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I HAVE once spoken to you
of an earthquake and a small fire. Today I shall say something about two or
three other inclement natural phenomena of which I have had direct personal
experience. The
first was when I was a child, it has left a clear
imprint on my mind. Many of you, no doubt, are familiar with storms and
hurricanes. But have you ever seen a whirlwind, what they call a tornado? This
word has been rendered by a Pundit into turna-da, a thing that is
swift in its flight. I have had a chance to see the thing with my own eyes.
Just listen, you will see how terrible a thing it is and how well in keeping
with its formidable name. We were
at school then, the
Page – 424 in
that direction." We kept running, for a distance of two or three miles
from the School and beyond the limits of the town. Suddenly we were brought up
short. Right in front there was a wooded tract where the trees had been all
smashed up. We moved on straight into the heart of the ruin. It was a strange
spectacle, as if an open zig-zag path some fifty cubits wide had been cut
across the wood with dozens of bull-dozers driving through and levelling everything
down. Bushes and shrubs and trees and houses – it was lucky there were not many
houses – had all been swept clean away for a distance of four or five miles, we
were .informed. The place had been sparsely populated, so the casualties were
not heavy – some half a dozen men, a few head of cattle and some houses. The
demon of destruction seemed to have spent all his
wrath on Nature. It was perhaps really the work of some evil spirit. They
said the whirlwind had arisen from a pool of water four or five miles away and
it did look like a demon when it came rushing forward with a whirling motion
after having churned the waters of the pool. However that may be, we heard this
about a pedestrian who had been walking along the road just when the tornado
crossed his path. He was caught by the wind, given a few twirls up in the air
and thrown down on the ground by the side of the road. As he shook himself up
on his feet, he went on muttering, "What fun, I got a free lift to the
sky!" – kaisa maja, asman
dekh liya mufat se. The man was a labourer type from As
I moved for some distance along the clearing left by the wind, I could see how
swift and powerful had been its impact. The trees that had not been uprooted
were twisted in a fantastic manner you could hardly imagine. All that was
needed now to make a paved road or highway out of the clearing was to remove
the bush and throw in some gravel and mud. What
I saw, or rather experienced, on the next occasion was not a tornado, but a
prank of the wind-god all the same.
Page – 425 It was a wild enough prank and rather dangerous for those
of us who were among its victims. It was here in It all happened after
nightfall. The-sky had been overcast the whole day, it was dark all around and
heavy showers fell at intervals – real nasty weather; you would say. We were
upstairs. In those days
we all lived in the rooms upstairs, the ground-floor was used only for meals.
We had just had our dinner and had moved upstairs. In the meanwhile the wind had been gathering strength all
the time and the downpour grew heavy. Suddenly, there was a terrific noise, of
things creaking and crashing down, which meant that the doors and windows were
giving way before the ferocious gale. With it came a whistling sound and splashes
of rain. The doors and windows of the two rooms occupied by Sri Aurobindo were
blown away, leaving them bare to the wind and the rain like an open field. He
removed to the room next door, but there too it was much the same. The upstairs
was getting impossible, so we started moving down. We had barely reached the
ground-floor when the shutters and windows along the walls of the staircase
fell with a crash on the stairs. We escaped by a hair's breadth. Things did not
seem to be very much better in the rooms downstairs. There too the doors and
windows had given way and allowed free entry to the wind and rain. All of us
gathered in the central hall, and somehow huddled together in a corner. In the early hours of the
morning the storm abated and by
Page – 426 daybreak
all was clear. Indeed to us it seemed much too clear. That is to say, the rows
of Porché trees – we call them health trees – that lined the streets and were
considered among the attractions of the city now lay prostrate in their heaps
on the surface of the roads, making them impassable. Gangs of workmen arrived
from the Municipality with their axes and tools but it took them some time to
cut through a passage. Even now you could see here and there, especially on the
way to the And
now we had to think of our daily needs, about breakfast and lunch. But where
to find the milk and foodstuffs, rice and pulses? Where were the shops?
Everything was a shambles. I do not know if during a war the opposing forces battling
through a town or village would leave it in a condition somewhat similar to
this. The number of wounded and dead was fairly large, somewhere in the region
of a thousand. I
cannot now recall the exact year of this upheaval. Most probably it was 1912 or
1913, that is, shortly before the outbreak of the Great War. We may suppose
perhaps that this minor upheaval came here as the harbinger of that world-shaking
calamity? But
it was no less strange that not long after the end of the Great War, there came
another storm, not of the same intensity but on a somewhat similar scale. This
time it brought a different sort of message and turned out to be a blessing for
us in the end. The
Mother had already arrived for the second time, this time for good. She was at
the Bayou House where the Dowsetts now live. We were at the Guest House and I
remember well how Sri Aurobindo used to call every Sunday and dine with her.
We too would come along and had a share of the dinner. I need not add that the
menu was arranged by the Mother herself and she supervised the cooking in
person; she also prepared some of the dishes with her own
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That is the reason why I say we were really lucky to have a share in those
meals. At that time we could only appreciate the physical taste of the food we
were served; today I realise what lay behind. After
dinner, we used to go up on the terrace overlooking the sea-front. Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother stood aside for a chat and we stood by ourselves.
Sometimes we would request Sri Aurobindo for some automatic writing after the
dinner. The writings that came through his hand in those days were frightfully
interesting. I remember somebody came and began to give an analysis of the
character of each one of us; he had many things to say about Motilal Roy as
well. One day someone suggested that something might be given about the Mother.
But she immediately protested, "No, nothing about me, please." At
once the hand stopped automatically. Well,
during the Mother's stay in this house, there came a heavy storm and rain one
day. The house was old and looked as if it was going to melt away. Sri
Aurobindo said, "The Mother cannot be allowed to stay there any longer.
She must move into our place." That is how the Mother came in our midst
and stayed on for good, as our Mother. But she did not yet assume the name. I t
took us another six years; it was not till 1926 that we began to call her by
that name. You can see now how that last spell of stormy weather came as a
benediction. Nature did in fact become a collaborator of the Divine Purpose.
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