Abstract
Manoj Das is a leading senior writer within Indian literature, with his novels, short stories, and poems centring on village and rural life, mingling realism and everyday experiences with elements of mystery, mysticism, and the supernatural as he explores the vicissitudes and aspirations of the human condition. As he describes here, Das has been “greatly influenced” by the transition and transformation of India from colonialism to postcolonialism. His writings — with dramatic suspense, magical realism, and a style that with a minimal touch can convey nuances of character, motivation, and emotion — evocatively capture some of the most distinctive aspects of Indian culture, spirituality, arts, and history. His work has been compared with other famed Indian authors, particularly those writing in English (Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao). In this interview, Das reflects on his life work, including the role of translation (in an Indian context of “transcreation”). Das also shares his candid views on the poetics and politics of “regional language literature” (RLL) and “Indian writing in English” (IWE), an opposition relevant to postcolonial studies in the context of the (national and international) distribution and reception of literature and the wider politics of language. Conducted in the southern Indian city of Puducherry, home to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, this interview presents the influence of philosopher and guru Sri Aurobindo on Das and his work, including Das’s most recent scholarship on Sri Aurobindo. Das also discusses the influences on him by the well-known Indian writers Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Fakir Mohan Senapati, and Rabindranath Tagore. This is the first interview with Das published outside of India and in the West.
Keywords
One of India’s foremost and distinguished writers, Manoj Das (b. 1934) is especially renowned for his short stories, with A Song for Sunday and Other Stories (1967) as his first collection. Born in the village of Sankari in the eastern state of Odisha (formerly “Orissa”), Das writes in both Odia (formerly “Oriya”) and English, with his output spanning poetry, short stories, novels, children’s literature, editing, journalism, travelogues, and historical and cultural scholarship. His work has earned him the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (2007) for lifetime achievement, the highest literary honor awarded by the Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters. He has also received the Sahitya Akademi Award (1972) for his short stories. At the state level, he has twice won the Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1965 for his short stories and in 1972 for his essays, the Sarala Award (1980), and the Sahitya Bharati Award (1995). He has won the Saraswati Samman (2000), one of India’s highest literary awards, for his Odia novel Amruta Phala (1996), translating into English as Divine Fruit, which intertwines a historical and contemporary story of existential search. Das has been honoured with the Padma Shri (2001), India’s fourth highest civilian award, as well as numerous honorary doctorates. He lives in Puducherry (formerly “Pondicherry”), a coastal city about a hundred miles south of Chennai and a former French colony that attained de facto independence in 1954 and de jure union with India in 1962. A devotee at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram 1 and a professor at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Das has lived in Puducherry since 1963.
The villages and rural culture of Odisha are central to Das’s writings. Das represents Odisha’s peoples through a humanism that affirms moral growth and social responsibility. His abiding concern with rural life and with closely writing the environment is evident in numerous works, including his novel Cyclones (1987), his novella Bulldozers (1990), and the short stories “The Crocodile’s Lady” (1975f), “The Submerged Valley” (1986), “The Tree” (1986), “The Dusky Horizon” (1989a), and “Quest of Sunderdas” (1989a). In “The Submerged Valley”, Das portrays the impact on ordinary villagers as the state displaces them to make way for a reservoir. Among the new expanse of water, the people see the top of their former temple and hill, and risk heading toward them by boat. The realism and emotional subtlety of the story demonstrate Das’s skill in portraying the dignity of individuals and groups that might otherwise be invisible to the nation-state or elided under the discourse of development. Das has stated that the “ecological ruination” of village life, both physical and social, is caused by the “demonic hunger for false prosperity and lack of respect for the rural grace, along with an inability to see the consequences of certain kinds of development activities on the part of the entrepreneurs, planners as well as the villagers themselves (at least some of them)” (Raja, 2014: 65). Written in Odia and English, and with its stories of Odisha village culture read across the state, India, and the world, Das’s work has been categorized and placed in the lineage of both Indian “regional language literature” (RLL) and Indian writing in English (IWE) (see Nayak, 2010). Critics have compared his writing of village culture with the writings of Raja Rao and Chinua Achebe (see Nayak, 2010: 199; Behura and Rajasree Misra, 2015: 199). 2
Das’s work also explores the transition of India from colonialism to postcolonial nationhood, including the shift from casteism and feudalism (marked by princely states and the zamindari or landownership system ruled by zamindars, rajas, and maharajahs) to democracy, industrialization, and urbanization. These transformations appear in each of Das’s novels — Cyclones (1987), A Tiger at Twilight (1991), The Escapist (2001b) — and in several stories, such as “The Owl” (1986), “The Concubine” (1989), “A Time for a Style” (1995), and “Mystery of the Missing Cap” (1995). Das explores the conflicts between the disingenuity, even alienation, demanded by an emerging postcolonial political class, and an aspiration toward moral awakening. The village becomes the focal point for examining these conflicts. Das has stated: “Born in a village, born just before independence [1947] and hence living through the transition at an impressionable age, I thought I could present through English a chunk of genuine India. Well, right or wrong, one is entitled to one’s faith in oneself!” (Raja, 1980: III). If his writerly craft partially constitutes his faith, then it is through an economy of prose, using techniques such as analepsis and autodiegesis (see Bera and Gupta, 2017: 94), that Das shows the organic emergence of conflict, in all its psychological, social, moral, and spiritual dimensions, within and among his characters.
