20-08-1978
Dear Ramendra Sarkar,
I am in receipt of your letter of 15th August which seems to have been written in a fit of ill-temper. I hope you have calmed down by this time. Now, you may have been even regretting for having written that sort of letter, acting mainly on impulse and in a huff.
You should remember that many a time there may not be anything objectionable in a particular programme as such, but the worker who conceives or organizes it does attract criticism if he in his over-enthusiasm fails to observe the organisational norms and appears to act arbitrarily, bypassing his seniors or co-workers. You should have learnt by now the aforesaid rule of conduct and other preliminary etiquettes and conventions of organisational working. Expected to be endowed with keen sense of perception and extra-ordinary power of observation due to your being an artist, you should have picked up these things very quickly. May be, the artist in you makes you sometimes absent-minded. Whatever it may be, being a new-entrant in field work, there is no wonder if you commit little mistakes in the beginning. It is only through 'error and correction' that you will progress until you become a finished product of the Kendra.
From your letter it seems that either you are angry with others or are disgusted with your own shortcomings. May be, you are perturbed on both counts. This fretting and fuming on one's part, either over the real or imaginary wrongs done to one by others or over one's own failings is a stage that one has to go through while one is striving to become a perfect instrument in the hands of the organization. There are many more further stages that one has to pass through in the long journey. These are, as it were, the land-marks that one is bound to come across on one's charted but difficult route leading to one's final destination. The apparently simplest but the difficult-most task on the part of one who has set on one's purposeful voyage or mission is to hold fast to one's assigned place in the ship, unperturbed by occasional severe rolling and tossing that one may get while passing through occasional stormy weather on the way. No serious traveler or pilgrim ever jumps out.
As I see clearly, you have great potentialities. But you are still too immature to mould yourself and bring out the best in you. No person or no organization can shape you either, if you were to change your course at the turn of every calendar year or with every fit of anger or enthusiasm.
You may have your own reasons to be displeased with those in the midst of whom you are working at present. But on calm thinking you will have to admit that you may hardly get elsewhere a more sympathetic set-up than the one the Vivekananda Kendra provides you.
I trust, you will drive away from your mind all cowardly thoughts of running away from the great work that you have undertaken as a life-mission and that you will become your healthy and cheerful self again. That will also provide opportunities to the organization to fashion you into its finished product-a man with a capital M.
I am planning to make a little diversion and visit Madras for a day or two before resuming my abandoned tour to Assam towards the end of the month. I trust, I shall be fortunate to hear from you at that time that you have already banished from your mind all those weakening thoughts once and for all the time, and you have rededicated yourself to the sacred work.
With regards,
Yours affectionately,
(Eknath Ranade)
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