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Letter from Savitri Devi to Professor A – 17 December 1976

893 words

New Delhi
17 December 1976[1] [1]

Dearest comrade,

Your kind letter has extremely touched me. It is sweet to see that one’s efforts are not useless, and that people who have the same basic convictions as we, are in full agreement with the little we do — the little we can do, in these utterly unfavorable circumstances. I thank you for your moral support.

I also thank you for your present ($200) of which I am sending nearly half to the printer, asking him (after a fourth reminder!) to send me as soon as possible the last printed forms of my book (after due corrections); for all the successive proofs are more or less faulty, one misprint disappears and a new one — or new ones == appear in the same line in the following proofs . . . until I am compelled to ask the man to print after carefully correcting himself, the latest proof. Some mistakes still come out in the finally printed pages — alas! The workers do not know French, nor does the printer. Of course, there was in Calcutta the “Saraswak” Press and, even better, so they say, the “Baptist Mission Press.” I went to both before handing the MS to J. Bose. The charges were so high — several times those of Bose’s small “Temple Press” — that I could not but act as I did. Moreover, the contents of the book were repellent to the person who discussed the terms with me at the “Baptist Mission Press,” and he told me they would not anyhow print a book which was the negation of “the values of Christianity” — so?

I’ll send you first one copy (dedicated) for yourself by airmail as soon as I have one. And two packets of 10 each (by surface mail). They will take 3 or 4 months to reach you, I am afraid. I’ll try to see what are the possibilities of such heavy air mail parcels, if any.

I also — I hope you do not disagree — sent 200 rupees to Mr. Mukherji, my husband, in Calcutta, to help him (who has no job, and is too old to get one) to get himself a few warm clothes, and a suitcase — his having been stolen in the train the last time he came to Delhi to spend a few days with me. (He can’t stay long as I have only one room. I sleep on the floor when he is here, and as I have no extra quilt, it would now be rather trying. It is cold here in winter (“climat continental”), and one of the walls is — as many are here — “like lace,” i.e., full of some 4 or 5 hundred holes all in a row, like this: :.:.:.:. It is impossible to heat it; the heat is wasted.

Mr. Mukherji is one of the Indian high caste minority whole-heartedly of our views, and faithful to them after the disaster. You’ll see in my Souveniers et réflexions passages related to him.

Thanks once more for your kind and touching present.

My best wishes for the Winter Solstice Festival, to yourself and M—.

All my dear books are in France — including so many copies of the cat book (Long-Whiskers) and of Impeachment of Man. A friend of mine — Madame Suzanne Pihot, née Ardault, a University classmate of mine — was keeping them at her residence [address omitted] 55 km. from Paris. She died three years ago. I wrote to her sister — Madame E— G— [address omitted], to ask how I could get them here. I could put them in the empty shelves of my room. But she objected that no company would undertake to send them unless I was “Solvable” — and teachers of the Alliance Française characterized as “locally recruited staff” — not “détaches de l’Enseignement francais” — are looked upon, “en principle” as non-solvables as they can be dismissed at a minute’s notice (as I was in France in 1969 after nine years of service as a maitresse auxiliaire, — nine only, not ten; had they kept me ten years I should have a little “pension d’enseignante” which I have not. I assume that they kept me a year less on account of the trouble I had in 1966 [February] as they came to suspect what I am). I told you about that trouble once, didn’t I?

I still see “blurred” with my operated eye — in spite of spectacles, which make me see a little better. (At night I see lights like this [drawing omitted] instead of like that [drawing omitted], as I do with my other eye.) And I cannot read at all with my magnifying glass added to the new spectacles. I suppose I must have separate “reading glasses” and change wearing each pair — another nuisance — I must see the doctor who operated my eye.

If ever you come to India I’ll be glad to see you again, and make M—’s acquaintance. I dare not invite both of you to share my hovel — which I no longer have the strength to clean properly, and which nobody else is willing to clean (even professionals) because they will not deal with the “cat’s messes.” (I deal with those myself, but still that is what these men say.)

With, again, all my heartiest thanks and my best wishes for the Winter Solstice and the New Year. And with the ritual greeting of the faithful.

Yours sincerely
Savitri Devi Mukherji

Note

[1] [2] From a transcription by the recipient. Original lost.