Other major themes in Das’s work include transcendence, the supernatural, mystery, and mysticism, as seen in his stories “Lakshmi’s Adventure” (1989a), “Sita’s Marriage” (1989b), and “Farewell to a Ghost” (1994). Das represents the supernatural world not as something to be doubted, but as a fact of reality. Reincarnation is a commonplace plot feature in his stories “A Letter from the Last Spring” (1967), “Birds in the Twilight” (1975f), “The Vengeance” (1980), “The Kite” (1986), “The Murderer” (1986), and “The Brothers” (1989a). Critics have noted that the worlds of Das’s fiction reflect his belief in a reality and consciousness that are all-pervading and subtle, beneath surfaces, and which characters aspire to realize (see Raja, 2014: 110; Shukla, 2004: 89). Sarbeswar Samal has argued: “The microcosm of Manoj Das is a close and compact world governed by its own laws and regulations. It is an all inclusive and homogeneous world, based on an intimate relationship and understanding between man and animal; natural and supernatural; the mysterious and the realistic; and the extraordinary and commonplace” (1997: 39). As with Gabriel García Márquez and other Latin American writers, magical realism for Manoj Das is not only a literary technique but an epistemology, using the technique and epistemology to understand consciousness.
Das’s fiction is marked by formal features including realism, irony, satire, and the influence of ancient Sanskrit texts, such as the Hindu epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as well as Vishnu Sharma’s Panchatantra (animal fables originally written around the 3rd century BCE). The Statesman has observed that in Das’s reworking of Sanskrit epics, “instead of using the familiar, imported phrases and idioms, he plays about with the language, picking words and using them in fresh connotation to build imagery suitable to the [modern] Indian background” (qtd. in Raja, 2014: 25). The collection Fables and Fantasies for Adults (1978) shows the influence of the Panchatantra and also uses satire as social critique. Many of Das’s works employ satire, such as “The Last I Heard of Them” (1975f) and “The Man Who Lifted the Mountain” (1979b). Reflecting on satire, Das has averred: “I always remember what Jonathan Swift said: ‘Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders generally discover everyone’s face but their own’. But I never forget to try to behold my own face in that mirror” (Raja, 2014: 103). This self-examination reflects Das’s valuing of introspection as well as his conviction in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy of self-transformation towards higher consciousness. Some of Das’s stories have multiple formal layers, which can include moving “from pathos to burlesque, from irony to simple moralizing” (Raja, 2014: 83). Stories that show formal multiplicity include “A Trip into the Jungle” (1978) and one of his most anthologized stories, “The Princess and the Storyteller” (1978). Das’s work is also marked by humour, as in his novella Sharma and the Wonderful Lump (1978). As with his representation of the supernatural, Das uses humour, irony, and satire with largesse, even sympathy, as mechanisms to explore human consciousness (see Dash, 2017: 166).
