Debu bhattacharya biography of albert

Dear Friends,

On Wednesday, 13 December 2017, the Aurobindonian community of Pondicherry lost its senior-most member with the passing away of Albert Patel at the age of ninety-four.

Albert’s father Ambalal Patel was one of the early disciples of Sri Aurobindo. He came in touch with Sri Aurobindo’s writings at an early age when he was in college at Baroda. Prior to that, he was a follower of Vishnu Bhaskar Lele under whose guidance Sri Aurobindo had attained the realization of the Absolute Brahman in just three days which ‘most Yogis get only at the end of a long Yoga’. He chose the path of Integral Yoga in 1923 and established a regular contact with the newly formed Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1926 and eventually joined it as a permanent inmate in 1931. His wife Pushpa-ben too joined him later. Ambalal’s work in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was to provide accommodation to visitors.

Albert was born as Avinash on 24 October 1923. He received his early education at Nadiad in Gujarat where he studied in Saraswati High School. He came to Pondicherry in February 1943 and had the darshan of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on 21st February. The impact of the darshan was so great that he chose to join the Ashram. He left his matriculation half-way to join Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1943 where his first job was to iron the clothes of senior inmates like Nolini Kanta Gupta, Pavitra, Chandulal and others which he continued along with tailoring till 1946 or 1947. In the initial years he assisted Kanailal Ganguly who was an inmate of Sri Aurobindo Ashram since its inception. To improve his tailoring skills, once Avinash sought the Mother’s permission to go out of Pondicherry and learn the art of tailoring. The Mother held his ears and said that there was no use of going outside and that “Knowledge is within. Bring it out.”

On one occasion, one gentleman also named Avinash asked the Mother for something which She had duly sent. Later, when Avinash Patel went to the Mother, She aske

ARCHIVE

At Benares Hindu University (Benares, February, 1916)

MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI

I wish to tender my humble apology for the long delay that took place before I was able to reach this place. And you will readily accept the apology when I tell you that I am not responsible for the delay nor is any human agency responsible for it. The fact is that I am like an animal on show, and my keepers in their over kindness always manage to neglect a necessary chapter in this life, and, that is, pure accident. In this case, they did not provide for the series of accidents that happened to us—to me, keepers, and my carriers. Hence this delay.

Friends, under the influence of the matchless eloquence of Mrs Besant who has just sat down, pray, do not believe that our University has become a finished product, and that all the young men who are to come to the University, that has yet to rise and come into existence, have also come and returned from it finished citizens of a great empire. Do not go away with any such impression, and if you, the student world to which my remarks are supposed to be addressed this evening, consider for one moment that the spiritual life, for which this country is noted and for which this country has no rival, can be transmitted through the lip, pray, believe me, you are wrong. You will never be able merely through the lip, to give the message that India, I hope, will one day deliver to the world. I myself have been fed up with speeches and lectures. I accept the lectures that have been delivered here during the last two days from this category, because they are necessary. But I do venture to suggest to you that we have now reached almost the end of our resources in speech-making; it is not enough that our ears are feasted, that our eyes are feasted, but it is necessary that our hearts have got to be touched and that our hands and feet have got to be moved.

We have been told during the last

Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading: 500 Great Books to Be Enjoyed Over 50 Years [1982]

1121 entries: 967 monographical, 154 otherwise

Unranked—arranged topically

A Lifetime's Reading, as the author notes, is "divided into fifty chapters, or 'years', to give the reader who requires it a discipline according to which he can pace himself." As with most of the other book-as-list projects documented here (Powys, Van Doren, Fadiman, Dirda, Newman) the work or works noted in the section headings within each chapter do not always capture which works in particular Ward recommends; or, rather, in the section text, he recommends further books as clearly as he does that or those in the section heading. Again, we want to avoid being too liberal in the inclusion of texts or misrepresent Ward's recommendations; but at Greater Books, for these books-as-lists the final result should clearly represent what is in the whole book, not just chapter or section headings.

The biographical blurb included in the bookleaves us unsurprised that Ward's list is one of the few truly-global selections of "great books". A librarian who worked for a variety of institutions in England, Indonesia, Libya, and elsewhere, he wrote not just about literature but also Tripoli: A Portrait of a City and other travel books as well as The Book of Common Fallacies: Falsehoods, Misconceptions, Flawed Facts, and Half-Truths That Are Ruining Your Life.

Year 1:
Lewis Carroll

• The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll
  1920; includes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [1865]; Phantasmagoria and Other Poems [1869]; Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There [1871]; The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in 8 Fits [1876]; A Tangled Tale [1880-5]; Sylvie and Bruno [1889; 1893]; Three Sunsets and Other Poems [1898]; other works—English

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1865—English


2. Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

1869—English


3. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found T