The Chosen Mother

“I resolved on My birth. I decided who should be My mother.”

On December 31, 1970, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba announced thus, in answer to a question from the Editor of ‘Nav Kaal’, the Bombay Daily. We were present at a special session of the Academy of Vedic Scholars, founded and guided by Bhagawan. “Any questions?” He asked after the discourses, with which He graciously blessed us. “From when have you shown these signs of divine Power?” the Editor ventured to ask. Prompt came the reply, “From My very birth. Why… from long before. I was at Shirdi as Sai Baba before I incarnated in the Raju family at Puttaparthi… and I was Krishna before that!” The Editor was struck speechless. So, were the others in the Hall – Sri P.K.Sawant, Minister for Home Affairs in the government of Maharashtra (the meeting was held at his official residence in Bombay), Sri Bharde, Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Sri V.S.Page, Chairman of the Maharashtra Legislative Council, and others.

“That is to say…,” the Editor stuttered. “That is to say,” Baba interrupted him, “I resolved on My birth. I decided who should be My mother. Mere humans can only choose the one, who is to be the husband or wife. But, the Mother was chosen by the son in the Rama and Krishna incarnations and then too, as now, the task, for which the birth was decided upon, was the same – the conferring of Prema on all and through the fostering of Prema, the cultivation of Righteous Living among Mankind.”

The Mother Sai Baba decided upon was Eashwaramma, a poor, middle-aged, tender-hearted, pious, illiterate, rural housewife. She had mothered seven children, three of whom had survived into teenage and beyond. This book is a humble tribute to the historic role that Eashwaramma was invested with and the steadfast courage, with which she enacted the role and encountered the challenge.

The Bhagavata Purana and the Ramayana give us glimpses of the onslaughts of grief and joy, hope and despair, anxiety and assurance that the mothers Yashoda and Kaushalya had to bear, when Krishna and Rama revealed their cosmic magnificence and even as boys, chastised man, monster, and the gods. Eashwaramma, like every other Hindu housewife, was conversant with the Telugu ballads, legends, folksongs, and tales that have gathered around Krishna and Rama. Nevertheless, it took years of intimate observation and hundreds of inexplicable incidents and intimations to convince her that this child she had fondled, this boy she had doted on had come to prove the Bhagavata and the Ramayana as true and as valid now, as they were then.

When we review the life of the Mother of the Avatar, we find ourselves progressing through curiosity, expectation, compassion, and wonder and landing in appreciation, admiration, and adoration. Eashwaramma was allotted the well-nigh impossible task of expanding her awareness beyond the ring of hills, beyond the barricade of tradition and taboo, and the wall of custom and caste. Burdened with the prestigious and pardonable pride of the most precious motherhood a woman could aspire for, she could not, in spite of consistent effort, jettison the homage she attracted from all the continents. Even while in this predicament, she, like any other earnest sadhaka anxious to win His Grace, had to trudge
along the inner path that leads from multiplicity to unity, from dispersion to concentration and meditation, from egoism to detachment, from passion to serenity, from unconcern to the love that cares and shares, from Maya to the Master.

And, all this journey while busy as mother and grandmother in the Raju family, as well as in the fast multiplying, multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-credal, global family of Sai. As Mother, her love had to be all-enveloping, all-protective, and unconditional. It was mainly through the teachings and Grace of Baba that she succeeded in this assignment of expanding and deepening her love. Baba, in His elucidation of Dharma, has revealed that woman represents the concretisation of God’s beneficence. She has a natural aptitude for spiritual endeavour, being endowed with fortitude, meekness, and modesty. She is intelligent and vigilant. She has an innate sense of honour and loyalty to virtue. Eashwaramma, as the closest devotee of Sai, was aided by Him to uplift herself to the heights marked out for the ideal woman.

I have herein attempted to picture the Mother, through a few feeble strokes of the brush. I confess my inability to present a fuller portrait, in spite of the twenty-four years I was privileged to spend at Puttaparthi, when she, too, was active in the village and at Prasanthi Nilayam. But, she was too modest and humble, too non-communicative for me to delve into her actions and reactions. She laid bare her heart to me only on the occasions, when she needed some pestering doubt cleared, some knotty tension loosened, some deep apprehension exorcised, some rumour explored. She found in me a person, who understood her predicaments and problems and adored her as the ‘Mother’ chosen by the Lord.