In addition to short stories and novels, Das writes poetry, and only in Odia, having published two volumes, Tuma Gaan O Anyanya Kabita (1992) and Kabita Utkala (2003a). As with his prose, his poems are marked by a humanism that affirms moral consciousness and growth by representing the rural life and natural environment, in addition to the mythologies and legends, of Odisha. Das’s interest in Indian mythology and folklore emerges in his scholarly volume, Myths, Legends, Concepts and Literary Antiquities of India (2009). Das has also written several children’s books. Stories of Light and Delight (1970) and Books Forever (1973) — the latter introducing the books of India’s past — continue to be bestsellers in India. Das’s work has resonated with readers outside of India, with his short stories included as representatives, often solely, of Indian and Asian literature in volumes in Australia (1982−1983), Canada (1975e), the UK (1972b), and the US (1975a, 1975b, 1975c, 1975d, 1979a, 1983, 1985).
There are many dimensions of Puducherry — historical and timeless, physical and spiritual — perceptible through the senses and silence, with parts of the city retaining French influence in architecture, churches, and boulevards with Francophone names; with monuments to Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the First World War along the seaside promenade; with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as its spiritual centre; and with a steady stream of visitors — artists, scholars, writers, seekers — from around India and the globe. Our conversation took place in the front room of Das’s home, close to the central ashram site containing the meditation courtyard with its samadhi or tomb-shrine of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. I was greeted by Das himself, clad in a white kurta pyjama. Upon entering Das’s home, I noticed rosewood-framed photographs, again of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, displayed on the wall. Perhaps that was a fitting prelude to my time with Das, with his calm presence filling the room and complementing its soft silver walls and white borders, the symmetry of our settees, the slow and silent ceiling fan, and the morning light of the skylights. And again rosewood: this time in the glass-panelled bookcase below the photographs, with several vases of flowers and a portrait of Krishna on its white surface. The bookcase contained titles such as Iconography of Minor Hindu and Buddhist Deities, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, and Indian Carpets and Floor Coverings, thick volumes of the Gazette of the Union Territory of Pondicherry, and a series with titles on Wittgenstein, Fanon, Lukács, and McLuhan. The eclecticism of these titles reflects that of Das’s cultural and aesthetic imagination. He is a natural and charismatic storyteller, speaking with ease, passion, and a seemingly effortless grasp of character, event, and detail. The text has been authorized by Manoj Das.
It is not a very easy exercise for me to tell you exactly how I came to write short stories, since I believe this inspiration for writing is inherent in some people. Such as it is, some people are constituted in a manner to become artists, musicians, and I believe some people to become storytellers. I do not know how it happens, unless you believe in consciousness incarnate with a certain kind of pre-concept, or a consciousness which wishes to have some new experiences in a particular lifetime. Perhaps that new experience includes closely observing life, and that acuteness of observation can lead to literary expression.
With respect to my childhood influences, my village [Sankari, in the Balasore district of the eastern state of Odisha] was probably one of the finest places I have ever seen, but now it is gone. In 1942, when I was seven, a terrible cyclone struck the whole area, both my part of Odisha and the neighbouring part of Bengal. A famine followed, and I saw before my eyes so many familiar faces confronting death. It was a very sad and shocking experience. Moreover, during that period of melancholy and sadness, the World War was going on. All of these, I believe, must have helped me and contributed to my small range of experiences: the wonderful location, the beauty of the place, the silence, the love of the people, and also the storm, the deaths, the epidemic, a gang of bandits surrounding and invading our house, our narrow escape from death.
My primary school was one of those typical small village schools. There was no question of an English-medium school in my area. Years later, I came to town to join the regular academic stream. My fellow students — when I was seven, eight, or nine years old — would prod me to tell stories, and I built up narratives for them. This is, I believe, how the impetus began.
Also, my mother herself was a great lover of literature. She would write poetry in our mother tongue, Odia, and she had read a number of classics, such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, in our own language. I thus learnt a variety of stories from these classics. I began by writing poetry. So I became known as a budding poet, but as I started writing stories, somehow people and magazine editors were more interested in those than in my poems. Readers demanded more and more stories, publishers demanded them, and that’s how I became stuck with fiction — short stories and, much later, novels. I never aspired to become a popular writer or a great writer. For me writing was spontaneous. It was just like one whistles, one sings, one talks.
