I beg your pardon, Sir! Enema didn’t strike me at all. But I hope it didn’t make any difference in the working of your Force unless you enematised the patient too much. It is a pleasure to learn that one can deceive the Divine, however!Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1936
Letter ID: 1595
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
April 7, 1936
What would it be if I were put to roast? Anilkumar is rubbing hard his formula every day saying – very difficult! Now your threat comes. If it comes to that I shall exclaim:
Why singular? A respected person is supposed to have more than 2 feet – witness the formula – শ্রীচরণেষু.2
But let me add that my roasting has already begun, not in your spiritual oven, but in the barometric oven. Dilip and myself have decided to cycle off to the Lake in the early hours of the morning. As it is not possible to get a cycle at that hour from outside, what about getting it from here?
Can’t ask Benjamin for a cycle at that time. He would eat our heads off and yours too. This cyclo-mania is becoming too epidemic – we won’t be able to supply at that rate.
And this time it’s not a “melancholiac” that asks but a maniac, you may say!
Melancholomania.
Boil has burst today! Swelling less, pain none but still it is oozing and oozing. By tomorrow it will be over, I hope. R’s treatment continues.
R has written to me insisting that you should continue the treatment for a fortnight even after the oozing is past history – so as to erect a barrier against farther boilings.
I beg your pardon, Sir! Enema didn’t strike me at all. But I hope it didn’t make any difference in the working of your Force unless you enematised the patient too much. It is a pleasure to learn that one can deceive the Divine, however!
If the Divine chooses to be deceived, anyone can deceive him – just as he can run away from the battle; পলায়নমপি3 You are evidently not up to the tricks of the Lila.
1 gurupādapadmāya namo namaḥ: Salutations to the lotus foot of the Master.
2 ṣrīcaraṇeṣu: At the revered feet (plural, not dual).
3 palāyanamapi: even running away.