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REVIEW
A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES : DILIP KUMAR ROY Written by : Dr. Amrita Paresh Patel, Published by : L. D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad, Year of Publication : 2002, Page : 256, Price : Rs. 220/
A Lover of Light among Luminaries : Dilip Kumar Roy is Mrs. Amrita Paresh Patel's doctoral thesis published in a reworked form by L. D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad, one of the most reputed institutions of Indian Culture, Art and Philosophy in the world.
It is a well-known fact that Dilip Roya was a versatile writer and a determined pilgrim of eternity of the twentieth century. One can discover in his works an expression of a sincere and burning quest of true spiritual knowledge, an authentic account of his enocunters with the great men of the East and the West, a sweat and poetic prose and an amazing vitality of style.
The revised version of her work comprises four parts, divided into ten chapters, with a concluding Note and Appendices attached at the end.
The first three chapters of PART I introduce Dilip Roy's life, traits of biography as it was his favorite form of literature and Roy's art of spiritual portrait painting. Her real work lies in the third chapter where she discusses how the biographies of Roy's authorship differ from the traditional types. For Roy, Amrita Patel rightly points out, all writing including biographies, is merely a means to the end of spiritual progress.
PART II, Prose - Portraltures is divided into two chapters : Fuller Portraits and sketches. The former contains the most intimate full-length portraits of Shri Aurobindo, his gurudev, Shri Krishnaprem, his follow pilgrim of eternity, Subhas Chandra Bose, his bosom friend and Indira Devi, his daughter disciple. In the next chapter, brief sketches of his contact with a few great Luminaries of his times like Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Ramdas etc. are evaluated.
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