Satyanarain and asked me to pray to it ( Mahanaam – the great name.) He ran his fingers in my beard and my entire body became suffused with fragrance – Pudmagandha. Then he sat back on his bed and lit a cigarette. He was a heavy smoker.
Dadaji was an incredibly handsome man: tall, strongly built, charismatic and magnetic eyes. His speech was a jumble of Bengali and Hindi. He spoke very little English. I pieced together his past from Bhattacharya with whom I kept up correspondence till the end of his life.
Amiya Roy Chowdhury, who later came to be known as Dadaji, was born in village Fultali now in Bangladesh sometime between 1906 and 1912. He was a precocious child given to argument with wandering holy men.
Once, he confronted an ash-smeared sadhu and asked him: “Is this the means of finding God?” Another time, he grabbed the scrotum of a nanga sadhu and asked him “How does this nudity help you?”
He left his home and wandered round places of pilgrimage exhorting yogi and holy men to return to their homes, work, marry and beget children. For some years he worked with All India Radio, Calcutta, as a singer-artiste. He was jailed during the freedom movement. He married and had a son and a daughter. Once he was arrested on a false charge of forging a will. No one was willing to give evidence against him. The charge was withdrawn and he was honourably acquitted.
Dadaji delivered no sermons, wrote no books, and refused to set up an ashram. “All the universe is my ashram,” he said. He travelled round the world talking to small groups. He resented attempts to deify him.
He denounced renunciation and celibacy: “Celibacy does not mean not using sexual organs. It means to be in Him. What does sexual intercourse mirror? Absorption, relishing the taste of His Love.”
As I said before, I got to know Dadaji quite well. I am mortified to read in Mills’ little book that he died three years ago on June 7, 1992. I did not read of his passing away in any newspaper; Abhi Bhattacharya was not there to tell me about it. But every time I recall Dadaji, a faint aroma of Padmagandha envelops me.
6/24/95
The Pandit and the Sadhvi: the Legend of Shraddha Mata
I was aggrieved to hear of Shraddha Mata’s death a few weeks ago in Jaipur. I got to know her some fifteen years ago and called on her at the Hathroi Fort whenever I went to Jaipur. Each meeting was for me a memorable one; I became genuinely fond of her. However, it was the first encounter with her which remains imprinted on my mind.
Like many others, I had read about her in M.O. Mathai’s memories of his days with Pandit Nehru. According to Mathai, Panditji had a liaison with Shraddha Mata and fathered an illegitimate child who was born in a Catholic hospital in south India. Shraddha Mata later abandoned the child and returned to Uttar Pradesh to resume her mission as a tantrik sadhvi.
It was Maneka Gandhi’s mother, Amteshwar Anand, who told me that if I wanted to meet Shraddha Mata I should go to the Nigambodh Ghat cremation ground. Several corpses were burning with a few mourners sitting here and there. I asked the timber dealer who supplied wood for cremations for Shraddha Mata’s dwelling. He pointed to a platform surrounded by gunny sacks at one end of the ground. I made my way there and saw an elderly lady in a saffron kurta-dhoti sitting cross-legged on a wooden takhtposh counting the beads of her rosary.
“Kaun hai? (Who is it?)” she shouted.
“Aap ke darshan karne aaya hoon (I have come to have your darshan)" I replied.
“Darshan to karne aaya hai, tera naam bhi to hai koi? (You have come for darshan, but don’t you have a name?)”
I mentioned my name. “Are you the same fellow who was editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India?"
I admitted I was. She exploded: “Jhootha kahin ka! (You are a liar!) Darshan parshan, nahin. You want to know more about what that haramzada Mathai has written about me. It is all a pack of lies.”
“But
Dadaji was an incredibly handsome man: tall, strongly built, charismatic and magnetic eyes. His speech was a jumble of Bengali and Hindi. He spoke very little English. I pieced together his past from Bhattacharya with whom I kept up correspondence till the end of his life.
Amiya Roy Chowdhury, who later came to be known as Dadaji, was born in village Fultali now in Bangladesh sometime between 1906 and 1912. He was a precocious child given to argument with wandering holy men.
Once, he confronted an ash-smeared sadhu and asked him: “Is this the means of finding God?” Another time, he grabbed the scrotum of a nanga sadhu and asked him “How does this nudity help you?”
He left his home and wandered round places of pilgrimage exhorting yogi and holy men to return to their homes, work, marry and beget children. For some years he worked with All India Radio, Calcutta, as a singer-artiste. He was jailed during the freedom movement. He married and had a son and a daughter. Once he was arrested on a false charge of forging a will. No one was willing to give evidence against him. The charge was withdrawn and he was honourably acquitted.
Dadaji delivered no sermons, wrote no books, and refused to set up an ashram. “All the universe is my ashram,” he said. He travelled round the world talking to small groups. He resented attempts to deify him.
He denounced renunciation and celibacy: “Celibacy does not mean not using sexual organs. It means to be in Him. What does sexual intercourse mirror? Absorption, relishing the taste of His Love.”
As I said before, I got to know Dadaji quite well. I am mortified to read in Mills’ little book that he died three years ago on June 7, 1992. I did not read of his passing away in any newspaper; Abhi Bhattacharya was not there to tell me about it. But every time I recall Dadaji, a faint aroma of Padmagandha envelops me.
6/24/95
The Pandit and the Sadhvi: the Legend of Shraddha Mata
I was aggrieved to hear of Shraddha Mata’s death a few weeks ago in Jaipur. I got to know her some fifteen years ago and called on her at the Hathroi Fort whenever I went to Jaipur. Each meeting was for me a memorable one; I became genuinely fond of her. However, it was the first encounter with her which remains imprinted on my mind.
Like many others, I had read about her in M.O. Mathai’s memories of his days with Pandit Nehru. According to Mathai, Panditji had a liaison with Shraddha Mata and fathered an illegitimate child who was born in a Catholic hospital in south India. Shraddha Mata later abandoned the child and returned to Uttar Pradesh to resume her mission as a tantrik sadhvi.
It was Maneka Gandhi’s mother, Amteshwar Anand, who told me that if I wanted to meet Shraddha Mata I should go to the Nigambodh Ghat cremation ground. Several corpses were burning with a few mourners sitting here and there. I asked the timber dealer who supplied wood for cremations for Shraddha Mata’s dwelling. He pointed to a platform surrounded by gunny sacks at one end of the ground. I made my way there and saw an elderly lady in a saffron kurta-dhoti sitting cross-legged on a wooden takhtposh counting the beads of her rosary.
“Kaun hai? (Who is it?)” she shouted.
“Aap ke darshan karne aaya hoon (I have come to have your darshan)" I replied.
“Darshan to karne aaya hai, tera naam bhi to hai koi? (You have come for darshan, but don’t you have a name?)”
I mentioned my name. “Are you the same fellow who was editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India?"
I admitted I was. She exploded: “Jhootha kahin ka! (You are a liar!) Darshan parshan, nahin. You want to know more about what that haramzada Mathai has written about me. It is all a pack of lies.”
“But
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