have erected an automatic self-defence against the Call of correspondence.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1935
Letter ID: 1290
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
March 23, 1935
S is showing signs of cerebral irritation. It is strange that I did not think of the head injury, neither did you draw my attention to it.
The Mother got the suggestion several times, but she did not feel entitled to interfere as she is “not a doctor” and the suggestion was not scientific or rational, but only an “unbased” intuition. The rights of reason and science, you know, are not to be trifled with! Hail, Reason, holy Light! etc. But it is a great pity she did not act on her intuition; she asked whether it was not necessary to open the wound and see, but Pavitra told her André had not found it necessary as there was no pain. But evidently something went seriously wrong.
Mother, thinking of this case and one or two others, I feel ashamed of my poor knowledge and experience. I was wondering how I would show my face to you at Pranam.
Cheer up. And as Danton said “De l’audace et toujours de l’audace”.1 (What is lacking in you is the doctor’s confidence in guessing at a disease and throwing a medicine at it in the hope that it will stick and cure. But that is not what I mean by the quotation.)
I dreamt that you had come to me for eye treatment, though there was no facial similarity.
If there was no facial similarity, how do you know it was I!
Does it mean that you are still unwell? M says you walk about with a bandage on.
The eyes are still unready for overstrain, that is all. I suppose they have erected an automatic self-defence against the Call of correspondence.
If you believe all that M’s highly wrought poetic imagination conceives!!
D and H are losing their nails perhaps due to their washing work with soda. I have asked them to wash their nails with lemon-water after the work to neutralise the corrosive action.
That ought to stop it. Do they not rinse properly after work? They should do so and rub each finger with the lemon-water.
1 “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace!”: Boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness!