Nirodbaran

Nirodbaran graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in medicine. He was told about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother by Dilip Kumar Roy while in Paris. In 1930, he visited the Ashram and met the Mother and was overwhelmed and had a spiritual experience. After some vacillation, he finally felt the call and joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1933, leaving behind the prospect of a highly lucrative career. In the Ashram he entered upon a new life and had many experiences and realizations. He returned to the Ashram with the intention of practising Yoga, and took up work as the resident doctor. He found to his surprise that poetry was one of the vocations taken up by some disciples. As Sri Aurobindo had already withdrawn from the public life of the ashram, he communicated with and instructed the sadhaks via letters, and Nirodbaran entered into a voluminous correspondence with Sri Aurobindo for five years,from 1933-38 described as 'epistolary history', alone runs into 1,200 pages who encouraged and guided his attempts at poetry. He published a collection of his poems as Blossom of the Sun and 50 poems by Nirodbaran, which were revised and commented on by Sri Aurobindo.

Circumstances propelled Nirodbaran into Sri Aurobindo presence in November 1938 after he tripped and fell in his room, fracturing his right thigh. Nirodbaran was required to be in attendance as a Physician. He served Sri Aurobindo for the next 12 years, until he took Samadhi.

Later he published Talks with Sri Aurobindo (3 volumes), Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo (2 volumes), and his memoir 12 Years with Sri Aurobindo, as well as various volumes of poetry and other writings.

Nirodbaran took samadhi on the evening of July 17, 2006 at the Ashram Nursing home in Pondicherry, aged 102 years. He went peacefully. His Samadhi is located at the Ashram's Cazanove Gardens.

Dr. Nirodbaran, born in an aristocratic and distinguished Zamindar family, is the paternal uncle of the late Major Sukumar Talukdar, a war veteran, who served as the Regimental Medical Officer of 2/5 Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force), before, during, and after the 1965 war with Pakistan. Later he was appointed as the Senior Medical Superintendent of the Meerut Medical College Hospital. Nirodbaran's nephew is Anil Talukdar. The daughter of Anil's maternal uncle, Kritika Chaudhuri, Molly, was married to Dr. Arup Bose, the cousin of the daughter-in-law of Chittaranjan Das, Nationalist leader and barrister. Dr. Nirodbaran was a close relative of Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, his paternal cousin Dr. Arabinda (Barrister, England), is married to Atasi, daughter of Asit kumar Haldar. Haldar's maternal grandmother is Saratkumari Devi, the sister of Rabindranath Tagore. Their sister, Sukumari Devi was the paternal grandmother of Former Army Chief Gen Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri. Gen Chaudhuri was Nirodbaran's cousin. Former Air Chief Marshal Subroto Mukherjee, the grand nephew of Chittaranjan Das, was Nirodbaran's maternal cousin. Nirodbaran, a freedom fighter, was also jailed for two months for participating in the Non-Cooperation movement. He was also a close friend and classmate of Lokenath Baul, the right-hand man of Surya Sen (Master Da) in the Chittagong Armoury Raid.

• Twelve years with Sri Aurobindo Chapter 1 - Nirodbaran
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• Supporting spiritual search