unreal sea-line': this expression points to the horizon which is not a real terminus to the voyager but proves illusory as one sails further and further. One 'yearns' towards it in pursuit of a terminus. Now that the voyager has disembarked on a marvellous land which surpasses every possibility of imagination he is so glad (fain) that all the old lure of distances that keep deceiving one is lost.

"Next comes the grand finale. The poet has turned his back on the sea-line. Behind him lies, shut off for ever, the 'false glimmer' of the ordinary human existence always searching for beauty and happiness but finding only deceptive and transitory appearances. Never more will he be attracted by them. Their call is over. And this profound finality is branded upon our minds by those few sweeping words: 'There is no return.' Mark how short is the line they make — compared to the preceding seven.... The phrase — 'There is no return' — gets an absoluteness even technically by there being no return here to the long measures we have met before. The utter end of all the past, the end of all utterance of it, are here. The 'unimaginable land' on which the poet has planted his feet is evoked by this two-footed concluding phrase as a sudden short-cut to the Ineffable."

5. K.D.S. — A Specialist in Sri Aurobindo's Poetry

Amal Kiran is well-versed in all that Sri Aurobindo has written as a poet. Very rarely, if at all, can we find another critic, living or departed, who has, to quote D.K. Roy, "read Sri Aurobindo's poetry so thoroughly and acquired such a deep grasp of both its poetical beauty and technical mastery, insomuch that he [K.D.S] may easily be adjudged a specialist in these two capacities."

K.D.S. has employed his talent and acumen, his native gifts of poetic perspicacity and insight, not only to understand and appreciate Sri Auroindo's special contribution to poetry in all its varied range but to pave the way for others, by a series of luminous studies, to a more critical and deeper understanding of

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his Master's poetic genius.

Sri Aurobindo was already a poet even before he became a politician and a Yogi. When K.D.S. penned a piece of literary criticism and gave it the title of "Sri Aurobindo as a Poet", the Master found the title rather flat and suggested a modified caption, "Sri Aurobindo - the Poet".

Yet, it is a fact, although highly deplorable, that quite a few contemporary writers — critics and poets alike - who should know better, fail to give Sri Aurobindo his due recognition as a great poet. The Sage was well aware of this strange and regret- table phenomenon. Thus, when K.D.S. wrote/to him:

"By the way, the copy of yourLove and Death is ready to go to England. I wonder how the critics will receive the poem. They should be enthusiastic. It is full of superb passages.... I can never stop thrilling to it."

Sri Aurobindo wrote in reply:

"Contemporary poetry... seldom gets its right judgment from contemporary critics. You expect for instance Love and Death to make a sensation in England - I don't expect it in the least. I shall be agreeably surprised if it gets more than some qualified praise, and if it does not get even that, I shall be neither astonished nor discomfited. I know the limitations of the poem and its qualities and I know that the part about the descent into Hell can stand comparison with some of the best English poetry; but I don't expect any contemporaries to see it. If they do, it will be good luck or divine grace, that is all."

It redounds to the great credit of K.D.S. that he took up in right earnest, almost single-handedly, the pioneering task of making Sri Aurobindo known to the reading public as a poet of supreme calibre, and that against much vehement resistance emanating from some of the established poets and critics. He has written two bulky volumes on Sri Aurobindo's poetry: (1) The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo and (2) Sri Aurobindo - the Poet. What he has sought to achieve in these two volumes is in his own words:

"The poetry of Sri Aurobindo is too vast and rich for a mere couple of fair-sized volumes to do full justice to it.

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But the author has tried his best to give a succession of interpretative insights, hoping to catch the 'many-splendoured' poet in his essentiality even if failing to cope in a satisfying manner with his totality."

To illustrate how Amal Kiran defends with intellectual vigour and surprising insight any poetical composition by Sri Aurobindo, we may point out the following stanza of the Yogi-Poet which K.D.S. considers "to sum up with mantric power the goal of the Integral Yoga":

Arms taking to a voiceless supreme delight,

Life that meets the Eternal with close breast,

An unwalled mind dissolved in the Infinite,

Force one with unimaginable rest.

