Kathamitra Bhaban


  • Kathamrita Bhavan (14, Guruprasad Chowdhury Lane) located in the house of Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta.
  • Mahendranath Gupta, known as Sri ‘M.’ was the chronicler of ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’ (Ramakrishna Kathamitra). 
  • This building started functioning as one of the Centers of Ramakrishna Math in 2017. After remaining for some time under the direct supervision of the headquarters and later under Ramakrishna Math (Shyampukur Bati), it became a full-fledged centre in 2019. 
  • Computer training, coaching and welfare activities such as providing clothes, notebooks and scholarships to students are carried out here. 
  • Religious activities include worship, bhajans, lectures, spiritual retreats and celebration of the birthdays of Sri Ramakrishna, Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta. 
  • In this house, the Holy Mother herself installed Durga Ghat and a photograph of Sri Ramakrishna. She resided here for a month in a corner room on the first floor. 
  • Afterwards, in this same room, M. concluded composing the Ramakrishna Kathamrita. Swamiji and his brother disciples have visited the room on the ground floor quite a few times and held discussions. 










With fellow disciples

Sri M. at an advanced age


  • Sri M. was born in Kolkata on 14 July 1854 and had mystical inclinations from his childhood. He was a brilliant student and gained deep knowledge in English literature, Western philosophy and other subjects. He took up the profession of a teacher and served as a head master in several schools. 
  • Morton Institution was founded by Sri ‘M’ in 1890. He used  to teach English, Economics, History. Swami Yogadananda, Shri Keshub Chandra Sen, Girish Ghosh and others came here to meet Shri 'M'. The premises at 50 Amherst Street is now known as Hindu Academy Primary.
  • He met Sri Ramakrishna at the temple garden of Dakshineswar. At the Master’s instruction, M. practised inner sannyasa, renouncing all ego and sadness, while not being indifferent to his worldly duties and responsibilities.
  • Sri M used to note down Sri Ramakrishna’s words in order to think about them in the intervening period before he met him again. Armed with phenomenal memory and grasp of language, he vividly documented his meetings with Sri Ramakrishna. 
  • After the passing away of Sri Ramakrishna, some of the disciples of the Master asked him to publish the diary, but he was reluctant and did so only after receiving approval from Sri Sarada Devi. This not only made M. immortal but it has also became the source of solace and knowledge for millions of disciples till date. 
  • About the Gospel, Aldous Huxley remarks in his Foreword: “Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity”.
Reference:

https://www.rkmathkathamritabhawan.org/x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirza Ghalib's connections with Kolkata

Image
Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan  (27 December 1797 – 15 February 1869) also known by the pen names of  Ghalib  and  Asad  was an Indian poet who wrote in Urdu and Persian and is renowned for his work Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula .   His works describes the fall of the Mughal empire, the establishment of the British East India Company Rule and the Sepoy mutiny – the political scenario during his lifetime.   Mirza Ghalib was born in Kala Mahal, Agra into a family of Mughals who moved to Samarkand (in modern-day Uzbekistan) after the downfall of the Seljuk kings. At the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh and settled at Delhi.   He visited Kolkata to appeal to the East India Company to restore the full pension in lieu of his family estate annexed by the British.     Ghalib had left for Kolkata on November 1826 and reached the ...
Read more

East Kolkata Wetlands

Image
‘ Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil all year or for varying periods of time during the year’. The East Kolkata Wetlands are an amalgamation of natural and man-made wetlands  lying east of the city of Kolkata.  The wetlands cover 125 square km and include salt marshes, and agricultural fields, sewage farms and settling ponds. The primary utility of the area is to treat Kolkata's sewage. This functionality has earned the place its nickname – ‘ Kidney of Kolkata ’.  The nutrients thereby accumulated in the wastewater are used to sustain fisheries and agricultural lands .  This site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention , also known as "The Convention on Wetlands", an intergovernmental environmental treaty established in 1971 by UNESCO, which was implemented in 1975.  The name East Calcutta Wetlands was coined by late Dhrubajyo...
Read more

Acharaya Girish Chandra Bose and Bangabasi College

Image
Girish Chandra Bose (October 29, 1853 – January 1, 1939) was an Indian educator and botanist who hailed from the village of Berugram in the Burdwan district of India.  After his graduation from Hooghly College in 1876, he was appointed as a lecturer of science at Ravenshaw College , where he worked until 1881. He was offered a state scholarship to study agriculture at the Royal Agricultural College (Cirencester, England). He took life membership of the Royal Agricultural Society in 1882, and in 1883 was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society. He completed his degree at the Royal Agricultural College in 1884.  After visits to Scotland, France and Italy, he returned to India. A Manual of Indian Botany written by Bose, was intended as textbook containing plants of India, in contrast to the European textbooks commonly used at the time. He also started the first agricultural journal in India . The journal, founded in 1885, was published both in English (as Agricultural Gazette...
Read more