I do not write poetry in English because I believe that the mother tongue is the language of the subconscious. Poetry can come out best only in one’s mother tongue, and not in any other language which you have learnt later. I also see poetry as a more intellectual genre than prose — it allows me to pursue ideas and forms that would otherwise be inexpressible in prose. It also allows me to explore my inner experiences and feelings, psychological and spiritual.
To be frank, even from my childhood, before I could learn to read or write, the stories of the Mahabharata and Ramayana inspired me. Then when I was capable of reading, I read the father of modern Odia fiction, Fakir Mohan Senapati — his works were treasured by my mother. And then, as I grew up, I of course read Tagore without difficulty, as I knew Bengali from my childhood. Another influence was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. More than Tagore, it was Bankim Chandra who inspired me, as a model. Among current writers, there are not any who have influenced me, except for Sri Aurobindo, who has inspired my vision of life. Unconsciously I must have been influenced by other current writers, but consciously definitely not. I have always felt my own way of writing.
I started writing in English because of a provocation. I was a third year student in the college. Somebody brought to my notice a write-up on the Indian village, written by an Indian author who lived abroad. That was an impression that insulted the psyche of rustic India. I cannot recall the title and the author, but the piece was written in English, and published somewhere abroad, not in an Indian publication. It was a silly article, satirizing the villagers and their habits and their mindset. I felt revolted. This is not the village that I know. And having been born and brought up in a typical Indian village, I thought I owed it to my background to present a portrait of rural life as I have experienced it.
How many people abroad know about this particular language called Odia? But my language is a very developed language. And if you read my short stories in English, they are all present in Odia too. I don’t translate; I rewrite. 3 Suppose inspiration comes for a story and the immediate demand is from an Odia editor or publisher, then I write it in Odia. Years later, I might sit down again and write the same story in English. Similarly, about 50 per cent of my stories are written originally in English, and some of my novels are in English, but I also write them again in Odia.
Indian literature is so varied and so wide that each language has its peculiarity, a series of nuances exclusive to it. However, at this historical moment, when we speak of Indian literature, most people have in mind Indian writing in English. Now so far as Indian writing in English is concerned, there existed several magazines in India, I mean English-language magazines. And the most powerful avenues for an Indian writer of English short stories were two forums. The most important one was the Illustrated Weekly of India, once a widely-circulated magazine combining news and reviews with creative writing. It would devote full, long pages to poetry and it regularly published short stories. My novella Sharma and the Wonderful Lump (1978) had been serialized in it, as well as R. K. Narayan’s novel The Man-eater of Malgudi (1961). The maximum number of my stories were published in that magazine. Secondly, there was a monthly magazine called Imprint. It published mostly fiction, but also belles-lettres and topical essays on aspects of culture. Both have been phased out by now. So when you speak of short stories in English today, you have to look either into published anthologies, or academic magazines published by universities, which hardly circulate outside of academia. Some of the publications brought out by American universities have a circulation beyond their campus, but in India that is not yet the case.
There is a great resentment among the non-English writers of India. I observe that the best of Indian writing remains in Indian languages, but we do not have professional or gifted translators. Workshops are conducted by the Sahitya Akademi and the National Book Trust to guide and motivate translators, but few translators have emerged who can preserve in English the Indian psyche as it is reflected in Indian fiction in different languages. Secondly, there is a general impression today that some writers write with commitment to only one aim, namely, to attract readers overseas. That is a rather unfortunate motivation. A novel could be a cocktail of 40 per cent eroticism and 60 per cent social realism and win an international award. I do not know how the judges choose such books. These are just my impressions. I am a writer; I am not a judge or a critic.
But when the Ramayana and Mahabharata were written, or when Vishnu Sharma wrote the Panchatantra, where were such questions of popularity or circulation? Yet these classics exist, and they are dazzling purveyors of Indian literature. A writer’s life might be limited to 50, 60, or 70 years, but literature is something which is a perennial stream of creativity. Works which deserve to be remembered or to be immortalized, they will achieve that recognition over the course of time.
Yes, you cannot set out a programme for it. Of course it would be good if we had some excellent translators and we could identify the right kind of novels. But when one says “the Indian psyche”, this cannot be forced into any novel. It is either there, or it is not. A writer who is steeped in the Indian consciousness, his writing naturally projects that. So one should not be compelled to think, “Well, I should write something which will appear to be so genuinely Indian that it will be accepted as the true representative of Indian literature”.
