I send you three poems – parables rather, all from Sri Ramakrishna. I have written in all eighteen. The others will follow. Some comfort this at least. But I have had to write so many letters today over this mess!... Quite annoyed, truly!Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
Letter ID: 165
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
November 1931 (?)
(...) such fuming helps not. But I have had enough fun over the income tax and now this! Qu’en dites-vous1. Fine mess! I will have to pay lots [?] for a law-suit because my precious cousin has forgotten all along to pay the tax! O Lord!
I send you three poems – parables rather, all from Sri Ramakrishna. I have written in all eighteen. The others will follow. Some comfort this at least. But I have had to write so many letters today over this mess!... Quite annoyed, truly!
Have worked all day,– quite solitary! So be pleased, please.
I am.
No use boiling over human ingratitude – it is too immense a thing to deserve a single boil. You know Vidyasagar’s saying, “āmār upar tānr eta rāg keno? āmi ta tānr kona-o upakāra kari ni!!” [“Why does he abuse me? I never did him a good turn!”] Of course all humanity is not like that – luckily, but it is a familiar tract in human nature and a large part of the average human act like that. You may say he might at least have paid the tax – but what human being will pay a tax when he can shove [?] it on to somebody else – especially a benefactor. A benefactor ought to benefact always – to the extent of paying any little tax that may be going about – otherwise where is the constancy in his character? Even your cousin may be thinking, “What a strange fellow to object to paying the tax on his own bungalow!” At least if he did, that would be the human mind all over.
1 French for “What do you say?”