Of Another Dimension

  Tarun-da's book Of Another Dimension came as a happy surprise. In spite of having been a teacher for so long in the Ashram School there is no attempt to be didactic. On the contrary, he lives every moment of life depicted in his book. Yet there is a clear message. And the message is clothed in such extraordinary detail that it sounds real and is not a mere intellectual statement. Neither is it beyond our reach, we who go on quoting ceaselessly "the supramental message of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother" without really feeling it. Nor does it ever fall below our dignity. For example, the first story The Heart of Love and the Hand of Might touches that most "reprehensible topic" called Love without being at all sentimental. Yet it is brimming with emotion; in fact, it is all feeling and emotion, as if the events in the story were the consequences of this emotion and not the other way round. It reads like a modern day fairy tale and is the best piece of the book. The memoir of his first meeting with the Mother in 1953 on a rainy Christmas evening, with the small children shivering while the Mother is distributing Christmas gifts, is another superb piece. The art of storytelling has converged with the magic moments of devotion. The Experience is yet another eye-opener to the occult realms that constantly surround us but mostly remain invisible to our physical eyes. Tarun-da seems to have definitely imbibed something from his two grandparents, Dr.Babu (Upendranath Bannerji) and Jaya Devi, who were among the twenty-four disciples present in the Ashram on the Siddhi Day of 24 November 1926.

  My only complaint is that the book is too slim, only 60 pages, out of which again the two travels to Gingee didn't draw my attention. Then it makes the serious mistake of trying to cater to too many tastes — Vision, Travels, Memoirs, Experiences, Short Stories — and gives us a nibble of everything without satisfying the appetite. I would have wished for fewer categories with a more ample sweep, say about 150 pages of Short Stories and Memoirs. The cover page is well designed. We seem to be at least emerging from an era of unimaginative getups. The price is Rs.50 only and has been deliberately kept low to meet the bare cost of printing.

— Raman Reddy

November 2002