PEOPLE

 

Tehmi Masalawalla

Tehmi Masalawalla, known commonly only by her first name, is an octogenarian early resident of the Sri Aurobindo ashram at Pondicherry, where she has worked for many years and continues to work at the Bulletin office. Self-effacing and inconspicuous, she is a poetess writing in English, whose work can rank with the best mystic poetry of all times. She is also remarkable as the first translator into English of Satprem's Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness. This introduction to Tehmi forms the prelude to Anie Nunnally's interview, conducted in December 2000, with the sadhika-poetess .

 

Pandit Manilal Nag

Among the most senior sitar players of India today, Pandit Manilal Nag is touring the U.S. and Canada this Spring and offered a concert for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in L.A. on May 6, 2001. This was the second time he was hosted by and performed for the Center, the first time being in 1998. He has also offered his music at the ashram at Pondicherry. His innate sweetness and simplicity, along with his intuitive brilliance in playing the sitar are evidence of a highly developed inner being, spiritually open to the Mother's influence. He carries this spirituality with him into his everyday life and his enduring relationship with the Center has opened for him a progressive receptivity to Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

 

Tapas Bhatt

Tapas Bhatt is a resident of Auroville, where she works as cultural co-ordinator for the Bharat Nivas. She visited the Center in November 2000 and again in January 2001, while on a cultural exchange program in the U.S.

 

Kiran Mehra

Kiran Mehra is a resident of the Sri Aurobindo ashram, Pondicherry, which she joined while still a child. At present, she is a teacher at the ashram Nursery and an artist. Kiran's paintings are abstract and attempt to express rhythms and textures of a cosmic creative energy, using a variety of materials.

 

Vasanti Jayaswal

Smt. Vasanti Jayaswal has been a long-standing friend of the Center and a prominent teacher of Indian spiritual culture in the Los Angeles area for many years. Through the Spring of 2001, she has been active at the Center, leading studies into several of the goddess hymns of the Rig Veda.

 

Trudy King (Tatyana)

Trudy King, who took the name Tatyana in the last years of her life, was a faithful helper and companion of Jyotipriya, the founder of the Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles. She lived for many years at the Center's premises with Jyoti, and continued to live and work at the Center for several years after Jyotipriya's passing. In the last years of her life, she moved to Oregon, where she assisted a therapist by the name of Greywolf. She left her body on November 18, 2000, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. In this obituary, Julian Lines remembers the dedication with which she lived her life.