Lover of Light Among Luminaries Dilip Kumar Roy

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

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FullER PORTRAITS much himself as his guru, without being able to decide clearly, as to whom he is blaming. Consider, for example, what Dilip Roy has to say :
"This ....makes me feel convinced that I am a misfit here that I am, as Tagore said to me once, an artist first and last-not a Yogi. But the trouble is, Guru, that though I loved art passionately once upon a time, I failed to find it completely absorbing. Besides. I believed sincerely that if I wanted the Divine He would make it possible for me to climb up to him however hard and steep the path: in other words, He would make me change. But I don't find that He is at all responsive or that He would even have me persevere here. So perhaps it would be wiser for me to leave such a hopeless endeavour and try something more practicable if not equally satisfying. But then I don't find the conditions around very satisfying either; so why not permit me to try something else-say courting prison patriotically as Subhas and Jawaharlal are doing? For you must admit at least that I am not very receptive to your helping Force, which shows (does it not?) that I am essentially unfit for
your Yoga which aims at making us non-human?"37
What is clear here is only the confusion of Dilip Roy's mind and a lack of singleness of pursuit. It is the expression of the disturbance. But the expression is unmistakable as to what it is about. In such a situation, his mind would tend to blame his Guru and, absurdly, to absolve him of all the blame at the same time.
Dilip Roy's style here is elaborate, lengthy and repetitive. He writes about Sri Aurobindo in many, in almost all of his books, directly and indirectly and repeats a number of incidents time and again. He follows the trend of romantics who were careless about the form and concerned with only the content, which was chiefly expressionistic. He. now and then, digresses from his main subject of biography and begins to speak of himself, his emotions, reactions, experiences, his contacts with other great people. Often his lawless rambling is delightful as in the best of romantics. But at times it is very boring as in the worst of them. Often his digressions look senseless. For example, while Dilip Roy is talking about the transforming power of his guru in his chapter, 'Guru, the Transformer' in Sri Aurobindo Came to Me, he suddenly turns to present a long dialogue which took place between Mr. Pontiff and Mr. Chadwick. Mr. Pontiff is the name Dilip Roy has given to an Englishman who criticizes the Ashramites as passive idlers though, he admits they are outstandingly intelligent. Mr. Chadwick is another Englishman who has now turned into an Ashramite. He replies logically and patiently, all the charges of Mr. Pontiff. One might wonder as to what Dilip Roy is driving towards in all this.