When an undiscerning critic suggested some changes in the stanza with a view to improve its quality, K.D.S. rejoined:

"The variations you suggest are poetic enough - 'silent' or 'wordless' instead of Sri Aurobindo's 'voiceless' - 'meeting' in place of 'that meets' - and for the third line either

A mind unwalled and merged in the Infinite,

or

A mind unhorizoned in the Infinite.

But when poetry comes from the sheer Overmind to constitute the mantra the order no less than the choice of the words and the wide as well as the weighty rhythm they create are of basic importance and significance. In your versions the sense of remote distances of divinity getting caught with an intense yet quiet immediacy is lost in what Sri Aurobindo would have called bright combinations and permutations playing about in the plane which he has termed 'the poetic intelligence'. Your 'silent' has no surprise in it. One would mentally expect it. 'Wordless' is rather

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feeble and lacks sufficient concreteness. Nothing except [Sri Aurobindo's] 'voiceless' will convey an absolute and ultimate quality at the same time that it gives an almost physical substance to the 'delight' which refrains from declaring itself with a voice. The silence becomes substantial, the wordlessness becomes seizable - and they have to be such if 'arms', the instruments of the body's aspiration, are to get, by self-dedication, into touch however subtly, with a 'supreme delight'. This delight, in order to be capable of giving contact to our physical self, has to exist as a Being of Bliss and not as an impersonal ananda. You cannot replace 'voiceless' without attenuating the spiritual suggestion appropriate to the matter-part of man the aspirant.

"In the second line to substitude 'meeting' for 'that meets' is to bring about a monotony of rhythm in relation to the first line's 'taking'. Besides, the vividness of 'Life' 's performance of an action is lost. 'Arms' has an in-built vividness: 'Life' hasn't and needs to be made 'living', as it were, by making it directly do something. Such doing would prepare and be in tune with the 'close breast' Sri Aurobindo ascribes to it at the line's end.

"Your third line is too fluid in both the versions. The first version has again no surprise: 'merged' is commonplace. The second is more picturesque with a typical Aurobindonian word - 'unhorizoned' - but it is wanting in strength. The original's massiveness and power of movement, partly due to the unusual past participle 'dissolved' and partly to the flanking of 'mind' with two qualifiers each on either side, produces the impression of something specially done to the mind by a sort of two-pronged attack for infinitising it. The attack is all the more vigorous because both 'unwalled' and 'dissolved' are two-syllabled and have a mutually reinforcing effect by the 1-sound along with the d-sound common to them.

"Your experiment with the last line:

Lull one with an ineffable rest

is not only the weakest of your proposals but also a complete misunderstanding equally of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual revelation and of his syntactical structure.

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His line represents the fourth limb of the plenary or integral realisation: it does not just round off the combination of body, life-energy and mind. The word 'Force' is a noun and not a verb as your 'Lull' is, and 'one' is not a pronoun standing as the object to 'Force'. Sri Aurobindo wants to say: 'Force that is one with what seems its utter opposite — namely, rest — but what is, in a way beyond imagination, not really so.' The comma after the third line's 'Infinite' should have alerted you to Sri Aurobindo's continuation of his series of the superb realities to be experienced. - '

"I may remark that the six-syllabic adjective 'unimaginable' cannot ever be replaced. Its length is essential to suggest not only the extreme wonderfulness, which keeps defying even conception, of the state spoken of but also the sustained sovereignty packed into a 'rest' which can be equated with 'force'. In comparison, your 'ineffable' is piffling."

When we read such an inspired and efficient defence of Sri Aurobindo's poetic creation, we readily concur with D.K. Roy's prophecy that "when, in the not too-distant future, Sri Aurobindo will have been acknowledged by the whole world as by far the greatest of modern poets to whom the mantric word came as soaring to the eagle, ... Sethna shall receive the smile of the great Goddess of Poetry, Saraswati, not only for having (in the words of Chesterton)

"... watched when all men slept

And seen the stars which never see the sun"

but also for having readily acquitted [himself] of [his] sacred responsibility, the sense of which prompted [him] to 'salute' the 'Dawn' [he] had seen and announce the high Herald of a new consciousness in poetry..."

