Lover of Light Among Luminaries Dilip Kumar Roy

Author(s): Amruta Paresh Patel
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES: Dilip Kumar Roy The Mother once said that there was only one person in the Ashram who was perfectly humble and that was Sri Aurobindo. This comment opened the eyes of Dilip Roy. He observed at various occasions how humble Sri Aurobindo was even to his disciples. So he tried to change his egoistic attitude and also to follow the living example of his guru. Dilip Roy frequently disagreed with the decisions of the Mother and the opinions of the other inmates of the Ashram. He, almost always, expressed such disagreement, instantly, in his letters to Sri Aurobindo. Dilip Roy, in his books, quotes a number of humble letters written by Sri Aurobindo to him as answers to his impudent and impulsive letters. Dilip observes:
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"Whenever I got restive he wrote to me in that vein-firm but not overassertive, sure of his vision yet unwilling to impose it. persuasive but never insistent. That was always his way of being humble."29
Moreover, Dilip Roy notices that Sri Aurobindo had the capacity to pass. from the serious to the light moods with an astonishing ease. In 1934, Roy wrote to him about the parable of the ass and the flood:
"Once upon a time, Guru, there was a foolish ass who lived in the neighbourhood of a wise Yogi. One day a sudden flood burst. the banks of a river nearby and flooded the countryside. The wise Yogi, being wise, ran up till he reached the safe top of a hill at the foot of which he used to meditate day and night in a cave. But the ass-being foolish, not to say unmeditative-was swept away by the rushing tides. 'Alas!" he brayed, 'the world is being drowned!' 'Don't be an ass,' reprimanded the Yogi in high scorn from up the hill-top. 'It's only you who are being drowned not this great big world'. 'But sir.' argued the idiot, *if I myself am drowned how can I be sure that the world will survive?' And the Yogi was struck dumb and wondered, for the first time. which was the deeper wisdom-the human or the asinine! And I too have started wondering on my own, Guru!" I added. "So I appeal to you to adjudicate:tell me whose is the more pitiable plight the Yogi's or the ass's? And incidentally, tell me also if my mind is going off the handle because I find the foolish ass's argument nearly as rational as the wise Yogi's?"
"To that Sri Aurobindo replied your wise but not otherwise ass has put a question that cannot be answered in two lines. Let me say, however, in defence of the much-maligned ass that he is a very clever and practical animal and the malignant imputation of stupidity to him shows only human stupidity at