Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1935

Letter ID: 1478

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

November 18, 1935

R showed me your reply regarding your disapproval of Bovril and remarked that you did it from motives we don’t understand. But have you disallowed it because of my disapproval or do you and Mother concur with my opinion?

We concur. Besides she considers it too heavy for a patient like S. Even as a convalescent – which he is not yet – he cannot be treated like other convalescents or fed up without consideration of the fundamental and constant weakness of his digestive organs.

S complained of acidity because he was given too much lime-juice.

Why do you all call it lime-juice? It is orange-juice that is being sent. If it had been limes, I suppose S would have been dead by this time. But even this orange-juice represents more than 20 oranges a day. Mother looks askance at this enormous quantity – how can he digest and will it not increase the hyperacidity, burnings, eructations, hiccough?

R resented S’s complaint and wants to stop treatment. I said it would be absurd.

That is what he wants to do. We have said “no”.

Shall I write to you my opinion about things as in the Bovril case or would I put you in a fix as to whom to listen to?

It is better if you write.

No, the fix is how to get R to be reasonable.

You must have marked that he has suspended giving him brandy.

If he has stopped it, all right. But it was a monstrous imprudence. He does not seem to realise that S’s is a special case – that of a man who even in convalescence and apparent good health cannot be allowed to take what others take.

He told me just now that S’s black vomit was of blood but he kept it from me because it would make me nervous! In the report also he wrote “Black vomit of yellow fever”. Did he write to you that it was blood?

No, he did not write it was blood – only that absurdity about yellow fever.