Chapter Eleven: Cosmic Happenings
By Tuesday, July 12th, Sri Chinmoy’s grand total stood at 951,635 drawings, poising him on the very threshold of completion. During the next two days, he added several thousand more to this total, bringing it to 965,851. Just over 34,000 birds remained to complete the million.
On Thursday evening, just after nine o’clock, the counters filed upstairs at the artist’s invitation to view his three millionth drawing in progress. It was perhaps no more than a quarter complete and yet its central images had begun to emerge on the page. A grid of some 20,000 boxes, measuring 44½ ” x 28”, sectioned off the page. In the centre of these printed boxes there now rose a dome-shaped mountain. Beneath it, as if taking shelter, was a single row of fuchsia-pink and amethyst-tinted birds each one slightly bent over to fit under the protective covering.
It was, indeed, a great surprise to see this mountain as the main symbol of the drawing and yet, the image held deep resonance for Sri Chinmoy. In Indian tradition, Lord Krishna is known by the epithet “Giridhara”, meaning “he who holds aloft the mountain.” The name refers to a childhood episode where the festivities of the village folk were threatened by Indra, the god of thunder and rain. Krishna, then a young boy, lifted up the nearby mountain with one finger and held it over the heads of the villagers to keep them dry. By extending this historical analogy, we may infer that the artist was offering divine shelter or protection to his three million soul-birds. In actual fact, the shape is as much a mountain as it is a canopy, an umbrella, a marquee – ample and spacious enough to fill most of the drawing, with only thin tent poles connecting it to earth. While most of the mountain is drawn in solid green and blue inks, the surrounding birds are splashed with bright neon colours – yellow, pink and lime.
To have seen the original impulse of this drawing was to gain an idea of the immense creative force of the artist as it was being manifested. We can try to imagine the visionary power that lies behind the creation of any great work of art or any of the magnificent monuments of the world. But it is another thing altogether to be in the presence of this power as it is taking a concrete and tangible form. It is the miraculous transformation of the inner world of dream into the outer world of reality that fills us with feelings of awe and wonder. And so we tried to assimilate this first introduction to the drawing that contained the last of Sri Chinmoy’s three million birds – a precious glimpse through an open doorway to a giant sheet of grid paper on which floated a mountain made of birds.
The next evening – Friday, July 15th – Sri Chinmoy declared that his three million birds were finished. There remained only a few finishing touches to give his final drawing, but he knew that the amount he had already completed would carry him far beyond the final goal. The following morning, he ran two 100-metre races at the Sri Chinmoy Masters Games, a track and field meet conducted by his students for athletes over forty years of age. He also threw shot put, discus and javelin. On returning home later in the day, he applied himself once more to his drawing. At 8:15 it was finished at last. The artist gave it the name “My Three Million God-Manifestation-Songs”.
Later that same night, at an outdoor function with his students, the tired athlete-artist reposed in the cool air under a half-moon. Looking at the moon, we recalled that this day was the 25th anniversary of the moon landing. It was also the night when astronomers the world over watched in fascination as fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hurled towards Jupiter, which they struck the following day, creating astonishing explosive effects.
And one man had finished drawing three million birds.