When Pedda Venkappa Raju ended his earthly sojourn, Baba declared that on one person alone is bestowed the rare reputation of being hailed by mankind as the Father of the Avatar, during one long era of human history. This narrative, however short, sparse, and sketchy, of the earthly career of Eashwaramma, hailed as the Mother of the Avatar, will serve to remind us of the extraordinary adventure she was called upon to undertake, the hesitations, hazards, hurdles, and hopes she had to encounter and the Glory of her Victory

Kondama Raju was happy indeed that this ‘grandson’ of his was called Sathya; for, he recollected the announcement in the Bhagavata Purana that, when Narayana was born on earth as Krishna, Brahma, the first of the Trinity, entered the divine presence and extolled the baby as Sathyasya Sathyam, Trisathyam, Sathyatmakam, Sathyaparam, Sathyavratam, Sathyanetram, and Sathyasya Yoni (The Truth of Truths, the Triple Truth, the Core of Truth, the Highest Truth, the Living Truth, the guide into Truth, and the Source of Truth). The grandfather had built for himself a ‘hermitage’, a small thatched hut besides the family home. Eashwaramma had to yield whenever her mother-in-law picked up the beauteous baby and carried him over to Kondama Raju. And Kondama Raju would ‘instal’ him in his puja and meditation room. “He never disturbed me in my prayers. His presence only helped to calm my mind and direct it to God,” the old man told me.

Women from neighbouring homes clustered around the captivating infant, cooing and caressing for hours. Very often, Eashwaramma would forget that some of these women belonged to castes that were ‘taboo’. Indeed, the baby’s hands reached out to these ‘mothers’, as if He wanted to leap into their arms; He would wail piteously, if He was not handed over to them; so, she was forced to suppress her qualms, whenever the child revealed that it did not have any. Dr. Jayalakshmi, serving in the Sathya Sai Hospital, Prasanthi Nilayam since twenty years, writes that she wished to know from Eashwaramma how charming Swami was, when He was a baby in arms. “I took with me a picture of Krishna drawn by a famous artist, depicting Him squatting beside a pot of butter and eating the contents. It was a big picture I had taken down from a calendar, on the wall of my room. Eashwaramma looked on it and said, ‘Yes! His face shone like this, like the Moon. He had the same, black, curly hair, His muscles were strong and well formed. His brows were different from Krishna’s. They met in the centre.’ Pointing to the jewels that Krishna wore, she heaved a sigh, ‘But, we were poor. We could not afford to give Him the jewels this child wears.’”

Subbamma, the wife of the Karnam, would pick the baby up and hug it to her breast. The baby gurgled in delight and she would carry Him off with her in triumph. Only one house lay between the home of the Rajus and that of the Karnam. The Karnam was of the Brahmin caste, to which, as custom dictated, all other castes paid ceremonial obeisance. He was the hereditary village accountant, in charge of land records and the collection of land tax on behalf of government. The Karnam along with the patel (also a Brahmin and hereditary authority over law and order) were the most powerful ‘dignitaries’ of the village. Subbamma was old and had no children of her own, and how could Eashwaramma’s compassionate heart say ‘no’ to her, when she wished to fondle Sathya? “This is a Brahmin child,” other women would twit, seeing the alacrity, with which Sathya let Himself be carried to her house. The more intuitive among the kinsmen, like Kondama Raju inferred that the child preferred the endearments of Subbamma, because theirs was a vegetarian household. Others, less sensitive, could only say that He delighted in crawling upon the wide, cool floors of that spacious, storeyed mansion! The child never burst into such spontaneous hilarity in His own home, as He did at Subbamma’s – and this inevitably led to Eashwaramma being called Devaki and Subbamma as Yashoda by the relatives of the astrologer. Eashwaramma, too, was delighted to see her baby the centre of everyone’s love and attention as He grew sweeter with every passing day.

