Promod Kumar

Promod Kumar Chattopadhyay (1885-1979) was an interesting personality who travelled through many vicissitudes in his life. He was a traveler and travelled extensively all over India, Nepal and Tibet for pilgrimage. But it was not merely for the purpose of pilgrimage -though its spiritual significance was not absent in his psychology -but for his passionate seeking for meeting the enlightened yogis and sadhus, he spent a considerable period of his early and middle life in the paths of the Himalayas and other places of India like a barefooted sannyasin. But he was not a sannyasin. He was already married then and his wife was a loving and dutiful woman. He was a painter of high quality. However, nothing could bind him with the normal familial life and ordinary world. Actually, for an indomitable aspiration for realizing the spiritual truth he became a little restless. This moved him to the dusty path of eternal India. He met innumerable spiritual personalities of almost all the disciplines of the spiritual kingdom of India in the course of his frequent travelling. His love and respect for sacred India and his thirst for India's spiritual treasure were the predominant factors that determined and shaped predominantly the course of his life. Eventually, he became a realized person, a siddha in Vrindavan - a sacred pilgrimage place of North India- famous for Lord Krishna and Radha's lila there on the bank of river Yamuna from time immemorial. He then returned home and pursued his career as a painter to earn a livelihood. He joined Baroda School of Arts as its Principle in the Twenties of the last century. Later he founded National Art Gallery in Masilipattanam in Andhra Pradesh in South India and became its President. He wrote many books on his experiences in the course of his extensive travelling in Bengali. His thirst to know about Tantric philosophy and practice led him to visit many renowned places of Tantric sadhana and he met many enlightened yogis and sadhaks ofTantra-discipline. He will be remembered for his renowned book "Tantrabhilasir sadhusanga" which is rich with the history, philosophy and the past glory and present decadence of Tantric sadhana in India and other places. Later he joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry in 1958. He painted some portraits of Sri Aurobindo which were highly praised by the Mother as they reflected the inner being of Sri Aurobindo to a great extent. He was amongst a very few who saw a vision of Supramental consciousness in the form of a winged bird. He came to Calcutta again for some personal work in 1975. But he did not return to Pondicherry as his daughters wanted his presence amongst them for the remaining days of his life. He left his body on 22 September 1979 at the age of 94.