6. K.D.S. as a Prose-writer

Amal Kiran is not only a poet of great distinction, he is at the same time an admirable prose-writer, and that too on a variety of

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subjects - philosophical, cultural, literary, historical, political, sociological, and even archaeological. He is a versatile genius of wide and profound scholarship. A phrase of Shelley very much favourite with K.D.S. applies fittingly his own case: his mind has grown “bright, gazing at many truths.”

A great thinker, Amal da has almost a fascination for all that is intellectually challenging and difficult. The brilliance of his mind is simply of the first order. He brings in profound insight in all that the deals with. He has a flair for sustained and meticulous research. Also, he has developed a consummate skill in lucidly communicating to his readers the findings of his sustained investigation.

His style of writing is natural and graceful. Felicitous phrases appear at every turn of his writing. His presentation is always well-reasoned and crystal-clear, never betraying any obscurity or obfuscation.

The total number of books, published or yet to be published, that he has authored may very well exceed the figure of forty. The sweeping range of his interests and scholarship comes out strikingly when we scan the tittles of his books. To name a few of them:

1. 1. The Indian Spirit and the World’s Future; 2. The Problem of Aryan Origins; 3. Talks on Poetry; 4. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo; 5. The Enigmas of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; 6. The Obscure and the Myysterious: A research in Mallarme’s Symbolist Poetry; 7. The English Language and the Indian Spirit; 8. The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo; 9. Blake’s Tyger: A Christological Interpretation; 10. Indian Poets and English Poetry; 11. The Beginning of History for Israel; 12. “Overhead Poetry”; 13. KarpasaIt in Prehistoric India; and a host of others.

It becomes a little difficult to believe that books as disparate in nature as The Beginning of History for Israel, Blake’s Tyger and Karpasa in Prehistoric India have issued forth from the pen of

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one and the same author.

K.D. S’s voluminous prose writings reveal him as a multi-splendoured Kavirmanishi (‘the ser and the thinker’) who has scattered aplenty gems of insight, acting in the variegated roles of a journalist, a philosopher, a psychologist, a debater, a critic, a historian, a chronicler, an expositor, a counsellor and what not. The limited space at our disposal does not permit us to give examples of Amal-da’s exposition of these various genres of prose writing. Readers are invited to refer directly to his books.

7:K.D.S. as a Correspondent

Amal Kiran’s “epistolary exchanges” from a significant part of his writings. He mingles in his letters a large ease, a smiling reasonableness, clairity of thought and perfect awarness of his correspondents’ problems and difficulties. In his detailed expository replies he shows himself to be most patient, understanding, intimate and delightfully enlightening. His epistles are often characterised by a delectable feature which K.D.S himself has labelled “Amalian digression”. His serial, Life-Poetry-Yoga, regularly published in Mother India is, I think, the most popular item in the monthly periodical. All his readers eargerly wait for its next instalment. Here is a random passage extracted from one of his letters, which shows in an exquisite way K.D.S.’s mild irony, sense of humour and extent of scholarship:

“I tried to picture myself ‘bristling with rage and resentmentcum-indignation’froth and fury’. It is almost a human edition of Shakespeare’s ‘fretful porpentine’ doubled with a spitting cat. Could I really have written in vein conjuring up such presence’s? ‘A sport bucking up’ seems more to the point. And what my own point was may be summed up by saying: ‘One is surely allowed to be narrow if one cannot help it, but - if I may mix my metaphors - to be peacocky over it gets my goat.’ I am all at a loss in higher maths. But I do not come out to say that the higher here is the lowest possible. It is one of my perennial regrets that I cannot follow technically the steps by which Einstein worked out his relativity theory. You are a veritable Ramanujan compared to a

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cipher like me in this field, but I turn aspiring eyes towards your theme of Circles and Squares, and I do not cry ‘Fiddle-sticks’ to every Circle that is not St.Augustine’s sacred symbol with centre everywhere and circumference nowhere, nor do I cock a snook at what is not Whitman’s ‘Square Deific’ of multiple and even baffling co-existent aspects.”