There was a time, before Independence, when men like Dr Mulk Raj Anand, whom I consider the doyen of the Indian novel in English (see, for example, his classic novels Untouchable (1935), Coolie (1936), and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937)), were projecting for the first time the sorrows of the toiling masses, the labour classes, and tea-garden workers (we see this in Two Leaves and A Bud, with its beautiful title). Independence from colonial rule slowly changed the situation. R. K. Narayan was highly popular for some time, and that popularity still somewhat exists, because he was focusing on the little ironies of life, the mild humour, the gossips, and specimen characters from small towns and villages. He examined these subjects with wit and compassion, revealing a hitherto unexplored area of Indian life. Additionally, writing about hill life, there is my friend Ruskin Bond — he’s very popular, his books sell quite well, and people love him. He writes about the hills and those regions because he lives there and identifies with that quaint lifestyle. There were other gifted writers, such as Raja Rao. He was more a philosopher than a fiction writer, and for the most part he successfully adapted the art of fiction to suit his message, though sometimes the thought element dominated his art. So they were the famous trio — Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, and R. K. Narayan.
At the moment I cannot find any writer of fiction in English who can be compared to these earlier authors’ popularity or their appeal, for various reasons. That said, things are moving, things are changing, and new writers are coming. So many writers are popular in the sense that they receive international awards, and are published by noted publishers abroad. But their quality I do not think can be determined so easily. It may take another half century to identify that properly — whether they are really inspired writers or merely clever and skilled artisans of emotions and words, looking for certain situations, and taking advantage of such situations.
I have been greatly influenced by them. Ancient India was accustomed to a kind of feudal rule, but this feudal rule was different from the serfdoms in any other country. Every village was a unit, a self-sufficient unit, and the village elders were men of conscience. I met dozens of elders in my childhood. They were not people who were exploiters, and nor were they rude or unkind. They understood everybody’s lives, and they would sit and decide issues. Village panchayats 4 were far more practical, efficient, and truer to the problem than any decision that could be arrived at in a court of law through arguments between lawyers. This age-old village life suddenly experienced a new wave of patriotism, which was brought about by a new breed of politicians. “Mystery of the Missing Cap” (1989b) begins in an India which was marked by the four major castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras), and abruptly a fifth caste appears: the patriots or patriotic caste. I wanted to show how a country whose people who have never been exposed to these alien democratic concepts face a crisis. How will they cope with it? Some lose their balance, some become overambitious and can’t reconcile their own inner innocence with the hypocrisy and pretensions demanded by the new policies and politics. And what happens to them? The story records the paradox in the situation to a certain degree.
India and Indian democracy are certainly related to and aligned with other democratic countries. India has much backwardness which others don’t have, and many weaknesses which they don’t share. But India nonetheless has something exclusive: a wonderful vision of the future, and a great tradition to retain and to pursue it. I believe India has a reasonably bright future in the world community as we move forward in the twenty-first century.
The vision of the future is definitely a more united world, not in the sense of becoming one through a brotherhood of sorrow, as H. G. Wells (1907) saw, but a brotherhood of delight: delight of achievement, delight of understanding. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I believe that the whole of humanity is growing towards an enlightened future. And India will have a specific role in translating that vision into a world reality. That will be an adventure of consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo’s life was incredible. In its first phase, he fought for the liberation of his motherland. In the second phase, he strove for the liberation of humanity from its imprisonment in ignorance. How Sri Aurobindo has inspired me is as follows: he is the one person I have found who has a vision of man as an evolving being. Everybody else takes man as he is — this is man, we make his psychoanalysis, we make his social and political order, in order to serve this man. Sri Aurobindo is a visionary who sees that this man is not the final product of evolution. Man continues to evolve, and this insight of Sri Aurobindo inspires me. All our problems — our experiences of life, sorrows, anguish, agony, pleasures, delight, and even death — can be seen in a new light. After such a reinterpretation of psychology, you look at man as having something in him which is still deeply inherent, which unfolds gradually, birth after birth, life after life, and which will make man quite different from what he is today. Sri Aurobindo’s term for this is “supramental”. He uses the word supramental not because it is much greater than “mind”, but because it is a qualitatively different kind of consciousness which will take hold of you and me. When you look at the complex and wondrous history of evolution, right from gross matter to life, and then to mind, you come to believe that the process could not have ended with the present man, a half-complete being. Once you are acquainted with Sri Aurobindo, you become an incorrigible optimist.
