-45_Hail  to thee blithe Spirit.htm "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!" I FIRST came to Pondicherry in 1934 to do business in partnership with Mr. Robert Gaebele. I came from Bombay where one of my friends was Homi Sethna. When he knew that I was going to Pondicherry he told me that his cousin, Kekushru, was there at some Ashram and that I should meet him as he knew that we would become friends. And he was right. I got in touch with Kekushru at once and we became good friends. He then told me something about the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. I had known a little about Ashrams as in my home town there was a sort of Ashram, a Mutt of Arud Swamy which

Forerunner of the Divine Word I LOVE and admire Amal Kiran, not only for himself, bur for the entire context of space, time and atmosphere which engendered so variegated a flower. And for the fact that I personally came to know this phenomenon and to partake of some at least of its hues and scents. I deliberately use the plural in this regard, simply because this particular bloom is so multi-hued and multi-scented that one does not know where to begin, In any case, I am not qualified to speak about the multifarious achievements of a man who can only be described as a polymath. I forget the details, but I recall that even the Mothe

The Literary Firmament of the Ashram THE world Sri Aurobindo and the Mother tried to create here in Pondicherry under the institutional name of Sri Aurobindo Ashram during their stay of six to seven decades among us is a subject worth studying from various angles, sociological, holistic, and as a new evolutionary model and others. We know that the word 'Ashram' was used by Sri Aurobindo for want of a better word to denote what he visualised to create and found on the earth. In reality the attempt was to create a new centre of life, a centre of Life Divine. We must know mat the emphasis on Life was as great as on the word Divine.

The Friend Who Impressed Me So Deeply THE friend who impressed me so deeply in the early years of my Ashram life was K.D. Sethna who has since become famous both as a poet and a priest of high - or shall I say, spiritual - journalism. I can clearly recapture with my mind's eye his delicate sensitive face which first attracted me with its fine crop of Christ-like whiskers which he discarded subsequently, to the universal regret of his friends and admirers. For we did admire it without pressing the 'resemblance' any further. And let me add, with a sigh, that those who have never seen him with his whiskers will never be able to appr

-21_K.D. Sethna^s Concept of Love and Beauty.htm K.D. Sethna's Concept of Love and Beauty A Master lying like a Hidden Treasure K.D. SETHNA has been the most important literary figure in the post-Aurobindo Indo-Anglian scene. It is a surprise that he is still quite unknown outside a particular circle. But the few who have probed sensitively into his prolific prose and poetry with a mind trained on all the elevations of English prose and verse, have been moved to speak of his achievement in the same breath with the work of the greats in literature, history, and philosophy. Sethna's association with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is a myth and a history. What he h

-28_Sethna^s Wordsworth Criticism.htm Sethna's Wordsworth Criticism SETHNA'S lectures on poetry given to a group of students starting their university career at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education and published under the title Talks an Poetry are astonishing in the wealth of critical thought they contain. As might be expected, these talks convey the flavour of his intellect and personality in the wealth of critical thought they contain. As might be expected, these talks convey the flavor of his intellect and personality in his role as poet, critic, teacher and lover of poetry. His stance is professional, committed and at times anti-academic and his style, witty,

Sixty Years of Unbroken Friendship My Acquaintance with Amal I WROTE to Sri Aurobindo in 1937: "Some people look down upon the sadhaks here, saying that they would count for nothing in the world outside." He replied in his usual calm, unruffled manner: "The quality of the sadhaks is so low? I should say there is a considerable amount of ability and capacity in the Ashram. Only the standard demanded is higher than outside even in spiritual matters. There are half a dozen people here perhaps who live in the Brahman Consciousness - outside they would make a big noise and be considered as great yogis; here their condition is n

Yogi of the Modern-Age I AM asked by Mr. Deshpande to write about Amal in this volume to celebrate his coming on the verge of the 9th decade of his wonderful life. I have been fortunately given the freedom to choose the aspect on which to write. Without that I would have been unable to write about such a multifaceted personality. He and Nirod, and some others are for me continuations of my two Gurus, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Without Amal I might not have been here at all, and definitely not what I am today, not much but better than what I would have been otherwise.  Amal has nurtured me like a tender plant for nearly 25 years and if

A Poised Serenity WHEN one looks at the stupendous output of this man, sometimes one wonders how can a human brain know so much, contain so much, hold so much and yet not burst at the seams. If one wants to understand the secret of the prolific output of this literary giant K.D. Sethna, who is constantly emptying his brains of its treasures by pouring them out in his writings; who writes with equal ease on the Vedas and the Bible (the Pope may with difficulty find one amongst his cardinals who knows so much about Christianity); who can write a book about the Black Lady on William Shakespeare and who can with credit break lances with Kathle

The Multi-Faceted Seeker of Light ''WE CANNOT be quite the same in metre… The metre of all of you may be said to be spondaic: your feet fall with equal stress on the ground. Mine do not on account of a limp in one of them. And I use a stick to help me walk better. So my metre is two slacks and one stress; I am an anapaestic fellow," said K.D. Sethna in his very first lecture on Poetry given to a group of students starting their university career. No reader of these lines could ever miss the Joke the author has cracked on his own infirmity. To call him a fountain of humour will be far from exaggeration. People - his fans, friends, admirers,