Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1938
Letter ID: 2125
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
June 11, 1938
[Sri Aurobindo and the Mother]
Guru, oh Lord! what a lot you have written! I feel called upon to respond to it a little. I had a talk with X and asked 
him all that he had written to you and Mother. First he said it wasn’t anything much; then I told him about your letter to me and he said: “I wrote that I had a mind to try to improve the D.R. cooking gradually, but I realised it is impossible, so I have given up the idea...”
? I saw nothing in that letter about giving up the idea of improving the cooking.
“And that if D goes against Mother and Mother supports him against me, then it will be natural for me to have abhiman...”
Why should Mother support D against herself?
X came to me today with your letter which has pacified him.... I am almost sure if you hadn’t replied, he would have gone away, and he did express such a desire, I hear.
He says he went up to the station and came back.
He had decided already not to come back to Pondicherry after he went out – so it is not new. He came back because when at Cape Comorin he meditated on Shiva and Krishna, they none of them showed up and he could only see Mother and myself!
From what I learn from you and Kanai, I find that things have not been very well with X, from the beginning. His asking for a room in D.R. etc. was revealed to me only now. This incident only set the flame to his heaped-up grievances; otherwise I don’t see how a man could write like that from a single instance of this sort...
He had any number of grievances
(1) not getting an easy chair,
(2) not getting an almirah,
(3) not getting the D.R. room on the terrace (reserved especially for visitors),
(4) my letter which was quite general about poetry, Yoga etc., he says I told him that his poetry was all humbug (ভণ্ডামি1) and that his sadhana was humbug and all our efforts on him were পণ্ডশ্রম2 – Needless to say I never wrote or suggested anything of the kind and in fact wrote nothing about his poetry or his past sadhana. There were other grievances, but I have forgotten them.
God allow that I may be left some common sense even in the vortex of my troubles. You surprise me by saying that Y also wrote such letters to you!
At least a dozen in which he was going to take the next train to commit suicide decently in some distant place. You don’t know what a tug of war it was for some years together. Of course his letters were not so crude as X’s but they were bad enough. All that was very confidential however. We both “kept up appearances” outwardly, and saved his face as much as possible.
I hope it is a lesson enough for X.
One can never be sure – when a thing like that has seized a fellow, it is apt to turn up again and again. But I hope for his sake it won’t – for I have no longer my old unwearied patience which I showed to B, R or Y and many others. Also I have no longer time for endless soothing letters. However his present attitude in his last letter is blameless – he seems to have understood.
Z has a slight temperature. Given her an Ayurvedic drug galoye. Should we give her soup?
[The Mother underlined “soup”.]
Yes, it is better.
Our rose water is exhausted. Pavitra asked me to enquire if you have any.
[Mother:] I have some but it arrived from France in an iron drum. In spite of filtering there is still in it a slight tinct of rust. For any toilet preparation it is not harmful, but for eyes?– – – If you want I can send you a bottle –
1 bhaṇḍāmi.
2 paṇḍaśrama: useless efforts.