Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
Having led a faultless, nay, immaculate life for long I have had a fall of frivolity today. I was going to the pier this morning to write there another diaphanous poem when I sat down to scribble a few lines to Professor Sarcar and Professoress as they have just sent a tin of mustard oil and some muri [puffed rice], when lo, dushta [mischievous] sarasvatī tripped onto my pen and this Shuk-Sārī Sangbad1 of unpardonable unyogic levity was the horrific result. You know the rural style of Shuk-Sārī Sangbad, eh? My father wrote a la Shuk Sārī Sangbad a rollickingly undevout Krishna-Radha Sangbad (Shuk says something in praise of his Krishna, Sarī contradicts with cogent arguments proving to the hilt that Krishna is not a patch on her Radha. My father varied on this) (mine is not so blasphemous after all!) thus:
Krishna says, “My Radha, look at me!”
Radha says, “Why do you trouble me needlessly – I have enough troubles of my own.”
Krishna says, “All the three worlds are illumined with my beauty.”
Radha says, “If only you were not so dark! – beauty would be overflowing.” etc.
I halt in trepidation. The Lord has forgiven long enough my irreverence for His Supramental – I must be prudenter now, what?
Yet I send you – on a dare-divine mood the frivolity. Just smile a while fora change after my devout-enough poems of late, what?
P.S. The reference to yoginī is – les trois sceurs étaient bouléversees, excitées, bavardes, etc. en grande joie en mangeant Ie muri + sarsher tel2. Do you know one rejoices in muri only when sarsher tel gives its unctuous support. Now proceed please and tell me how you react to this irreverence. Too scandalized, what?
The question is not how I react to it, but how the mustard [oil] and muri react to your ribaldry. If they don’t get irritated at this irreverent attempt to bring discord into their happy ménage (made sacred and legitimate by solemn wedlock) and don’t give you an indigestion in revenge, it is allright. But such great gods ought not to be so lightly treated. If you had written a passionate lyric or a noble epic on the subject, that would have been something.