Jayantilal Parekh

Born on 21 June 1913, the Gujarati disciple Jayantilal Parekh joined the Ashram on 28 December 1938 at the age of twenty-five. A talented artist, he made hundreds of paintings and drawings under the Mother's guidance during his first decade in the Ashram. Then for most of the next fifty years he worked at the Ashram Press. In the early 1970s he organised the publication of the thirty-volume Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, and in 1973 he founded the Ashram Archives and Research Library. He lived for sixty years in the Ashram, until his passing on 26 January 1999 at the age of eighty-five.