about the jungle and its denizens and it is you who are in this field amazingly naïve.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 2. 1938
Letter ID: 2147
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
July 14, 1938
X calls me now and then in the afternoon to taste something she has prepared. So I spend about 15-20 minutes on my way to the hospital.
I like X’s smile. It’s innocent, childlike – nothing coquettish or sophisticated or trying to captivate.
Very dangerous! especially if you begin to luxuriate in the idea of her unsophisticated simplicity. Unsophisticated or not, if once the vital attachment is made, she will hold you as tightly as the other and with a greater violence of dabi1, abhiman and the rest of it and, finally when the connection is cut, she will say and think that it was all your fault and that you are a very wicked person who took advantage of her foolishness and innocence. Well, well, you know about as much of women as a house-kitten knows about the jungle and its denizens and it is you who are in this field amazingly naïve.
What exactly is meant by a “sophisticated” mind and “naïveté” in English?
“Sophisticated” means well up to everything, artificial and without simplicity; naïve means ignorantly artless, amusingly simple, not up to things.
... If you think I had better stop this social relationship and check the unyogic enjoyment – I shall.
I certainly think that you should stop while there is yet time. It is no use getting out of one net to fall into another.
1 Claim.