There is an old devotee known as Shirdi Ma, for she was at Shirdi when Sai Baba was alive. She’s called Peddabottu, too, because of the impressive kumkum dot she wears on her brow. Shirdi Ma, in her reminiscence, says that she was always urging Eashwaramma to tell her a few miracles of Swami, when He was a child. Eashwaramma would parry the questions most of the time, saying that she never saw any or could not remember. But, one day, she revealed a profoundly moving experience, which she had kept secret for over thirty years, having been told not to speak of it.

“Swami was nine months old at the time,” Eashwaramma said, “I can remember the whole incident fresh and clear. I had just bathed and dressed Him, and applied on His eyes cooling collyrium – I applied vibhuti from the Shiva temple and a dot of kumkum from the Sathyamma temple on His brow. I put Him in the cradle, gave it a swing, and turned to the hearth, where the milk had come to the boil. Suddenly, I heard Him cry. I was surprised for, believe me, He had never cried, since birth, for any reason, hunger, or pain, or discomfort. I picked Him up and placed Him on my lap, He stopped the wail. I saw a halo of brilliant light all around Him, a circle of radiance surrounding Him. But, the light did not hurt me, it was so cool, though so bright and near, I sat still, lost in delight. It was there a long time, before it faded slowly away. I closed my eyes and probably lost awareness of everything around, until my mother-in-law came to me and I awoke. The child was apparently asleep. She asked me what had happened and I told her about the halo that I could see, even then, in clear outline. She put her finger on her lips and said, ‘Don’t tell anyone of this. They wouldn’t understand. They would spread all kinds of tales.’ I think she told grandfather, for he asked me about it later.”

Sathya, clothed in signs and wonders, performed the preliminary exercises of crawling on hands and knees, of hobbling uncertainly from one pair of outstretched elderly hands to another, of stepping over doorsills, of running few paces, of uttering the first, monosyllabic endearments.

His first, uncertain lisps seemed far sweeter to those, who heard them, than that of their own children.

Peddabottu was able to persuade Eashwaramma to relate a few tales of Swami’s childhood. One day, the two of them were busy at an indoor game of squares with seashells as pawns. Eashwaramma said, “You extol Him as Narayana and as Krishna. But, I found Him a special Krishna, who gave me a special kind of worry, for He was never like other boys. He never asked for any particular food or clothes. A bundle of clothes would be brought from Hindupur or Anantapur and one of the grown-ups, father or grandfather, would call the boys in the family, asking each one to choose for himself. But, Sathya always sat aloof, until the others had made their choice and then, He would take whatever was left behind, rejected by the others. He never seemed to have any desire or wish of His own, but His face would light up with a beam, when He saw the other children happy. When we asked Him what He wanted, a smile was the only reply. I would hug Him close and try to get Him to confide His wish to me. ‘Sathyam, tell me what You want. I will give it to You,’ I would say. ‘I do not need anything,’ was His only answer. ‘Whatever you give Me, I will accept. That is enough for Me. I will not choose.’” His utter ‘unconcernedness’ grieved her. “If only He would be choosier, more assertive,” she would pine, while the elders would comfort her with the assurance that such indifference would not last long!

Another grouse Eashwaramma had was the solemnity Sathya assumed, when He was inside the house. He was all laughter and fun outside the house, hopping, skipping, and jumping with the other children, playing on the bed of the Chitravati and singing bhajans for hours with them. But, when He was coaxed by her to get home, He would make Himself grave and heavy. “This was something I could not understand,” Eashwaramma said, “How were we different? What made Him so deeply sober and serious? I began at last to wonder, whether the label ‘Brahmagnyani’ the elders had stuck on him and which I had thought a mockery, was indeed a tribute after all.”

