Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 2. 1937

Letter ID: 1816

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

January 3, 1937

N.P. complains of much pain in the eyes – frontal headache after half an hour’s reading, eyes watering etc. Manilal advises him to use glasses. He says glasses will cure it.

Glasses cure it, means what? The weakness will disappear and he will be able to read without glasses after a while?

... About the pot-au-feu, apart from all these, may I point out a little flaw in your argument? French people are used to taking a mixed meal, so the quantity of the vegetable would be very small in proportion.

[Sri Aurobindo underlined “very small”.]

Don’t understand. It is a question of the healthiness for the stomach. There is quite enough vegetable in a pot-au-feu to test the stomach and it is not taken once a week only, but often.

Moreover, what French people can take and digest, I am sure Indians can’t. Physically Indians are a far inferior race to the Europeans – an admitted and deplorable fact.

It is the other way round. Indians can digest foods (chillied, curried, strongly spiced) which would send a European to his grave in a short time. Indians have a shorter life but dietetically a much more spicy and hot life.