EPISTLES TO 'DISCIPLES': KAUSHANI CHATTERJEE ... 1

EPISTLES TO 'DISCIPLES': 

KAUSHANI CHATTERJEE ... 1

LETTER 1:

Dear Kaushani,                              15.10.2025 

     It was providential that we momentarily met at the airport which forged this permanent kinship of spirits. You are quite a creative individual, artistic, talented, intelligent and emerging into the sunshine of life where you will characteristically be eminently successful. But success is not all that constitutes what is best in life. While material success is laudable if earned ethically, spiritual success is what makes life truly meaningful. And herein comes to aid our very own spiritual tradition in all its diverse aspects as opposed to the materialistic education that modernity is heir to from the West. This I will instruct you in. But more of that later as the exigencies of examination will be tying you down to time constraint in reading.

With blessings on you and yours and best of effort for your upcoming examination,

Sugata Bose

LETTER 2:

Dear Kaushani,                             21.10 2025

     On this day in 1943 Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had formed 'The Provisional Government of Free India' in Singapore, himself assuming Prime Ministership and adorning Rash Behari Bose with the position of Chief Advisor. Two days later the Provisional Government declared war on England and the U.S.A., having itself sided with the Axis Powers. 21 October, therefore, ought to be our true Independence Day despite Partition, 14 August being Partition Day as Pakistan on the western and eastern wings of India was born that day amidst blood and carnage. On 15 August, 1947 India became a Dominion of the British Crown and not free as such. 26 January, 1950 saw her becoming a Republic with the promulgation of the Constitution. On 15 August, 1947 power had been transferred to the Congress by the Independence of India Act of the British Parliament which has ever since raised suspicions as to whether India's independence is totally free of legal bindings to the British Parliament or not. The Transfer of Power documents may reveal information regarding it but I have not had the occasion to study them neither do I have the legal training to understand such writings. Nehru under Mountbatten's persuasion and probably because of the unpreparedness of economically impoverished India from her erstwhile 22% GDP share of the world in 1800 to less than 2% or so in 1900, courtesy the depredation carried out by the East India Company and the British Crown, opted for being a member of the revised British Commonwealth of Nations. This makes in one sense the President of India at least nominally subservient to the British monarch if not in tangible terms otherwise. But perception matters and it does rob us of some sense of self-respect. But the exigencies of economics are apparently of greater moment than national self-respect. Netaji disappeared mysteriously on 18 August, 1945 and India's hopes of resurrection as a powerful self-reliant country disappeared with it. Upon youths like you, intelligent and educated, aspiring and self-sacrificing for the common weal rests the fate of our beloved motherland which is the abode of the gods and under divine guidance. 

With blessings showering ever and ever on you,

Sugata Bose

LETTER 3: 

Dear Kaushani,                           27.10.2025

    It is not without reason that I have pinned my hopes in you and others of your generation who are few and far between, though. Long back, nearing the end of the nineteenth century, Swamiji had prophesied that his message would be best understood by generations which were then in the womb of unborn time. In Belur Math he had said, "I have merely sung the 'Āgamani'. Five or six generations hence they are coming from far off who shall play with these ideas of mine. You at Belur Math must give them safe, preserved for posterity." He had further said, "A one-winged bird cannot fly." "It was given to Europe to develop man. America developed the woman." To Nivedita he said, "Remember the motto: Woman and the People." When I see you springing in light and joy with the aspirations of youth and the fused harmony of ages of civilisation attempting to surge forth in creative endeavour wrapped in beauty and artistry, I feel happy and hopeful that when our light of day will have dimmed and the sun will have dipped under the horizon, when the twilight of life will have darkened into the night of the af'erlife, then the soul shall satisfied sleep on the lap of the Mother, knowing that India lives on beyond our earthly sojourn to lead countless souls in the ages ahead beyond the dual delusive dream of desire and despair unto the realm of the Real that ever waits to be discovered in the sanctum of the heart. That is the destiny divine for all of us and that is the role assigned by the Mother to Punyabhumi Bhāratvarsha, to lead all to light and love divine. 

I shall write more, now that I know that the words will find a field well aerated for fulfilment in fructification. May your powers manifest, aspirations be fulfilled and life become a joy for yourself and a beacon for others in your ambit!

With everlasting blessings,

Sugata Bose

LETTER 4:

Dear Kaushani,               2.11.2025

       Kaushani, don't you ever feel like talking to me? I can inform and instruct so much more and with so much greater vigour and energy than is possible through merely the written word. Which is why we have the organ of speech and community to communicate with verbally. Literature came far later in human civilisation. At first it was sound which gradually evolved into intelligible sound signals before language developed. Laughter and tears, exultations and frightened shrieks, and body language preceded it all right from the inception of the human species in its most primitive state.

Be at ease. This is only by way of sounding you and eliciting a response. You need not call, not now, nor ever if you deem it unnecessary or needlessly hazardous given the fact that you do not know me at all beyond that fleeting meeting at the New Delhi Airport. Your security is of utmost importance to me too.

With blessings on such a bright one as you are and expecting nothing in return for the service that I am rendering to my Mother India,

I remain,

Yours in Ramakrishna-Vivekananda,

Sugata Bose, a humble devotee of the Divine Duo.

LETTER 5:                                      19.11.2025

Dear Kaushani,

     Rare in human history comes a personage of the luminosity of Swamiji and when such a one arrives, it is bounden on humanity to heed his message and to act accordingly. That our blessed motherland has been yet again blessed by the advent of such a soul, a Rishi of the highest order, and that too in our times, is of greatest benefit to all of us, provided we listen to his teachings and execute the affairs of our life in accordance. 

The central message of Swamiji's life was that we should awaken the power latent in our soul and with it resurrect our civilisation lying in apparent ruins owing to a thousand year slavery to foreign powers and cultures which have subjugated the Hindus and thwarted their spiritual-cultural evolution. To this end he laid down his life untimely by expending his superhuman powers at home and abroad, for Vivekananda, though Indian-born, was a cosmolitan character which no geographical boundary could hope to contain. Swamiji had hoped, nay willed, that the youth of India would dedicate themselves to building a glorious future India, then lying low in colonial fetters. Upon his return from the West to India in 1897, he thundered from Colombo to Almora, awakening the sleeping leviathan that was India and quickening her spirit unto life and action. His lectures are breathtaking, inspirational beyond measure which raised India then and even now remain potent enough to vivify India. But who is India? It is you and others of your ilk who are in the flower of their youth who are going to be the architect of this country, this premier precinct where the Divine dwells as if in permanent habitat. Your dreams, your deeds in consequence and your decisions are going to shape the destiny of future India. As Swamiji says, your ancestors are looking down from their heavenly habitat from across five thousand years with expectant eyes to see their descendants fulfil the destiny of India whose initial impulse they had set rolling ages ago. They had even laid down the blueprint of India's evolution, charted her civilisational course which you must give effect to duly and raise an India far more glorious than she was ever in the past. The youth have the energy, the enterprise, the enthusiasm and the ingenuity to build this future India and upon them Swamiji had pinned his hopes. You, Kaushani, are a significant member of this youth of the country today, loaded as you are with gifts of the mind and heart that few can match, and upon you rests the burden of this motherland of ours---much molested by millenia of invasion and injury---struggling to rise to her feet and occupy her due place in the comity of nations. Your every ounce of effort should be directed to that end---this is my exhortation unto you.

With blessings never ending,

I remain in the twilit consciousness of my life, in the hour before the vesper song makes its tremors in the Ganga and carries my boat to the other shore,

Sugata Bose