Frontispiece: Amal Kiran in his Study (September 1994) Amal-Kiran Poet and Critic Edited by Nirodbaran and R. Y. Deshpande

-35_The Locus of K D Sethna^s Poetry.htm The Locus of K.D. Sethna's Poetry IN 1927 a young Indo-Anglian poet drawn by the new spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo came to his Ashram in Pondicherry. The name of the young man was K.D. Sethna. He was twenty-three and two years earlier had published a book of poems. He was not happy with the life he had been leading; he had felt that he "had waited overmuch in the ordinary life".1 In the presence of Sri Aurobindo he found what he aspired to. Sri Aurobindo does not teach a world-shunning life-negating spirituality.  "It is an error," he says, "to think that spirituality is a thing divorced from life."2 And Sethna knew th

SECTION THREE A Name sung by the poet fame A Golden Bridge to Sri Aurobindo IN THE Ashram who does not know Amal Kiran ? He is not only known to all but much loved by them. Mother India under his editorship is a wonderful magazine one eagerly waits for every month. It is through Mother India that I first met Amal. To be precise, his letters on Life-Poetry-yoga first drew me to his glowing heart and brilliant mind. His, I found, is the heart that "knows strange depths".1 It is indeed a beautiful sight to see Amal coming to the Ashram, to the Samadhi, to Sri Aurobindo and

SECTION FOUR The Wide Magnificence of Mood Two Birds: A Painting by Amal Kiran used as a frontispiece as well as a cover-jacket for his collected poems The Secret Splendour, 1993 edition Page - 435 A Pencil sketch of Yama by Amal Kiran made in his Savitri-copy in the blank space at the end of Canto Two, Book Nine 1951 edition. Page - 436 A Pencil sketch of Arjava by Amal Kiran, kept as a frontispiece in his copy of Poems by Arjava (J. A. Chadwick), 1941 edition Page - 437 A

-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,