The Mother's Musician

SUNIL The Mother’s Musician Clifford Gibson First edition 2014 © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 2014 Published by the Late Shrimati Kokilaben Mehta Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry - 605 002 PRINTED IN INDIA Acknowledgements Thanks to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives for access to Sunil’s correspondence and to Manoj Das Gupta for permission to consult the material used to produce this book and to reproduce some of it in these pages. Special thanks to Mirajyoti Sobel who compiled a detailed inventory of Sunil’s correspondence and translated many of the letters from the French. Thanks also to Marie-Françoise Corbel who read and translated materials in French and gave much needed moral support. Thanks to Mary Premila for reading the draft and making many useful suggestions. Thanks to Aryamani and Jivatman for translations of letters from the Portuguese and to Aloka Ghosh for translation from Bengali. Thanks to Steve Webman for patient answers to my many questions about Sunil’s life and music, and thanks to all those who agreed to be interviewed. Thanks to Peter Heehs for providing workspace during the early phase of the book and for technical advice. Thanks to Swadhin Chatterjee at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press for his patience with the many changes to the text after he had lovingly completed the layout of the book. Also, special thanks to Dominique Darr and Michel Monte- crossa for permission to use their photos. And lastly, heartfelt thanks to Akshay Mehta and to the Late Shrimati Kokilaben Mehta for their support in publishing this book. Introduction In the fall of 1971 I received a letter from Sunil Bhattacharya. I had written to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram asking about music played by the Mother of the Ashram. Sunil answered with details of the Mother’s music and briefly introduced himself and his music: “I am myself a composer. I am assisted by a group of musicians of the Ashram for my orchestral reproductions. My style of music is entirely a development, an expression of the deep impression that the Mother’s improvisations had created in me.” After I sent a reel-to-reel tape with return postage for my first taste of Sunil’s music, The Hour of God arrived in my mailbox and opened doors onto a new world of beauty and inspiration. Like many who cherished his music I asked about sharing his music with others and Sunil replied: “Regarding the question of permitting people to copy from the tape I sent you, I leave the matter entirely to your discretion. I do not want my music to be commercialized, at least just now. So please exercise a little bit of caution and allow only those people to copy who want the music only for their personal enjoyment.” Attempts were made over the years to persuade Sunil to allow his music to be made available to a wider audience, but he always refused, saying that he felt publicity, “would introduce one more bond, one more power which is irrelevant to what I am given to do and the consequences may well recoil into my life and, above all, into my work.” Describing the inner world from which his music sprang he once wrote to a friend: “The insane relish of work is gone, the allegretto agitato of strings have died down but I can however hear muffled base chords resounding like heavy footfalls of strangers along the corridors of my mind. Yet deep within me there is a still pool which sends back the image of a light that is burning somewhere.” He did not wish to transform that still pool “into a neon-lit sales counter.” In 2002 I heard of a book project on Sunil that had been started and abandoned and I contacted Victor Jauhar who had helped record Sunil’s music from early on. Victor had worked with Mirajyoti Sobel on the suspended Sunil book project and put me in contact with her. I was delighted to have the opportunity to look through the archived materials and enquired about being allowed to take up work on the project. I looked forward to hearing Sunil’s voice come back to life in his letters and hoped it might be possible for others to come into contact with the person they have known through his music. I received permission from Manoj Das Gupta, Managing Trustee of the Ashram, and Minnie Ganguli, Sunil’s sister, to look through the 16 large boxes of correspondence containing many dozens of folders and some thousands of letters and other documents and photos lovingly preserved over the years. Selecting from this material I have tried as much as possible to let Sunil tell his story in his own words through his correspondence with many friends and admirers of his music over a period of several decades from the early 1960s until his passing in 1998. We are fortunate that Chhobi Ganguli, his sister-in-law and faithful secretary, scrupulously saved almost all of Sunil’s correspondence over the years and it is from this cache of correspondence that the bulk of letters and quotations contained in this book have been chosen. Also included is the Mother’s correspondence with Sunil regarding his music as well as comments she made about his music in other places. In addition to the correspondence is a truncated auto- biography of Sunil which details his early childhood in the small town of Krishnagar in West Bengal and his life in Calcutta where his family moved before Sunil reached school-age and where he learned to play the sitar from his cousin who had studied with two famous sitar players of the time. Sunil’s own account ends while he is still quite young and does not mention studying at Xavier’s College in Calcutta where he received a degree in chemistry. Sunil picks up his story from his first visit to Pondicherry in 1942 and from this point his words are taken from his cor respondence. Complementing the letters written by and to Sunil are interviews with several people who knew Sunil intimately and accounts written of Sunil’s life by residents of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. SUNIL AS for me, mine has been all along a very simple yoga, modest in goal and in scope. As such I feel almost like an outsider whenever questions under discussion touch the yoga of the Supramental. That is why when such discussions take place, I choose to remain quiet. I know my limitations. Even after 35 years of stay here in this Ashram I am still a novitiate, treading the ancient path, reaching out at the old, old Truth that was, is, and that will always be. As a matter of fact, I am still negotiating the sharp contours of a yoga which Sri Aurobindo took pains to elaborate in those few pages of his Bases of Yoga. For me there is only one attraction. Could I, one day, make an entire and utter self-giving to Her a reality in my life, claiming nothing, asking nothing, desiring nothing? The goal recedes and it still remains a dream to me. The first person account of Sunil’s boyhood contained in the next several pages was apparently told to his sister-in-law Chhobi. It is not clear if it was narrated to her in English which she then noted down as best she could or told in their native Bengali and then translated into English, but the English in this account does not have the same expressive style of English which Sunil used in his correspondence and speech. Nevertheless it has been left as it was handed down to us as an authentic account of Sunil’s early life. I was born in Krishnagar, a small, beautiful town, 60 miles north of Calcutta, in 1920. In Krishnagar we lived in many rented houses. The last house we lived in was on the High Street quite near the river Khorai. This house in the High Street was a big sprawling one. There were many, many rooms, downstairs as well as upstairs. Our kitchen and pantry were separated from the main building. We had to cross a long courtyard to go to the kitchen where we had our meals. Our house was a two-minute 2 SUNIL walk to the river Khorai, a beautiful river, with a beautiful riverside road which stretched on either side for miles. There was an event which was very important for the town. It was called Rashlila. This was a day of jubilation for the whole town. Krishnagar is one of the chief places where Vaishnavism is dominant, the other two places being Nabadwip and Shantipur. The Maharaja of Krishnagar was a great devotee of Krishna. The Rash is supposed to be a night of full moon when Krishna danced with Radha. This day is celebrated in great pomp and splendor in Krishnagar. In the early morning you wake up with the sound of beautiful chants by the sadhus, walking down the street and chanting, “Krishna Keshava, Krishna Keshava, Krishna Keshava pahi mam.” This song used to create in us the dawn of a sacred day. * I have a feeling that my father was very happy in Krishnagar where he had many friends and well-wishers. His daily routine was to go out with his cycle. He had to go quite a few miles to get to his dispensary at Ghurni. He was a doctor. Then he had to come back to Krishnagar where he had another dispensary. He would come home at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

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