Mother,Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo to Dilip
Volume 4
Fragment ID: 5045
(this fragment is largest or earliest found passage)
Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar
February 25, 1943
Mother,
Please excuse me if this letter becomes somewhat long. I know how busy you are – I’ll try to be brief. Please show this to Sri Aurobindo and send me your answer, if possible to-night so that I may write to Madras and Delhi.
1) The Gramophone people want me to record a few songs. Can’t go to Calcutta. Madras recording is not so good but que faire? Calcutta is a far cry. I could offer you Rs. 315 a month or two ago. So the records (mine and Hashi’s) are selling not badly for wartime. So they are pressing me again and again, you see. I have written I can only go to Madras not to Calcutta. So may I go for a week to Madras with your blessings?
Yes.
If you permit I will leave on the second proximo after Prosperity. The Radio people also were asking, Jadu told me. That way I may offer at least Rs. 60 at your feet.
2) I intend to stay in some dry place for say a fortnight or three weeks. I am invited by Jnanranjan Sen, Public Prosecutor, Nagpur. I may stay there a week on my way to Delhi where Dr. Indra Sen and Nishikanto Sen – Registrar in the University – are there. The latter loves me and my music. I would prefer to stay with him a week. Dr. Indra Sen was suggesting to me to lecture at the Amphitheatre on “Sri Aurobindo and what he stands for” as I did at Trivandrum with music of course. I may do so if you give me your blessings – not otherwise.
Yes.
I told him so. In Delhi I have many other friends also and I will try to see if I can be of some service to you in getting some money contributions. It may happen as was the case with Birla year before last at Calcutta. But for this too your full blessings are necessary.
All right.
For I am not so vain now-a-days as I used to be and can’t really believe I can get money, etc. for you. If you will make me a servant of yours then only I can act, I really feel this – some progress anyhow, isn’t it? I suggest this as my vitality makes me often restless and if I can serve you in this way once or twice a year, why not? I hope you will believe me when I say it is not fame that draws me. I feel very tired outside and that quickly. My vairagya is persistent, as I told Sri Aurobindo on the 4th. If you give me some force only then I may (perhaps) shed this vairagya. Otherwise I often feel days are passing, etc. etc. I won’t repeat the doleful song. I am a little tired of my vairagya, really. Why cannot I with my abounding vitality serve you better?
3) In Delhi the India Gramophone may, I think, like to make some records. That way I can fetch some money too – but this is not likely to be much. But the Radio may offer me Rs. 150 (they do often). I will try.
4) From Delhi I want to go for a week or two to Almora to Krishnaprem’s Ashram as he presses me to come once. On the way I will stop a few days with Udayshankar. If he helps I can get some money with his help for the Ashram. 7 will try. That may be [consideration] Rs. 1000 at least.
So I will come back about 22nd of April for darshan.
Qu’en dites-vous?But do give me all your force. If I am overtaken with vairagya there as I was at Trivandrum I will return post-haste from Nagpur maybe – outside the Ashram I feel a great nostalgia for the Ashram after the first week or two at the most. In that case I feel very weak and can’t do strenuous work. I want to do some strenuous kind of work if I am to get rid of this inveterate vairagya as Sri Aurobindo told me again he does not like it.
5) In Delhi I am likely to meet Birla who admires me greatly. But he is too deep a Gandhist now-a-days. So I don’t hope much from him this time. But I will certainly try.
All right.
You know of course that I have a good life outside. My only weakness is for fish now-a-days. I often dream of fish. Que faire? But there’s nothing fishy about my activities outside believe me.
P.S. In Madras I am going to teach two or three Mir a songs to Subbulakshmi1. That will fetch some money. Your blessings are necessary. She and her husband are nice people and she is very religious – her husband says. So – I think her songs in the Gramophone will be a success. They are inviting me as you may remember.
Yes to the whole programme (with reservations about the vairagya, though!) with the Mother’s blessings and mine.
1 M. S. Subbulakshmi the well-known singer was born in 1916 in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. She and her husband, T. Sadasivan dedicated their lives to her music, not for personal gains but for the good of humanity. She gave innumerable concerts in India and abroad. In the forties she performed in four films, one being “Meera,” based on the life of Mirabai. She learned Hindi bhajans from Dilipda.