Friday 2 February 2018

Letter to Miss J Macleod


यतो धर्म: ततो जय:

To Miss J. Macleod

In the Suez Canal
Saturday evening, July 15 [1899]

My sweet Yum,

I have found a new name for your – Dear Lady Lakshmi – do you see what it means ?

You are so great and generous that I know you will suck no personal bitter out of what I am going to say – and will realise that whatever feeling it proceed from, it at least breaths nothing but love (and infinite gratitude) for you and S. sara. I am sure you will know without my saying it that to my inner consciousness I have only shown the power to perform one single renunciation – the willingness to become dependent upon others. I am sure – I know – that you two at least have always understood that this was not easy – in itself – to me.

It it should ever happen – as is ofcourse entirely unlikely -that I should die before you and Swami I would b glad that he should hear from you that you understood this, and that I had asked you about it the day we went through the Suez Canal.

But a more practical point calls me to letter-writing.

I am anxious, if I go to America at all, to go first and foremost, on swami's WORK to perform some definite service – if possible a lucrative service, and NOT to go as a visitor to anyone – least of all to you and S. sara.

I should like to see you and Mrs. Bull only after I was embarked on money-earning, if I could. Could I do any small educational service to begin with that would defray board and lodging in a modest way, and yet leave me free to preach my cause? Will you consult Mrs Bull about this, and will you take my request very very seriously and try to arrange something of the sort – when you are settling the question of my movements with the King? Of course we don't know what my fate may be in London and England – but I have more faith in America as a field for money-earning in the ways that I can do best. In a general way I feel volumes of power within me – but when it comes to details, I cannot see how its going to be applied – I see no opening. However that's not my business.

Somehow or other the Mother will let me offer up something to him – won't She?

Isn't that funny? I don't know how you will feel about yourself – or whether you will think I have a right to describe my relationship in these terms – but I came to India with little or no dependence on the personal side of Swami. In that awful time at Almora when I thought he had put me out of his life contemptuously – it still "made no difference" to the essentials. Now – he is the whole thing – for good or for evil – instead of growing less, I have grown infinitely more personal in my love. I am not sure but his least whim is world the whole […] - now. When one turns to him in thought the heart grows free. Blessed be God for making it possible to love like this.

He is not well today. I fear he has pain -but I trust it is for no serious cause. He has scarcely smoked at all since Madras, and he knocks off iced water quite suddenly. These things may account for it.

Life does not seem so simple to night as it did that monsoon night when I kept waking up and thinking "I won't leave the ship without Swami. I'll go down too" ad then falling off to sleep again -

Did I tell you about it?

Poor Mrs. Jacobs was in such terror all night -  and when I once found out my plan of action I was as peaceful as a flower.

"Have you ever been in a monsoon before?" she exclaimed at least in a half vexed voice. "You don't seem at all frightened." "Well" I said "after all, if the worst comes to the worst it won't be so serious!" But she probably thought this affection – and I forgot for the moment that she had two sons with her and a husband in Calcutta.

Dear Yum I have no business to bother you like this.

My love to the Babelet,
Your Own Margot



 
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हमें कर्म की प्रतिष्ठा बढ़ानी होंगी। कर्म देवो भव: यह आज हमारा जीवन-सूत्र बनना चाहिए। - भगिनी निवेदिता {पथ और पाथेय : पृ. क्र.१९ }
Sister Nivedita 150th Birth Anniversary : http://www.sisternivedita.org
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