Nirodbaran (17 November 1903 – 17 July 2006,

Pondicherry Pondicherry (), now known as Puducherry ( French: Pondichéry ʊdʊˈtʃɛɹi(listen), on-dicherry, is the capital and the most populous city of the Union Territory of Puducherry in India. The city is in the Puducherry district on the sout ...

) or "Nirod" for short, was the personal physician and literary secretary to Sri Aurobindo and scribe for Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol and senior member of the

Sri Aurobindo Ashram The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a spiritual community (ashram) located in Pondicherry, in the Indian territory of Puducherry. The ashram grew out of a small community of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from ...

Life

He graduated from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

with a degree in

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

. He was told about

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo (born Aurobindo Ghose; 15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist. He was also a journalist, editing newspapers such as ''Vande Mataram''. He joined the ...

and The Mother by

Dilip Kumar Roy Dilip Kumar Roy (22 January 1897 – 6 January 1980), also spelt Dilipkumar Roy, was an Indian musician, singer, musicologist, novelist, poet, essayist and yogi. He was the son of Dwijendralal Ray (or Roy). In 1965, the Sangeet Natak Akademi, Ind ...

while in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. In 1930, he visited the Ashram and met the Mother and was overwhelmed and had a spiritual experience. After some vacillation, he finally felt the call and joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1933, leaving behind the prospect of a highly lucrative career. In the Ashram he entered upon a new life and had many experiences and realizations. He returned to the Ashram with the intention of practising

Yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...

, and took up work as the resident doctor. He found to his surprise that

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

was one of the vocations taken up by some disciples. As Sri Aurobindo had already withdrawn from the public life of the ashram, he communicated with and instructed the sadhaks via letters, and Nirodbaran entered into a voluminous correspondence with Sri Aurobindo described as 'epistolary history', alone runs into 1,200 pages who encouraged and guided his attempts at poetry. He published a collection of his poems as ''Blossom of the Sun'' and ''50 poems by Nirodbaran'', which were revised and commented on by Sri Aurobindo. In November 1938 Sri Aurobindo broke his leg and as a physician, Nirodbaran was one of the disciples with medical knowledge who attended him while he recuperated. Nirodbaran was born into an aristocratic and distinguished Zamindar family. Nirodbaran was paternal uncle of the late Major Sukumar Talukdar. Among Nirodbaran other close relatives were Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, Chittaranjan Das, General Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri and Air Chief Marshal Subroto Mukherjee. Later he had published ''Talks with Sri Aurobindo'' (3 volumes), ''Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo'' (2 volumes), and his memoir ''12 years with Sri Aurobindo'', as well as various volumes of poetry and other writings. Nirodbaran left his body on the evening of 17 July 2006 at the Ashram Nursing home in Pondicherry. He went peacefully. He was 102. He was buried at the Ashram's Cazanove Gardens at around 4 in the evening of the next day.
Twelve years with Sri Aurobindo Chapter 1

{{Authority control 1903 births 2006 deaths Sri Aurobindo Alumni of the University of Edinburgh 20th-century translators