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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES: Dilip Kumar Roy his own. He sent his poems to Sri Aurobindo and Tagore to seek their opinions. Sri Aurobindo responded:
"It is again a beautiful poem you have written, but not better than the other. But why erect mental theories and suit your poetry to them whether your father's or Tagore's? I would suggest to you not to be bound by either but to write as best suits your inspiration and poetic genius.... You have developed an original poetic turn of your own, quite unlike your father's and not by any means a reflection of Tagore's. Besides, there is now, as a result of your sadhana. a new quality in your work, a power of expressing with great felicity a subtle psychic delicacy and depth of thought and emotion which I have not seen elsewhere in modern Bengali verse... (The italics are mine.)" 22
Dilip Roy cites Tagore's response, too:
"How did you manage to train your ears? Now you have no cause to be diffident any more. But how a cripple can possibly dispense with his crutches one fine morning and start to run straight are what I find unfathomable deeps. At times I almost ask myself if you might not have had it all written by somebody else?"23
Dilip Roy, then, was regarded as one of the authorities on the Bengali metres. Next, he appealed to Sri Aurobindo to teach him English prosody including quantitative metres. Dilip Roy used to send a note-book up to Sri Aurobindo with his own poems and queries on various aspects of poetry. Sri Aurobindo was sending the note-book back with his answers, explanations and corrections to Dilip Roy. In this manner, he discussed with Dilip Roy English metres and modulations. Sri Aurobindo corrected the poems not only of Dilip Roy, but also of Nirod, Ramen, Nishikanto and other disciples and provided them with plenty of examples. All of them were convinced of his love. tenderness, patience and greatness because they knew that he spent much of his time to help them in their poetic experimentation when other important things were crying for his attention. in vain. Dilip Roy informs his readers:
"I myself have written more than six hundred pages of English verse and produced at least two thousand pages in Bengali, and he not only found time to read all these carefully but to comment on most of them as well as throw out suggestions for improvement."24
Dilip Roy discovered that though Sri Aurobindo was tolerant and soft to his disciples, at times, he was very firm and unwilling to budge an inch from the path once he had decided to follow. While discussing the importance of style in creative writing, Nirodbaran argued that style could be manufactured by voracious reading
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