Those who have known Amal Kiran know also that he was born K.D. Sethna and that Sri Aurobindo gave him his spiritual name, Amal Kiran, ‘A Clear Ray’. My first contact with Amal was a most memorable one. When poems first began to descend in me in the late 1960’s, I wrote to Amal who was then Editor of Mother India and he told me Sri Aurobindo said that Mother India was His journal. Although I knew nothing about prosody and my earliest attempts at receiving clearly the lines that were coming down were poorer than third class, a few perhaps caught something from the higher realms. When I sent these to Amal he not only praised them but wrote his comments on each poem and also marked as felicitous certain lines. He then published the poems in Mother India.
His inspiring, cheerful and always positive encouragement, even when he gently criticized a poem, helped immeasurably to encourage me to read hundreds, perhaps even thousands of poems, to seek for ‘overhead’ lines and immerse myself in their rhythm and music, leading in time, to the opening of the floodgates and the pouring down of more than fifteen hundred poems.
During the years of his residence at the Ashram’s Nursing Home, my relationship with Amal deepened even further and he shared his time generously, often with delightful humour. When I would enter his room he would say, in a booming voice, “What news, Narad?” I would then have to tell him the recent news as he would say that Narad is the bringer of good news. Each year I would bring him a supply of special vitamins to last him until my return to the Ashram, usually in October or early November. When he could no longer swallow the tablets those who attended him would break them open and mix the contents with some juice. He would say in a firm voice, “Too bitter, I won’t take.” Then quietly he was told, “But Narad has sent these for you,” and he would relent, saying, “Alright, I’ll take.” This scenario was repeated on a regular basis!
Narad (Richard Eggenberger)
Copyright 2016