8.K,D.S. as a Debater

One of the most characteristic traits of Amal-da’s genius is its comprehensive vision, its capacity to see truth in all its aspects. He does not seek to cling with obstinacy to any preferred position at any cost. But, at the same time, after having dispassionately weighed all the pros and cons in any given position, if he becomes honestly convinced of the justness of a cause or of the truth of any matter, he displays a fighter’s zeal to defend it against all detractors. He relishes engaging his opponents in intellectual debates and employs in the process his tremendous dialectical skill to demolish their arguments and expose the fallacies implicit in their line of thinking. He shows vigour of thought, subtlety of intelligence and unweariness of energy in his pursuit of victory in these intellectual battles. The readers cannot but be thrilled with the robust and profound polemical writings K.D.S. We are reminded in this connection of what Dilip Kumar Roy once said abut this aspect of Sethna’s intelligence. Roy observed:.

“I remember once how he [K.D.S.] debated with Krishnaprem in my living-room. I envied his dialectical intelligence! And Krishnaprem not only admitted his mental robustness…but enjoyed to the full by breaking a lance with him. But he had to go all out to hold his own against Sethna, which is saying much.”

Any short extract from Sethna’s writings will utterly fail to bring out this quality of his intelligence; so we refrain from giving here any representative passage. Instead, readers are advised to refer to any of his following pieces:

(1) “Two Critics Criticised” in Sri Aurobindo - the Poet (ii) “A Cross Critic Cross-Examined” (Ibid); (iii) the entire book Indian Poets and English Poetry (a correspondence with Kathleen Raine); (iv) “November 17, 1974 - A Look Backward and Forward” in

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Mother India, November ’74; (v) “A Gross Misunderstanding of Sri Aurobindo”, being a refutation of the view of Dr.K.K.Nair (Krishna Chaitanya) in Mother India, May ’94.

9. K.D.S. as a Journalist

Before K.D.S. joined the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1927 at the age of twenty-three, he had “looked forward to a little fame in the higher ranges of journalism”. And it so happened that twenty-two years later a fortnightly periodical, Mother India, was launched with him as its editor. With it started a new creative phase in his intellectual life and he very soon flowered into what his friend D.K.Roy has styled “a priest to higher - or shall I say, spiritual - journalism”. And it is so happened that twenty-two years later a fortnightly periodical, Mother India, was launched with him as its editor. With it started a new creative phase in his intellectual life and he very soon flowered into what his friend D.K.Roy has styled “a priest of high - or shall I say, spiritual - journalism”.

Yes, a new type of journalism it surely was. For, Sethna, through his editorial articles spreading over a period of years, sought in a sustained manner “to throw light on the true Indian spirit and its role in the creation of a new world”. The articles touched all that constitutes man’s man dimensioned life. And “in every field of activity the aim was to criticise whatever militated against humanity’s instinct of an evolving divinity within itself and to give the utmost constructive help to all that encouraged this instinct.” (K.D.S.)

Here is one representative piece gathered from Amal-da’s journalistic writings. It reveals all the quality of his intellect and the depth of his vision.

Example: “It is spiritual India that has attained greatness in times gone by and that has fought for freedom against the alien rulers. All the best that has happened to us or been created by us was born of our instinct of the Divine…. Also, our miseries and eclipses have been due to unfaithfulness to that instinct or else to a turning of it in the direction of other-worldliness instead of in the direction of God’s manifestation here and now. If we are true to our characteristic genius we shall never decline and all seeming declines will only be temporary phases. At present, there is a crisis in our country - not basically economic or political but psychological - and it consists in our being divided in mind about what

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makes Indian ness. A shallow scepticism, a preoccupation with superficial factors, a watering down of genuine ethics to weak moralism and sentimental pacifism, a false kind of secularity which forgets that the true secularity for India can lie only in a wide tolerant multi-faceted all-comprehensive plastic and dynamic spirituality - these things have obtained sway over half our mind and the other half that is alive to the Divine’s presence is unable to find voice and orient our interests and occupations towards the light that in Saint and Seer and Yogi is still burning amongst us … The way open to us is that as many individuals as possible should awaken to the Sovereign Spirit that has been our lodestar and lover through the millenniums.”

