A true child of the Mother

When young, she was a rationalist, a materialist, and an anarchist. She described herself as a seeker, someone who wanted to do something meaningful with her life and her energies. But her protestant background didn’t give her what she sought. When someone advised her to meet a truly great man, she laughed, as she believed that there weren’t any great men anymore. The winter of 1968 –1969, which she called the nadir of her life, provided an unexpected opening. Visiting a friend on a lazy Sunday afternoon, she walked into his London flat packed with people who were listening to a German speaker. The talk mesmerized her. As she recounted in an interview, “I do not remember his words but remember the experience. It was as if a room inside my head had opened, as if all rooms had opened; everything fitted together and there was a way forward! At the end of the talk, I rushed up to the man and asked who he had been talking about. It was Sri Aurobindo. I had never heard of him.” She managed to get hold of some of Sri Aurobindo’s books and read them all in an unused conference room of the Library Association where she was working. In her words, “I soaked it all up. It was the Water of Life.”

Meeting The Mother and going to Auroville came in 1970. She had been invited to join an overland trip to India but was waiting for an inner indication. Then a postcard from a friend arrived: “I am at the airport leaving for Auroville hope to see you there.” It was the hint she needed. She took the plane to Bombay, went by train to Pondicherry, and hired a rickshaw to bring her to the Ashram. “I was wearing a miniskirt and was dressed all in black,” she recalled. M.P. Pandit, who received her, didn’t mind. She was allowed to enter and see Sri Aurobindo’s Samadhi and Pandit organized a meeting with The Mother the next morning.

It was Roger Anger who took her to the Mother. It was pouring with rain, she had managed to bring a bedraggled bouquet of flowers and was repeating in her mind what she would say to the Mother. But waiting on the staircase leading to Mother’s room, she was told it would be a silent interview. “After some time I was called in. I don’t remember anything about the room or about anybody else being there. Someone must have told me what to do: kneel down, let Mother look into your eyes – I don’t remember. I tried to be open. She looked at me, and after some time gave me a rose, and I understood it was time to go out. I kind of drifted down the staircase. Roger followed. And he said, ‘Mother says yes’. I had received permission to go to Auroville. It was a very special moment.” In June 1972, Mother gave her the Sanskrit name Shraddhavan, meaning ‘one who has faith in the higher being’.

During the first six years in Auroville, Shraddhavan worked at the Matrimandir and joined the first Auroville school as a teacher, living in the Tibetan boarding house. She would cycle to Pondicherry every afternoon to revise the existing translations of Mother’s collective works, together with Mirajyoti and Pushpa.

For a short while, she became involved with the Auroville Society, created to counter the Sri Aurobindo Society’s control of Auroville, and joined its many meetings. But soon she got disillusioned. “One day I said that I had come to the conclusion that we should work from our hearts, not our minds, what Nolini had asked us to do, and follow Nolini as representative of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. There was quite a positive resonance. But there were also people who were not willing to accept that, which made me suddenly feel weak. That was the end of my active participation and I resigned.” Some people felt let down and betrayed.

The disputes between Auroville and the Sri Aurobindo Society intensified, while those who did not want to take sides, like Shraddhavan, were branded as ‘neutrals’. It was a very difficult time for all .Trying to understand what was going on, she realized that after Mother’s passing, all the forces that didn’t want Auroville to happen poured into everybody who was a tiny bit open to these influences –”all of us were open, all of us were beginners,” she recollected wryly – and so confusion reigned supreme. Many people got hurt in this battle and we can only be grateful that we’ve come through. For any other community that would have been the end, but not here. And somehow our little group of neutrals has contributed something to that coming together.” The government intervention in 1980 and the coming into force of the Auroville Foundation in 1991 brought the necessary respite and contributed to the re-establishment of harmony.

It was during the tenure of Dr. De as the second Secretary of the Auroville Foundation that study classes on Savitri started to be held in a keet hut. One of the regulars, Narayan from the Matrimandir, suggested that there should be a place where all the materials associated with Savitri could be collected, a place that would breathe the atmosphere of Savitri. Shraddhavan got inspired and decided to put all her energies into trying to manifest it. A plot of land between Bharat Nivas and Matrimandir was allocated and fundraising started. Shraddhavan’s partner, Helmut, made the designs and in 1995 the foundation stone was laid by Nirodbaran. Four years later, the first permanent building was completed and over the next 20 years the complex slowly grew. It now has auditoria, exhibition halls, libraries, a hostel, and a large garden and nursery. The statue of Sri Aurobindo, identical to the ones that grace the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, dominates the entrance.

Savitri Bhavan’s mission is to help manifest the spiritual side of Auroville through education, based on the vision and teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. To that end, Shraddhavan conducted study classes on the various works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and edited the journal Invocation: Study notes on Savitri. The main focus was on Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri – A Legend and a Symbol. As the study classes were also attended by non-native English people who had problems understanding Sri Aurobindo’s poetic language, Shraddhavan decided to give “The English of Savitri” classes, explaining difficult English words and giving sentence by sentence explanations. These classes were recorded and transcribed, which led to the publication of the series The English of Savitri. It was a daunting task. Shraddhavan had not anticipated that she would be required to explain the whole of Savitri, in particular not the last nine cantos of Book Two of the poem which are amongst the most difficult of the entire epic. But she has finished her task. Ten volumes of The English of Savitri have been published; the eleventh volume will be launched on Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birthday and the twelfth by the end of this year. These books are an unparalleled guide for any person wishing to better understand Savitri.

Shraddhavan enjoyed a warm personal relationship with Huta, an artist from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram who, under The Mother’s direct guidance, had made 472 oil paintings illustrating selected passages from Savitri, trying to express the true inner vision of her soul as asked by the Mother. Huta agreed that these paintings could be exhibited at Savitri Bhavan. Shraddhavan managed to raise the necessary funds and Helmut built a beautiful exhibition hall where they are now on permanent display, to be experienced in inner silence.

Apart from all her teaching, translation, and administrative work, Shraddhavan still found time to study poetry with her beloved mentor, Amal Kiran, which she considered an important part of her life. On the occasion of her 70th birthday, she published a small collection of her own poems titled ‘Stars in the Soup’. She has been honoured with the Auro-Ratna Award by the Overman Foundation in November 2012, and received the Sri Aurobindo Purushkar from the Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Kolkata, in 2016.

She was a true child of The Mother, one who consecrated all of herself and all she had – work, life, and soul.

Interviews with Shraddhavan can be seen at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdjHfFHg-BQ; 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_QWH-8_Ry0; and 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lqBDE