Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
6 January 1940
Nirodbaran: Hot water seems to have a stimulating effect on the hair cells.
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Nirodbaran: On your lower limbs I find a growth of hair which was not there before.
Satyendra: Then Nirodbaran can try hot water on his own head. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: I was thinking of trying it, but it makes the head so hot.
Satyendra: Then why not try hot and cold?
Sri Aurobindo: Cold water may take away the rest of the hair! (Laughter)
Satyendra: If Nirodbaran proves successful, we’ll all try the remedy.
Nirodbaran: No chance of success. Getting bald is hereditary.
Sri Aurobindo: You mean it is the effect of being born bald?
Satyendra: Scientists consider heredity to play a great part.
Nirodbaran: Perhaps they ascribe to heredity whatever they can’t explain.
Sri Aurobindo: They are discovering so many wonderful rays. Why don’t they discover something for baldness?
Nirodbaran: They have tried ultra-violet, but with no result.
Sri Aurobindo: It burns up whatever hair there is? Voronoff seems to have succeeded with his monkey-gland operation. Besides doing several other things, it grows hair.
Nirodbaran: I hope it does not grow hair everywhere – as on a monkey! (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: Not so far. If it did, it might grow a monkey tail too.
Satyendra: There are plenty of advertisements for curing baldness, but the problem remains. Perhaps Nirodbaran can discover something.
Nirodbaran: I may when I get my intuition opened or when the Supermind opens.
Satyendra: The Supermind opening is a long affair.
Sri Aurobindo: Intuition would be easier to get.
Purani: If one gets the Supermind, there will be no need to find anything out.
Nirodbaran: Yes, the hair will grow itself. There will be a change in every cell.
Purani: You will be all golden, I suppose.
Sri Aurobindo: As they say in the Upanishad, the Supreme Being with the golden beard, etc.
When Sri Aurobindo was lying down, Nirodbaran read to him a letter from Tagore to Sahana on mystic poetry.
Nirodbaran: Tagore says: “Mostly we see that those whose spiritual realisation is new cannot express that new experience in the simple and easy old ways. In their manner of expression there is something laboured.”
Sri Aurobindo: That is not true. If there is any obscurity in a truly mystic poem, it is because the poet tries to express faithfully his extraordinary vision, what he has inwardly seen. Others may find difficulty in understanding it, but it is not consciously written with a view to making it unintelligible. It is not a laboured work. On the contrary, if one tries to make it easily intelligible it becomes laboured.
Nirodbaran: Tagore goes on: “The sculptor who erects a chapel does it on the common soil. He does not think that unless he constructs it on Kanchanjunga his art is in vain.”
Sri Aurobindo: Can’t he have a private chapel of his own wherever he wants it?
Nirodbaran: Besides, does an artist have all these motives and plans beforehand?
Sri Aurobindo: No. He creates moved by an inner urge. What else does the letter say?
Nirodbaran: “One who has tasted heaven, if he is an artist, will build this paradise on the earth which is accessible to all and make ordinary clay heavenly. Language is a vessel meant to be enjoyed by all. Even if ambrosia is served, it must be in this common vessel.”
Sri Aurobindo: The artist can base his poem on heaven: why necessarily on earth? Does Tagore mean to say that everybody understands or appreciates all poetry? How many appreciate Milton and other great poets? Besides, one must have the power of understanding.
Nirodbaran: Tagore further writes about the Ashram poets: “Among you, Nishikanto alone has proved his easy mastery over language.”
Sri Aurobindo: That is a different matter from writing with easy intelligibility for everybody.
Nirodbaran: Why does he want us to follow the simple and easy old ways – the beaten track?
Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps poets when they grow very old want old ways to be followed?
Purani: But Tagore has himself gone off the beaten track. And what about his prose-poetry? What age-old way is there in it? In Gujarat, Kalelkar and Gandhi also say the same thing – that poetry must be for the masses. Kalelkar says that even the Ramayana was written for them.
Sri Aurobindo: Good Lord!
Purani: Yes, Kalelkar explains that Valmiki used to go from cottage to cottage reciting the Ramayana and that when the epic was finished the Rishis presented him with a Kamandalu (water pot), a Kaupin (loin-cloth) and a Parnakutir (thatched hut).
Sri Aurobindo: But the Rishis were not the common people and they had retired from ordinary society. Kalelkar’s is an entirely unheard-of interpretation of the Ramayana.
Purani: He claims to have found evidence in the poem itself for his theory.
Sri Aurobindo: Where is it said in the Ramayana? If Valmiki meant it for the masses he kept his meaning a secret. Nor did he recite it to the masses. There were the professional reciters who carried it from door to door and popularised it. That is a different thing.
Purani: At the Ahmedabad Literary Conference, Gandhi as President asked, “What has literature done for the man who draws water from the well?”
Sri Aurobindo: How much has the President done? The man is still drawing water! (Laughter)
Do the masses understand Kalelkar’s own writings?
Purani: Not quite. Gandhi alone can be said to be understood by them.
Nirodbaran: All this seems to be an attempt by people to apply the principle of democracy everywhere. But it is democracy in terms of socialism and communism.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Purani: Tagore has also taken up the cry now, but formerly he was not quite for the common man.
Sri Aurobindo: I suppose he has further developed his idea of the Vishwa-manava [universal man]. But, truly speaking, the universal man includes the best as well as the worst, the highest no less than the lowest, whereas the Jana-sadharana [common man], appears to leave out the best and highest.
Nirodbaran: But Tagore’s literary works – for example, his novels – can hardly be appreciated by the masses. In that sense, Sarat Chandra Chatterji can be considered more successful in living up to the democratic ideal.
Purani: In Hindi, somebody wrote on art recently under the title “Kasmai Devaya?” (“To What God?”) and said, “Fanardana”, the God of the people. But in practice only “the people” are insisted on; “God” is left out of the account. Possibly there is the echo here of Vivekananda’s idea of serving Daridranarayana (God the Poor).
Nirodbaran: Vivekananda did perhaps see Narayana in the Daridra.
Sri Aurobindo: But ordinarily, in the man drawing water from the well, people hardly have the vision of the Divine at work: they see only the peasant.
Purani: Kalelkar says that substance is more important than form in art. He gives the analogy of the vessel and the food in it, and emphasises that the food is the real thing. I don’t understand how in art the two can be separated.
Sri Aurobindo: This is something like Tagore’s ambrosia and the earthen vessel. But there can’t be art without form. If substance alone counts, we don’t have art. An artist has to give a body to his vision, which is the soul of his art; but in art you can’t take soul and body as separate things. Those images – food and vessel – can be applied to physical processes, not to any inner process like art creation.
Purani: When Valmiki had the vision, he was busier giving form to it than going from cottage to cottage and popularising the Ramayana.
By the way, there is a point made by someone about Vyasa and his Mahabharata. He says that Vyasa was greater than Sri Krishna because he had universal sympathy: Vyasa expresses his sympathy with every character he created in the Mahabharata.
Sri Aurobindo: Where does Vyasa say that? This looks like Valmiki’s intention to write for the masses. Both poets have kept their meaning a secret! As for Vyasa’s universal sympathy, one has to understand an important distinction in art. Every creator has to identify himself with his characters in order to make them live and bring out their essential points. This doesn’t mean that he has sympathy with each and every character created. Homer put many good things into his Hector’s mouth. But his sympathy was, if at all anywhere, on the side of Achilles.