10. K.D.S. as a Teacher

Yes, many may not be aware of the fact that Amal Kiran has been for some time in the teaching profession. After the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education was established in Pondicherry, the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram appointed him lecturer in poetry. The class he took twice a week was from the beginning an unusual one. He did not follow any set method but taught according to his inspiration. It is strange but true that during the first year of the two years he taught at the “Centre” he never opened a single book in the classroom or consulted any notes.

Amal Kiran’s lectures were not only enlightening which they were expected to be. But they were full of now famous “Amalian digressions” and evoked in the students much mirth and laughter. There was an informality in all the proceedings. And, as the “Publisher’s. Introduction” to his Talks on Poetry points out with mock consternation:

“At one time there was a threat by the authorities [of the “Centre”] to put up a notice that Amal Kiran ‘s students should not laugh so much since other classes were disturbed by being tempted to stop their own work and join the high jinks that seemed to be going on there.’

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Typical of K.D.S.’s lecture style is the following extract from his lecture on the French poet Mallarme:

“Let us continue from where we left off in the last lecture - or, if you think that what I said last time left you in a bewilderedly broken condition of mind, I shall refer not to the last lecture but to the last fracture. Perhaps my words now will set some of the broken pieces together.

“Mallarme’s is a mysticism of a very mystifying kind. Before him there had been mystical poetry, but except for Blake it had not the quality of mystification which this Frenchman brought into play…

“English lends itself far more easily to the ambiguous, so that English Mysticism often seems to deserve being spelt Misty Schism… The nature of the French language is ever a check against becoming involuted in idea and expression and construction. Thus Mallarme was forced, by the very medium in which he worked, to produce with each poem a systematic whole of enigmatic imagery.

‘Of course, it was because he was a true artist - unlike the Dadaists and Surrealists who came in the wake of his Symbolism – that he aimed at the significant from that goes with all Art: …His achievement lay in making his imagery enigmatic not by a chaos of wandering phantasmagorias but by a cosmos of related figurative queernesses. He broke through the surface of intelligible statement not with a number of haphazard punctures but with a collection of piercing points which when added up constituted a big aperture sucking the reader into a world unknown to the thinking mind, particularly the French thinking mind.

“If we may indulge in a bit of punning, a poem of Mallarme’s was at the same time a systematic W-h-o-l-e and a systematic H-o-l-e. His art may be described as a sort of camouflage by which you are made to see a well-built well-carved slab of stone and invited to step on it and the moment you step on it you find that what you look to be a stone is nothing save a grey gap with a sharp outline. Straight away you drop through the apparently

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solid into a depth where your mind can find no hand-hold or foot-hold.

“Arduously Mallarme took care to make his readers’ hands grip emptiness and their feet dance in a vacuum…. If you could properly make out what he says he would consider himself to have failed. When a young person once told him that she had understood one of his poems after brooding over it a while, he exclaimed:' What a genius you are! You have so soon understood what I the author am still trying to understand after twenty years!’”

11.Amal Kiran’s Humour

Amal Kiran’s innate cheerfulness flows spontaneously into his writings. But there is nowhere any levity in his now famous humour although there is much of light there. And along with it there is always the glow of intellectual delight. K.D.S. once aptly remarked: “English language has a word which can very aptly suggest light’s being included in laughter. the word is ‘delight’.” This applies so fittingly to all his humorous writings. His humour is always aglow with some glint of light.

Amal-da has been “never in the habit of considering cheerfulness unphilosophical”’ as he himself avers in his Introduction to Dilip Kumar Roy’s book, Sri Aurobindo Came to Me. After all, why should he be shy of sweetening his writings at every turn with delectable intellectual humour? Is he not the disciple of Sri Aurobindo who declared: ”here is laughter in the Kingdom of Heaven, though there may be no marriage there.”

K.D.S. is an adept in the art of humour; he is a perfect artist in this particular branch of style. All the different nuances of this art flow freely from his pen. His witty remarks bring a pure mirth to his readers’ hearts. His “punning atrocity” - to quote his own phrase- makes his readers sit up in joyous wonderment. His way of describing a situation or narrating an incident is simply inimitable; it is always a felicitous blend of light and delight. One can very well write a big dissertation around the theme of “The Humour of K.D.S.”

