Sri Parichand - A Pilgrim of the Spirit

Introduction

We are happy to bring out this slim volume to commemorate the birth centenary of our illustrious grandfather Sri Parichand Kothari. The aim is not to give publicity to the spiritual achievements of a person who scrupulously kept away from fame all his life, though all those who knew him will admit that he fully deserved it. Ours is a humble attempt to pay our reverential homage to one who renounced the worldly life in the prime of youth when he was still thirty, in 1934, to pursue Sri Aurobindo's yoga with unflagging ardour for more than half a century till he passed away in 1991. His sadhana knew no deviation or distraction. It was for him not merely the first but the only thing in life.

Such a life, like the life of all yogis, is never lived on the surface for the man of the world to see. Outwardly it is even uneventful, since it is lived at the deepest levels of consciousness, and whatever happens, even the most significant events are seen only with the occult eye. Parichand was too modest to speak about his spiritual achievements and nobody except the all-seeing eyes of the Mother could have known them. This is the reason why we have deliberately refrained from publishing any articles on him.

Our aim is to bring out the essential Parichand — a dedicated disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, whose every movement was guided by Their light, an untiring pilgrim of the spirit who was vigilant every moment, a man who radiated quiet cheerfulness and detached goodwill for all and seemed to live from a deeper spiritual consciousness than we ordinary mortals do. Last but not the least, he was a man of deep, spontaneous humility.

The present book could not have been published without the support of our many well-wishers. So we thankfully acknowledge the unstinted cooperation of Sri Manoj Das Gupta, the Managing Trustee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who gave the permission to use the material available with Research & Archives Department. We thank Sri Kishorilal Dhandhania, who knew Parichand intimately, for writing the foreword to the book. We are grateful to Bob Zwicker for generously permitting us to reprint his carefully edited correspondence of Parichand with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, to editors of The Golden Chain and specially to Raman Reddy who interviewed Parichand for that magazine — as it turned out it was to be his first and last interview — as also for writing a concise but comprehensive biographical note on Parichand for the book.

Finally we thank all those who gave us Parichand's letters to them, but among them, special mention must be made of Shyam Kumari who was a recipient of perhaps the largest number of letters and served him with a daughter's devotion during the last years of his life.

In the end we pray to the Mother, who was the inspiring source and guiding light to Parichand, to bless our effort of paying tribute to her distinguished son.

Pradip Jain