Not consciously, because I was a writer from my childhood. Long before I could write even, I was composing. I have had my moments of pessimism also, shaped by World War II, the atomic bomb, and the Holocaust.
In the late 1960s, I was pessimistic about the future of humanity. “A Trip into the Jungle” (1978) [the story is suggestive of cannibalism] first appeared in 1971, in The Illustrated Weekly of India. It was later adapted into the award-winning Hindi film Aaranyaka (1994), directed by Apurba Kishore Bir. But nevertheless, when I moved to Puducherry [in 1963], Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy gave me optimism about humanity. And his vision has certainly sustained me in my writing, in my zeal for communicating. It has had some subtle influence on my writing, but I’ve never tried consciously to bring his philosophy into my creative writing. It’s different when I am invited to give a talk on Sri Aurobindo. I speak on Sri Aurobindo, I sometimes write on Sri Aurobindo, though I don’t write generally on mystic subjects. But in my creative writing, in my novels and short stories, I do not consciously bring him in.
I’m translating into my own mother tongue Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri (1997). I’m also working on a novel. It is set in India and contains typical Indian characters. Also, I have been researching Sri Aurobindo’s tremendous experiences in jail, the people who came in touch with him, their private records, their family diaries, and books which are extant and which have been out of print for many decades. I have worked on a thorough biographical reconstruction of Sri Aurobindo’s life, serialized in the monthly magazine Mother India. I discovered many unknown things about him, which I have brought to light.
In 1910, Sri Aurobindo became the first Indian statesman on whom a complete debate took place in the House of Commons. Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the Labour Party, told the Treasury Bench that he had read in The Times that a warrant had been issued against Mr. Aurobindo Ghose (at that time he was not known as Sri Aurobindo) for having published a “seditious” article in a magazine called Karmayogin. 5 MacDonald requested that the magazine be placed in the library of the House of Commons to give British politicians a sense of its content. Montagu was then Under Secretary of State for India, and he reported that the government of India had not yet sent through the magazine issue. Two weeks later, when he asked again about the magazine and was again informed that the government had not yet received it, MacDonald produced a copy of the Karmayogin. He read out the whole article, line by line, and one member of the House asked whether the article was published in Bengali. To this Ramsay MacDonald responded that the article is written in excellent English and that Ghose is practically an Englishman. He read out the whole thing, challenging his peers to show the article’s so-called sedition. 6 Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour Party in England, supported him in this argument. These matters were never brought to public attention by any historian. In the history of the freedom movement, he is the first Indian statesman on whom there is a complete debate, but nobody has exposed this.
I have learnt — to be very honest — only one thing, that I have so much to learn. That’s the only statement I can make. I know life will continue even after this life.
The future alone can say that, because nothing is ever lost. Even if my own literature is not read, those who have read my work have derived inspiration. My literature will lead to their own creation of literature, and will leave its mark on that literature. That is how things grow. For example, how many people outside my home state read Fakir Mohan Senapati? Senapati was one of my inspirations and he is there in my writing.
[Laughs] What message can I convey, sitting in the shadow of Sri Aurobindo, whose message for humanity is to aspire, grow, and transcend yourself? I do not give any messages, or if I do, it is a subtle message. A pronounced message is a prophet’s gift, not that of a writer. Subtle messages are bound to be there, because the artistic process and the reading process are spiritual, psychological processes — psycho-spiritual processes, you could say. And those subtle messages have to be discovered by readers — maybe not consciously, but instinctively and meaningfully.(Puducherry, December 2017)
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Manoj Das, Anand Kumar, P. Raja, Bob Zwicker, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Library, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and Research Library, and Auro University.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by a Sabarmati Fellowship at the Gandhi Ashram (Ahmedabad) and a Salisbury University Faculty Mini-Grant.