Here are few examples of Amal-da’s humorous writings:

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Example 1: “The mispronouncing or mishearing of words in other languages has sometimes a farcical effect. The first Indian baronet was a Parsi, a man named Jamshedjee Cursetjee Jeejeebhoy. When he went to England he was invited by Queen Victoria to a party. A grandly attired butler stood at the door of the reception hall and announced the names of the visitors as they came. When the Parsi baronet arrived, the butler inquired his name. He got the answer: “Jamshedjee Cursetjee Jeejeebhoy.” The butler was a little puzzled but he kept his aplomb and, looking at the Queen, announced in a loud voice: “Damn says he, Curse says he. She’s a boy.”

Example 2: “You know what ‘lumbago’ means? The dictionary gives it as ‘rheumatic pain in the lower back and loins.’ The loins are the region between the false ribs and the hips. Get the word ‘loins’ correctly; don’t be like a friend of mine who always referred to his ‘lions’ when he meant his ‘loins’ - just as some people speak of quotations from Sri Aurobindo published in the Ashram Dairy when they mean Diary.

“To return to ‘lumbago’. Well, this morning I knew its meaning not quietly from my dictionary but growled out from my own lower back by my ‘lions’. Yes, I have a touch of this rheumatic pain. I shall tell you how I am going to make history by my battle with this hellish visitor whose sound entitles it to be almost a compeer of Satan. Satan is also known as Lucifer. Lucifer and Lumbago could very well be twin Archangles fallen from on high.

“The history I shall make in dealing with this fiend will be in three dramatic stages. First, there will be a realisation of the full presence of the dread torturer - full presence summed up by my thundering out the name as it is: ‘Lumbago!’ Next, you will see me tackling the demon and sending him away by a mantric strategy of the resisting will. I shall shout: ‘ Lumba, go!’ The last stage will find me relieved, a conqueror wearing a reminiscent smile and whispering with a sense of far-away unhappiness the almost fairy-tale expression: ‘Lumb, ago!”

Example 3: “Anatole France can be summed up in his literary quality by the rule he has laid down for writers: ‘D’nabord la claret,

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puis encore la clarté, enfin la clarté’ - ‘Clarity first, clarity again, clarity at the end.’

“The English genius differs here from the French, perhaps because England has more mist and fog than other side of the Channel. The English poet William Watson has said: ‘They see not the cleariest,/Who see all things clear.’ And Havelock Ellis, looking at Anatole France’s advice, has added his own comment of both agreement and disagreement: ‘Be clear. Be not too clear.’ “.

Example 4: “[My book Sri Aurobindo on Shakespeare] has been rather popular. I remember that on a visit to Bombay many years ago I had called at a bookshop to inquire how the sale of my productions stood. The owner told me: ‘One of your books is creating a lot of interest.’ I asked: ‘Which one?’ He answered: ‘Shakespear on Sri Aurobindo.’ I exclaimed: ‘No wonder! It must surely be the most original book I could ever have written.’ He nodded with an innocent smile.”

Example 5: (After his cataract operation)” We are supposed to keep the head completely still for twenty-four hours, otherwise the operation may be a failure…. In the evening when [my] relatives called, I was quite animated and my hands moved as usual in accompaniment to my talk. They found me a little too active and advised me not to move my head. Very obediently I agreed, affirming my agreement by nodding several times.”

Example 6: (Narrating how he happened to come to Sri Aurobindo for the first time) “ I had read somewhere that Sri Aurobindo was a great philosopher and linguist and poet on top of having Yogic attainments. But somehow he had not come alive to my soul. Then, one day, I went to the Crawford Market of Bombay to buy a pair of shoes. The shopkeeper put my purchase in a cardboard box and wrapped the box in a big newspaper sheet and tied it up. When, on reaching home, I untied the box and unwrapped it, the newspaper sheet fell open right in front of me and disclosed a big headline: ’A visit to the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo Ghose’. I at once started reading the article. At the end of it I said to myself: ‘This is the place for me.’ The destined Guru’s Grace had come to meet the searching soul. I wrote to the Ashram

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