Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1936
You compare your nights with mine! God above! Yours, Sir, is a labour of love –
Love under protest then or at least labour under protest!
And mine – labour of Yoga?
A labour of Bhoga?1
Now apropos of Mulshankar’s accident. He says that he fell half on the pavement and half on the road which seems to be right.
At 5 p.m., three men came to him and wrote down his version of the accident, below which he was asked to give his signature. He realised later that he had made a mistake and asked me to write to you. I don’t know how these people dared to come and trouble him without the surgeon’s permission. Moreover, he is not even in a position to give an exact account of the accident, at present.
But he can’t remember how exactly he was knocked down... Bapu says Mulshankar fell in the middle of the road, got up and walked to the pavement, which Mulshankar denies – he didn’t walk at all. But Bapu says again that when the car was on the point of knocking him down, Bapu closed his eyes from nervousness, and when he opened them, he found Mulshankar on the pavement. And I hear he is asked to be a witness which he refuses to be. Purani has taken down his version. There is going to be an incongruity between the two statements.
It turns out that it was the juge d’instruction who came to question 
Mulshankar, so there is nothing to say, though it is strange that they came in that way without informing or consulting the hospital authorities. It does not seem to me that Bapu’s version of M’s walking can stand. If his eyes were shut before the clash and he opened them only after Mulshankar had reached (in whatever way) the pavement, he cannot have seen Mulshankar walking, not at least with his physical eyes. Moreover it is most improbable. The car caught the cycle in the middle of the street, granted, but in such a way that the cycle went under the car and remained entangled there and Mulshankar must have been precipitated from the cycle, not merely tumbled from it. The car swerved in the collision in the direction of the same pavement and (according to Purani’s sketch) was stopped farther on near this pavement, not in the middle of the road. The whole movement was therefore towards the pavement; Mulshankar must have been precipitated head foremost against it and so got his bad hurt on the head. If he had fallen down in the street where the collision took place, he would it seems to me have been run over or been otherwise hurt. In any case Purani should have pointed out to Bapu that his closed eyes and his seeing Mulshankar walk do not go together, he must have taken a mental impression for a fact, since Mulshankar denies the walking. It would be awkward, if the inquiries are pushed farther, that two different and incompatible statements about the incident should proceed from the Ashram. If Bapu does not give evidence, it is another matter. Who has asked him to give it? The juge d’instruction or someone else?