Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
25 January 1940
Purani: Mahadev Desai has advised poor people to wear paper if cloth runs short.
Nirodbaran: Why wear anything at all?
Purani: He has got this idea from Gandhi. Once Gandhi put a piece of paper in between the two folds of his loin cloth. People say that paper will be short now.
Sri Aurobindo: Doesn’t matter. Was it not Gandhi’s idea once not to wear anything?
Nirodbaran: In that way, life’s problems become very much simplified, and for food one can eat grass like that English barrister.
Sri Aurobindo: Thus two problems of life are solved. But what about the third: shelter?
Purani: People can sleep under the stars.
Sri Aurobindo: Not possible during the monsoon. Even Sannyasis have to seek caves.
Satyendra: If one could really simplify life, things would be so much better. Even if as Yogis we accept life, simplification is necessary. If one makes life complex, complexities increase and increase. The Europeans, having accepted life, have increased its complexities enormously.
Sri Aurobindo: But to what extent to simplify? – that is the question. The Sannyasi’s standpoint is to accept only what is necessary. This is understandable. But the Sannyasi does not quite accept life. If you do accept it, how far will you simplify it?
Satyendra: If you don’t simplify it drastically, you have to accept life as the Europeans do – with complexities multiplying.
Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily. The Europeans have accepted life in the wrong way – that is, along with its disorders.
Satyendra: Some people in India, no less than in Europe, have wanted to introduce nudity. But it is hardly necessary in India.
Nirodbaran: All the same, it would be rather comfortable, I think.
Sri Aurobindo: A French woman went to Germany to study the nudists. When she came back she wrote an article in a paper: “Les bonheurs de la nudite” (“The Happiness of Nudity”). Blake also wanted to establish nudity as the rule of life. He succeeded only in taking some promenades with his wife in his own garden. (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: By the way, some people are going to celebrate Bejoy Goswami’s birth-centenary at Calcutta.
Satyendra: Are there no translations of his works?
Nirodbaran: I haven’t seen any.
Sri Aurobindo: I have read neither any translation nor his original work. During his time, there was quite a strong cult of him.
Nirodbaran: Brahmo Samaj?
Sri Aurobindo: No. He was Brahmo only at the beginning. The three nationalist leaders of the day were his disciples – the first, I forget his name, started the nationalist university, the second was Bipin Pal and the third Monoranjan Guha Thakurtha. It is said that the nationalist revolutionary movement was the outcome of his own movement.
Nirodbaran: How?
Sri Aurobindo: Because he used to stress work, action!
Nirodbaran: The Calcutta people, the organisers of the celebration, want to know where in your writings you have referred to him. I read in one book your saying that the work begun by Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and Bejoy Goswami hasn’t been finished. Jayantilal was telling me that you have said somewhere that Goswami couldn’t give to others what he had received.
Sri Aurobindo: Where have I said that?
Nirodbaran: Jayantilal thinks it is in a book by Barin.
Sri Aurobindo: The report is unreliable.
Satyendra: Somebody here was saying that a friend of his saw Goswami’s presence standing behind a person.
Sri Aurobindo: Goswami was a very powerful man.
Nirodbaran: I have read that his soul was thrice brought back to life by the Brahmachari of Baradi.
Satyendra: You mean Lokanath?
Nirodbaran: Yes.
Satyendra: Jayantilal told me that Lokanath got his realisation at the age of eighty, but that his Guru had no realisation, for which Lokanath was very sorry.
Nirodbaran: Yes. Lokanath’s Guru was Jnanamargi. Lokanath used to say, “You, my Guru, are still bound while I your disciple am free. I feel very sad about it.” This Lokanath seems to have travelled to Sumeru.
Satyendra: Yes, he wanted to go to heaven like Yudhishthir.
Sri Aurobindo: Did he believe that he could go to heaven bodily?
Nirodbaran: It looks like it. And so with a friend he started along the Himalayas and, crossing them, came wandering to Sumeru where they met some people only half a yard tall who lived on vegetable roots growing beneath the snows. I believe they were Eskimos.
Sri Aurobindo: Eskimos? But Eskimos eat fish. Who has written all this?
Nirodbaran: Some Sitanath Banerji, one of Lokanath’s disciples.
Evening
Purani: Have you read that book of poems by Udar’s friend, Armando Menezes?
Sri Aurobindo: I have glanced through it. He has a mastery over the language and technique, but the work still seems to be derivative except in a few places.
Nirodbaran: Do you mean that he has no inspiration?
Sri Aurobindo: No. He has inspiration and he has power too. Perhaps the word “derivative” is wrong. For it would mean imitation, though there is an influence of Shelley. What then shall I call his work? Perhaps I may say it is not authentic yet. It has everything else short of this, and he may achieve something.
Purani: He is afraid to come here lest he shouldn’t be able to go back.
Sri Aurobindo: He’s afraid like Nandalal Bose?
Purani: Yes. He says he has a family and if he takes up poetry here and doesn’t go back – (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: He is one of the best among Indians who are writing in English. There is another from your part of the country.
Purani: Jehangir Vakil?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. But he didn’t arrive at anything.
Nirodbaran: Armando Menezes’ mother tongue, as well as Amal’s, is practically English.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not everything, nor does it count for much. Many Englishmen can’t write poetry. The point is that Indians writing in English must do something extraordinary to be recognised while that is not so for an Englishman.