Last night, I spent the whole night with Sri Aurobindo somewhere, I don't know where, but there were lots of people. The two of us were alone, but we saw a multitude of people pass by. But the peculiar thing is that when I wake up, it doesn't go away! And when I lie down again, it's there, just where I had left it: it goes on. There's no longer a ... You know, in dreams, you have a dream, and then, the consciousness you're in suddenly changes, and it's over, you have to make an effort to recapture your dream or the state-but this doesn't budge! It doesn't budge, it's there like this, all the time: it goes on, whether I concern myself with it or not.

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Mounjiba had joined our large village-household about a hundred years ago when he was hardly a ten-year old boy, and lived with us whole of the rest of his life of about sixty; he died in the lap of my grandmother. Mounjiba saw the ups and downs of the family, and laughed and wept in the naturalness of its members. As a kid I’d heard from him any number of bed-time stories and fables which the books later told me were from Aesop. Who knows? I do not know wherefrom he had picked them up, nor the art of cattle-breeding and care. An occult master with small twinkling eyes, he seemed to know things immediately, a knowledge that comes from identification with what one is associated. Once he had to carry an errand to an acquaintance in the neighbouring village. On reaching the place the host asked him, “Mounjiba, you have come without wearing a shirt.” Mounjiba replied, “But Aai did not tell me to wear a shirt.” Now that generation lives no more.

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