For us, the most important event during the vacation was the CBSE results for 10^th .

Vacation started off with my daughter asking:

" My teachers think that I will be national topper. Do u think so?"

I wanted to box their ears for making her tense and spoiling her vacation .

Not wanting to give her any hopes , but without dampening her spirits , I said:

"u cant be national topper , but u ll be school topper."

Only 2 days before the results were scheduled to be announced, I remembered what i had told her.

Forget being school topper . . . what if she did nt come anywhere near the top ! !

I started off by priming her that marks weren't what decided the future. . . and anything else that came into my mind . .

When the results were on the internet, away from home, and caught in a traffic block, i told her very assertively :

"dont worry . ..don't worry about anything.. . . Count only the marks that u ve got, not what u ve not got . .."

In the meantime, a 100 friends had called her to tell the results.

At home, 2 hours after the results were released , I downloaded the file and confirmed to her what her friends had said and tried to comfort her :

"don't worry . don't worry . . . "

And with comments like:

"Your English is very good. . Just because CBSE has decided to give you only 90, it does nt make your English bad "

Then she said something that I never expected :

"Mother , I am so happy .! ! I am overwhelmed. . . . . . ! ! "

Suddenly everything changed.

Those words carried a magic which her marks did not.It changed everything.

It closed a chapter of absolute night mare for me after lasting for 2 days .

I wasn't angry with her teachers any more.

The period in time was 1908-09.

Aurobindo Ghose was in Alipore jail for a year. He had written instructions to his lawyer for his trial.

But with an unexpected change, Sri Chittaranjan Das,a friend of Ghose, stood there to defend him in the case. Ghose still thought it necessary to give him instructions. He heard an inner voice:

". . . . . . .put aside those papers. It is not u who will instruct him. I will instruct him."

Ghose stopped speaking another word to his lawyer.

Ghose, soon after coming out of jail, in a public speech, recorded in History as "Uttarpara speech" recalls that he had earlier never heeded this very persuasive voice .

A month before his arrest, he had felt a calling, to put aside all activity, to go into seclusion, and to look into himself.

Fully involved in India's struggle for independence, his work was extremely dear to him and his ego was such, he felt that if he was not there, the work he was doing would suffer or fail and cease.

One month later Ghose was arrested and in confinement.

In the same speech, Ghose admits to having heard that voice again and again:

"I am guiding, therefore fear not. . . . Remember that it is I who am doing this, not u or any others. . . ..what I choose to bring about, no human power can stay."

That when he looked at the Jail that secluded him from men:

". . . . . it was no longer the high walls that secluded me; No, it was Him who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree. . . .but it was not the tree. I knew it was Him, it was Him whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of the cell and again I saw Him. It was Him who was guarding and standing sentry over me. . . . . .Or I lay on the coarse blankets and felt his arms around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. . . .."

Ghose recalled that when he was brought before the magistrate:

"I looked, and it was not the magistrate that I saw. It was Him,. . . . it was Him who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the prosecuting counsel. It was Him who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled,: "Now do you fear ?" He said ," . . . . My protection is still with you and you shall not fear. The case which is brought against you, leave it in my hands. It is not for you. It is not for the trial that I brought you here, but for something else. The case itself is only a means for my work and nothing more . . . ." "

About his life before Alipore Jail, he said on the same occasion:

". . . . I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas,the truth of the Gita. I felt there was a mighty truth somewhere ......"

After Alipore Jail, Ghose re-entered the world "as a new being, a new character, intellect, life , mind," and embarked "upon a new course of action".

He later became Sri Aurobindo, the founder of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry.

This is from the "Uttarpara speech" with minor editing, but without change in the meaning.

The commemorative plate at the Alipore Court reads:

IN THIS ROOM WAS HELD IN 1908-09 THE HISTORIC TRIAL OF FIGHTERS FOR INDIAS EMANCIPATION INCLUDING SRI AUROBINDO THE PROPHET OF LIFE DIVINE "HE WILL BE LOOKED UPON AS THE POET OF PATRIOTISM, THE PROPHET OF NATIONALISM, AND THE LOVER OF HUMANITY. HIS WORDS WILL BE ECHOED AND RE-ECHOED NOT ONLY IN INDIA BUT ACROSS THE DISTANT SEAS AND LANDS" SRI CHITTARANJAN DAS, COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE