chaitanya and mira Dilip Kumar Roy CONTENTS Pre content SRI CHAITANYA Dedication Preface Act One: Aspiration Act Two Act Three; Illumination MIRA Dedication Preface Act One Act Two Act Three APPENDIX Letters of Sri Aurobindo Notes by the Author

Act Two In her temple at Brindavan, on the full-moon night of Ras, Mira is seen singing before her beloved Image of Gopal. The windows on one side of the temple open on the rippling Yamuna. A number of pilgrims and devotees listen on, in rapture. On her left Ajit, a Brahmin pedant, frowns on her as she starts dancing. On her right sits her Gurudev, Sri Sanatan, and the temple-priest, Pundarik. MIRA (Sings in a half-trance of ecstasy) Blessed art thou, 0 soul, to be born, May not thy days glide by in vain. Remember: priceless is this life: Aspire His lotus-feet to attain. The Vedas are mere words, if thou Stay blind to His

SRI CHAITANYAA DRAMA IN THREE ACTS DEDICATION To Indira, maid of Krishna, Who even in this dark age through dust and din Has won to the certitude no storm shall quell: "That the Light of the heart, pledged to His Love evergreen No demon power of Night shall countervail." July, 1977

Act Three — Illumination A year has passed. Sri Chaitanya has just returned to Navadwip without apprising his mother and wife. He has toured far and wide preaching the message of Love. He now intends to call on his wife and mother though he has to stay elsewhere, in the precincts of a temple of Vishnu. It is evening now and Vishnupriya, the beautiful bride of Sri Chaitanya, is seen in her private temple praying before the image of Lord Vishnu. She offers flowers, lights a few incense-sticks and then starts the 'arati' ceremony (moving a censer with lighted candles round and round the face of the image) singing in a moved voice. VISHNUPRIYA (si

Act One — Aspiration 1510 A. D. Evening. Sachi Devi is seen performing her daily devotions before her cherished Ishtadeva—a marble image of Lord Vishnu who was incarnated as Sri Krishna and later, as she believed, as Sri Chaitanya. Her worship over, she offers flowers at His feet when Sri Chaitanya enters hesitantly and waits in silence. His mother turns and gives an involuntary start. SRI CHAITANYA Mother, I... SACHI Yes, my son? SRI CHAITANYA I have been thinking......... SACHI (anxiously) You are not unwell, I hope? SRI CHAITANYA Oh, nothing: be not alarmed. I only meant: I wished I were in that mood

Act One Full moon night of Jhulan Purnima. In Miras temple at Brindavan she is singing before her Image of Gopal. On the right of the altar her Gurudev Sri Sanatan Goswami is seated beside the temple-priest, Pundarik. On the left, four sombre, whiskered pundits are watching intently. Behind her sit, with folded hands, a motley crowd of pilgrims, come from far and near, drawn by her name, music and holiness. MIRA (singing in a mystic ecstasy, standing before the Image): Friend, shall I tell you how I wooed And won my Lord Gopal? How the One for whom pine mighty saints Responded to my call? I knew but one code, trod one path:

Act Two — Conflict Next morning. A bathing ghat in the river Ganga of Navadwip. Two pundits, Keshav and Murari, are seen bathing close together, and a young woman, Romasundari, a few feet from them. Keshav who owns a 'tol' (Sanskrit school) is reputed for his scholarship. A man in the early sixties, with a flowing white beard and of an imposing appearance, he has a high opinion of himself. Murari, in the late forties, owns a similar 'tol' and is gifted with a sense of humour. Roma is a young widow of about twenty-five who, though poor and ekes out a bare living by spinning, comes of a good Brahmin family and was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and learning for which Navadw

PREFACE Often enough, when I sing in our temple, Indira Devi goes off into a mystic trance — samadhi — and sees Mira singing or dancing, in a Brindavan temple, in the midst of some devotees or learned sadhus who start with her a discussion or an altercation, as the case may be. After a time, when Indira Devi comes to, she relates in a half-trance—bhav-samadhi—these singular experiences: historical scenes recaptured or else Mira's stories and parables. As she goes on recounting them, she often breaks out laughing or clapping her hands ecstatically like a child and sometimes — when talking in a faltering accent about "her Gopal's" love — her voice grows husky with emo

Note of Thanks TO : MOTHER AND SRI AUROBINDO To: Revered Gobindo Gopal Mukhopadhyaya, Sanskritist, musician, who personally knew many spiritual personalities of the epoch. Without his constant affectionate encouragement we do not know when these letters would have seen the light of day. By the way, it was another Mukhopadhyay, Dr. Joygopal, who gave Dilip the final push when he was hesitating to take the plunge, because he had not got any- thing 'tangible' from his Guru: "You are bargaining with the Divine?" The shaft went home, says Dilip. To: Sri Shankar Bandopadhyay of Hari Krishna Mandir Trust, Pune, without whose sweet collaboration, nothing could have been

DILIP-DA Sri Aurobindo, I heard, once said to Nirod-da that Dilip was among the four or five really beautiful men he had ever seen. When I first saw him, though Father's senior and nearing forty, Dilip-da was quite handsome. But more than anything else, what left a lasting impression in my nine-year-old heart was his warm personality: affectionate, graceful, generous, a heart of gold. It is well nigh seventy years now but I can still vividly recall how at once he put me at my ease (I was rather shy, you know!). My father, Prithwi Singh Nahar, had taken Rajabhai (my brother Abhay) and me to the Ashram for the darshan of 21 February 1935, for Mother's fifty-seven