“Sathya had begun to attract the attention and admiration of everyone in the village and I began to fear the evil eye of envy and hatred. I tried to counteract it with the usual, symbolic rites of weeping, washing, and burning away the evil from Him. But, when He saw me busy at this, He would run off, saying, ‘What can anyone’s eyes do to Me?’” The reply, audacious and authoritative, evokes once again the age-old words of Krishna to His foster mother Yashoda. When reprimanded for putting a little sand into His mouth, the divine Child replied, “Do not believe mistakenly that I am a mere child, mischievous and mad!” When a stranger asked Krishna His name, He answered, “Which of My many names shall I tell you?” Sathya reminded Eashwaramma of Krishna many times a day, and she longed for Him to stay in this role all days and nights

Sathya, it was obvious, loved being outdoors, gazing at the hills, the stars, and the sky in silent happiness. But, as He grew older, playing out on the streets with other children, His predilections became a real problem, for in between hide and seek and blind man’s buff, every passing cow and buffalo had to receive a loving pat from His warm hand. The warning that they were vicious made no impression on Him. He would wail, when pulled away and had to be hauled and deposited before His mother.

The village urchins were a mischievous lot then, as now. They never can tolerate the extraordinary, whether it be in personal cleanliness, or clean speech and behaviour. Their favourite strategy to prune the unusual down to the common level is to tease and ridicule. Swinging a hen held upside down, kicking a dog to make it squeal, or twisting the tail of a bullock – they found these acts were certain to yield them the fun of making Sathya miserable. Eashwaramma threatened to spank them, but this only added to the entertainment. Nor was Sathya happy at the thought of their being punished. He never complained about what they did to Him, or revealed names. He seemed totally devoid of vengeance, or haste, or even dislike.

It became clear before long to Eashwaramma that Sathya was outstandingly bright. His arguments were invincible and His process of reasoning faster and straighter than that of any adult. His feelings delved deeper and lasted longer. His words were more soft and sweet than those of any child she knew. No wonder, He was soon named the ‘guru’ by the village. And, Eashwaramma was automatically identified as the mother of the guru, as someone special, and the women would bow reverently and touch her feet, when they chanced to meet her at the well, or at the temples of Sathyabhama or Gopalakrishna, Shiva or Hanuman.

Putting a child in the primary school was more out of a desire to keep Him safe, when outside the home, than out of eagerness to make Him learn. But, Sathya was creating problems. He gave away rugs and blankets to His classmates, who sat with chattering teeth when the days grew cold. Every hungry chum was brought home by Sathya, to be fed on milk and curd and cookies.

All too soon, Sathya was seven years old, ready for the elementary school at Bukkapatnam, three miles away. Eashwaramma was surprised, when the year rolled quickly by. It was only last Dasara it seemed, that He was being rocked in His cradle. Now, she had to dress Him in a neat, white shirt and knickers, apply vibhuti on His broad forehead with the deep-red kumkum dot between the thick eyebrows, pack His mid-day meal of sankati (rice and ragi flour, boiled together) and chutney, and watch Him sling the bag over His shoulder, calling out, “Ma, I’m off!” while she stood tearfully at the door.

A trek to Bukkapatnam meant long hours away from home. Sathya went to School at about half past eight in the morning, after a hurried breakfast and reached home only just before sunset. His cousins, who went to school with Him, resented His immaculate cleanliness; He stood high above the herd. They waited, until they crossed the borders of the village. Then, they fell on Him, while wading through the river-bed, and dragged Sathya along by the feet, until the clothes Eashwaramma had carefully washed and pressed were more crumpled and sodden than their own. Eashwaramma could never get Sathya to tell on the culprits. When dusk fell, Sathya sat in the light of oil lamps, flickering in the niches on the walls, narrating tales of school and the journey to and fro. Unlike other boys, however, He seldom spoke of the lessons He was taught. He spoke, instead, of what He taught the boys of His class and, amazingly, even the teachers, who ventured to teach Him. An excited bunch of children related the ‘lesson’ that was taught by Him to teacher Kondappa.

Kondappa was dictating notes, which every pupil had to take down in his exercise book; he found that Sathyanarayana Raju was the only boy, who did not. Naturally, he was incensed; he felt insulted. He asked Sathya, why He was refusing to follow the others. The reply he got was that the boy did not feel any need! He could answer questions on the subject, to which the notes were related. That was great provocation, Kondappa confessed to me, years later, when I met him at Anantapur. He narrated the events that ensued – the chair that stuck to him, the humiliation and hullabaloo. I had occasion to hear the story from Swami Himself and I amassed enough courage to tell Him that, being a teacher myself, I could not quite appreciate the tragedy that happened to the poor teacher. Baba said that, He had no intention to insult or injure. “It just happened, for the time had come to make a louder announcement that I was not just a human child.”

