MANMATHNATH GUPTA: A relentless revolutionary — Kamaleshwar Sinha
MANMATHNATH GUPTA saw the little candles burning in the white heat of melting wax through his thick optical lenses, brooded for a while and retired to his bed on Divali night. And then he slept and slept — and slept. Maya, his wife, discovered his death, remembered the massive man's last looming posture on the verandah of their house in New Delhi's Nizamuddin in the soft immensity of a velvety night punctuated by self-consuming luminous sticks. And she began to "do the needful" — informing her two sons and me, among others. She is Ramakrishna's biographer and has the Swami's peace. Her tears flow in as her fine arts flow out.
Manmathnath Gupta was happy to have "breathed and lived upon this gloomy earth", she said on the telephone in a calm voice and measured tone and ordered me not to be driven for the funeral in a hurry. I had a five-generation link with him. My grandfather, a British stooge, hated him when he conversed with my father, his soul-mate, who died young. I was part of his psyche, my son called him Bade Dadaji and my little grandson sat on his lap and played with his spectacles — and vision —in Chandigarh.
Many of our readers will ask: "Keda or kaun Manmathnath?" Briefly, the 91-year-old relentless re