Kundan Lal Jalie

 

A certain couple, Mr. and Mrs. Jalie, in London, arrived to take Shri Nathji’s darshan. At the time a flood of telegrams were pouring into the little home at Fairhazel Gardens, London, from all over India.
"What do these telegrams mean?" Mrs. Jalie asked.
"It is the birthday of His Holiness!" Mrs. Chabowski replied.
After the brief function was over, Mrs. Jalie, who was an elderly English lady, came to Shri Nathji and spoke on behalf of her Indian husband, Kundan Lal Jalie.
"Today is a sacred day," she said, "surely something must be granted to us on this day!"
"What do you desire?" Shri Nathji asked.
"I ask nothing for myself, but my husband is very restless. He has not slept for nights. He has suffered reverses in his business. He is a man on the verge of despair. The depression appears incurable. Only you can help him," said Mrs. Jalie.
Shri Nathji called Mr. Jalie close and said to him:
"Mr. Jalie, what a wonderful wife you have got. She asks nothing for herself, but desires peace and prosperity only for you. Some time back you were flourishing in your business, but today you are in despair because of losses. Let me ask you a question: What is the worth of a zero?"
"Nothing," said Mr. Jalie.
"When zero discovered it was nothing, it became like a tear-drop," said Shri Nathji, "it tried to expand itself, it tried to merge several zeroes into itself, but it remained unchanged–still a nothing. How could it increase its worth? It asked itself.
“And it came close to 'one' and said, 'I am nothing.' And  'one' asked zero: ‘Are you calling yourself a zero after establishing a relationship with me, or without establishing any such relationship?’
‘Without a relationship you cannot ask such a question, and with such a relationship you are no longer zero, you have become ‘ten.’
‘You can become one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand and more, but remember, this will be your worth only when you keep me with yourself. If you discard me, you will become zero again.’"
Shri Nathji’s words touched Mr. Jalie to the heart. He went home, content, and for the first time in many days, had a peaceful sleep. It was Shri Nathji's miracle. Shri Nathji had given him something no doctor or a psychologist could have given him.
Without returning to him the wealth he had lost, Shri Nathji returned to him his peace of mind. This was the greatest miracle of Shri Nathji–to give peace in the midst of suffering. Anyone would be at peace if his troubles were removed. But to restore peace to the mind in the adverse conditions that prevailed, was a task only Shri Nathji could accomplish.
Mr. and Mrs. Jalie began telephoning Shri Nathji daily. They would come to him again and again. They would take him for a drive in their car. The longer one’s association with a flower, the greater the fragrance one was apt to get.
"How are you, Mr. Jalie?" Shri Nathji would ask him on the telephone.
"Perfectly all right," he would reply, "perfectly contented!"
And Mrs. Jalie would be ever grateful to Shri Nathji. Their friends and acquaintances, who had seen Mr. Jalie acutely depressed and worried just a few days before, were astonished at this transformation in him. They knew his financial position had not improved, but something had transformed the state of his mind.
“I accept you as Rama and Krishna,” Mr. Jalie would say to Shri Nathji, “from my brain as well as my heart!”
As he would drive Shri Nathji through the city of London in his car, he would say: "Nathji! I am your chauffeur and this is your car. Should you ever wish to tour Europe I shall be at your disposal."

When Matheswariji and Pran NAthji arrived from India, Mr. K.L. Jalie was also there with Shri Nathji and Pran Nath to receive them at the airport. Mr. Jalie  also arranged Shri Nathji’s lecture at at the Hindu Club in London.  In middle of August 1963, when Priya Nath was to go to Harvard, Mateshwari had tears in her eyes when she came to leave Priya Nath at the airport. Mr. Jalie, who was with them at the time along with Pran Nath and Shri Nathji, said:
“Mataji, you should be happy. If my son were going to Harvard I would dance with joy.”
However, for Mateshwari it was a sad moment. She had loved Priya Nath more than anyone else because he had been the youngest in the house.

Mr. Jalie had been given a new life by Shri Nathji. He had been pulled out from the dregs of a depression that would have cost him his life. He had been very loyal and very grateful to Shri Nathji at first, and even served him with all his heart and soul. However with the passage of time, the devotional ardour appeared to have dimmed.
He became more and more interested in money and even began business ventures which had been outside his ken. He was an Optician by profession but he sought to run chartered aeroplane flights which he thought would bring him huge profits. He sought Shri Nathji’s blessings. However, divine blessings could not be had for the asking for the purpose of dubious business ventures. It appeared that Shri Nathji did not listen to his prayers.
The man’s business venture was not successful. The net result was that he stopped visiting Shri Nathji, thereafter, and simply disappeared from the scene. He forgot how Shri Nathji had brought him back to life; it was a debt he could never repay.

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Kundan Lal Jalie was born in 1909. He was a a former Bombay stockbroker who studied economics in London. Based on his personal experiences in finding economical lodgings in London he  opened a Community House for Indians in London in 1937. The house was a hostel and community center for Indians in east London, particularly former sailors, known as "lascars". Moved by the destitution of Bengali sailors in Whitechapel he opened a community centre in a two-room basement. In 1938 Kundan Lal Jalie met and married Mary Ingham (1909–1992), a Lancashire schoolteacher who had retrained as a nurse in Aldgate and spent time in India in the mid-1930s as an associate of Mohandas Gandhi before returning to London. Latter he received donations and managed to buy the disused Gower’s Walk school in 1939 were he reopened in 1940 as the Hindustan Community House. It provided cheap lodgings for about fifty men and offered meals. Indian or English food is available for these men. To enable the fullest use to be made of the House its charges for board of lodging are fixed at the lowest possible figure. The House has been able to accommodate shipwrecked sailors, and Indians stranded in London. Two Indian doctors, who have returned to India, attended the weekly clinic and gave free medical advice. The new surgery has been equipped by an Indian doctor. It is open three nights a week for free medical advice and attention. Two classes in English with an average of fifteen to twenty students were held every week night. So it provided social welfare, offering cheap lodging and meals, the chance to listen to Indian music on a gramophone, to learn English and to be helped to find work. The community house lasted only till about 1943 when bombing damaged the former schoolrooms. The residents were taken to Tilbury and then Coventry to find work, and the Jalies retreated to Kensington and eventually the South Coast. Later he opened shop at Elephant and Castle are in London as an optometrist.