My Fate

I had purchased this land for reasons unknown and beyond expression. I had never heard the name of Sri Aurobindo or The Mother and had no contact with Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. I had never even heard the name Pondicherry and did not know where it was.

I was a staunch Congressman and fully engulfed in the political life and movements for the liberation of our country under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi was the capital of the Britishers and I never liked to make a house in the slave city of New Delhi which was controlled and governed by the British rulers. I therefore wanted to make a house somewhere far away in the rural surroundings and this was the place ten miles away from the city-wall of Delhi i.e. Ajmeri Gate. It was an absolutely rural area, surrounded by small villages like Kalu Sarai, Begumpur, Adhchini, Hauz Khas, Lado Sarai and Katwaria Sarai etc. All this area looked like a jungle with only kikar trees all around.

There was not a single brick, what to say of any building or construction beyond the monument of Safdarjung. I constructed my house like Maharajas or Nawabs with a dream that this will be my palace or my country-home like those of the Lords.

A spacious drawing-room was constructed with arches and pillars in the Moghul style and a number of rooms of different characters and designs around the same. Below this drawing-room a beautiful khwabgah (rest-room) was built in the basement. The entire three storeyed house had beautiful coloured terrazzo floors. The basement-room was also beautifully decorated with terrazzo floors and there were two staircases going down into the same, one from the drawing-room and the other from my personal bedroom. Automatic air-conditioning in the basement-room was designed by an American friend-expert, in a manner that from one side the air was drawn in and from the other side the air was sucked out.

In the wall of this basement a big iron safe was built-in for keeping cash and a very big iron box was sunk in the floor with strong and multiple locking arrangements to hold diamonds, jewellery, gold and silver bars etc. These have never seen the light of any wealth. The empty lockers can still be seen as curios by curious devotees.

On the first floor of the house there were two flights of stairs from two different directions, and the designs and heights of the rooms were also different. One side was meant for my children and close and near relatives, and the other side for friends, guests and business visitors.

In the front of the house was a spacious porch for the cars to come and above the porch there was an open terrace overlooking the beautiful country surroundings.

The whole dream was that I will be sitting in my luxuriously furnished Darbar Hall, curtains hanging all around, with personal staff on one side and private secretaries on the other side, with a number of telephones, call bells and intercoms on all the tables, peons and chaubdars standing in uniform on all sides. On the porch side there was a lounge designed for the visitors to sit and wait.

A dining hall and a big kitchen.

Lawns and artistically designed flower gardens were also conceived all around the house with sitting places for all seasons.

The area was quite large (more than 8 acres of land). I was thinking that a master plan will be drawn up to have a swimming pool, tennis and badminton courts, then table tennis, billiards and a skating rink all at suitable places, an exclusive children’s park having swings, slides and seesaws etc. Further, a mini-zoo having love birds, parrots, peacocks, rabbits and monkeys etc. A cow-shed and a stable for horses. A small colony of houses for the workers and the servants. And in quite a large area there will be a farm with vegetable and fruit gardens.

It is a common practice with aristocratic people to have a dog in the garden, a sadhu-sannyasi or mahatma in the drawing room, wine at the dining table and cigarettes and cigars on the side tables. Unfortunately, I never liked dogs. Coming from a Sikh family, cigarettes and cigars were out of question. Wine could never come near me as I was bred and brought up in the Arya Samaj atmosphere and was a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, sadhu, sannyasins and mahatmas I liked and admired and they were always my company.

In the course of all these dreams my fate got a somersault and took me to Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. There I made a Supreme Discovery where I lost my heart and won the soul.

Soon after I came back from the Ashram my ‘dream house’ or my Palace and the entire land was taken possession of by the Divine and the Avatars, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother occupied my Royal Seat in the Darbar Hall which is now the Meditation Hall.

The residential rooms and apartments are now being used for the aspirants of Truth and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo from India and from all over the world.

The porch has now developed and taken the form of a branch of SABDA, i.e. Sri Aurobindo Books Distribution Agency from where all the literature and works of Sri Aurobindo, and the Mother’s philosophy, and also all Ashram products worth lakhs are disseminated throughout North India and also to foreign countries. My abode is also now in the corner portion of this porch, and has developed into a cave where I am very happy.

Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu verse has come true:

दहर नहीं, हरम नहीं

दर नहीं, आस्तां नहीं।

बैठे हैं रहगुज़र पे हम,

ग़ैर हमें उठाये क्यों?

It is neither a temple nor a mosque,

Neither an entrance nor a doorway;

I am sitting on the wayside,

Why should anybody disturb or dislodge me?

Gradually I asked myself as to what was my position now. Evidently, from the house owner and the landlord, I was reduced to the position of a chowkidar, caretaker and gate-keeper. The duty assigned to me was to ring the bells of the Ashram Temple which I have been doing since then.

My wife and children were also called to the Ashram at Pondicherry where they are leading their lives.

And this place was solemnised as Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch.

This is my fate.