But, the story disturbed Eashwaramma and the Ratnakaram family very much.

Eashwaramma dragged Sathya out of the grain store, where He was, while His mischief was being related. “You will be forced to leave this school and You won’t be able to join any other,” she warned. “You will grow into a good-for-nothing clod, fit only to drive cattle!” She was filled with fear that the impertinence of her son would bring down the wrath of the people, among whom they lived. But, soon she heard that not only His school-mates, but even the teachers, including Kondappa, were lionising Him, in spite of, or perhaps precisely because of these very incidents. Kondappa even wove a garland of verses, adoring Sathya as a divine child and had it printed for distribution.

Then came the good news that Sathya was declared the best student at the examination, held at Penukonda for the children of the Taluk. The people of Bukkapatnam arranged a procession through the town, in honour of the prodigy. Eashwaramma was proud and delighted, but also a little afraid of the envy of others. When Sathya was brought home, she swung coconuts all around Him and broke them, and waved burning camphor before Him to avert the ‘evil eye’

Sathya never had a moment’s rest, at home or at school. There was always a cluster of boys at His heels, wherever He roamed, in the hills and valleys, or on the vast sand bed of Chitravati. When the children returned home and dispersed, each household was thrilled to hear the tales they told. One day, the story was of a big piece of candy that each of them had got from Sathya. On another day, He had transformed a dozen frogs into swallows that flew away from the basket, into which they had dropped them. One day, He taught them a song in praise of Panduranga, the deity at Pandharpur in Maharashtra state, and encouraged them to dance to the tune. Another day, He spoke of the underlings of heaven, who were there to obey His summons and carry out His orders.

The friends and neighbours of the Ratnakaram Rajus predicted that Sathya would be rusticated from school. The incident of the ‘chair’ was undoubtedly very ominous. When I heard of this for the first time, I was not surprised, for the Avatar cannot tolerate meaningless restrictions and tinsel teachings. It knows no horizon circumscribing it. The Gospel of Thomas has this to say of Jesus at School. “But, Jesus looked upon Zacchaeus the teacher and saith unto him, ‘Thou knowest not the Alpha, according to its nature. How canst thou teach others the Beta, thou hypocrite? First, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha and then, will we believe thee concerning the Beta.’ Then, began He to confound the mouth of the teacher, concerning the first letter and he could not prevail to answer Him.” And Jesus elaborated the mystery, which the letter ‘A’ enfolds. (The Lord has declared in the Bhagavad Gita that He is the letter A of the alphabet.) He confounds Zacchaeus as Sathya often did, telling him, “Hear! O, Teacher! The ordinance of the first letter and pay heed to this, how that it hath lines and a middle mark, common to both, going apart, coming together, raised upon high, dancing, of three signs, like in kind, balanced, equal in measure.” Sathya spoke more softly and less enigmatically, and so, the Bukkapatnam teacher responded more reverentially.

Puttaparthi was Gokulam, for Sathya was there. The old name of the village had been Gollapalli, the Cowherd Hamlet. “It is this name that must have drawn Krishna to be born again on Earth. How else can I explain the strange things the boy did?” Eashwaramma asked me and related a story of His early years.

“It was one evening, during the Uttara monsoon. The sky grew dark and menacing.Venkappa was building a house, then and there was a large kiln of wet brick, waiting to be baked. The logs of wood were readied, but the fire could be lit only the next morning, for the day was inauspicious. Now, there would be a downpour and all those bricks reduced to a huge, misshapen mound of clay.

Something had to be done quickly. Luckily, there was a helpful neighbour. Cover the bricks with bundles of dry sugar cane leaves, he told Venkappa. Where were we to get that? He suggested a friend of his living on the eastern bank of the Chitravati, who could be persuaded to give these leaves. A long line of men, women, and children ran over the sands in desperate hurry. Swami, too, joined, the last in the line of volunteers. But, when He got to the middle of the river bed, He suddenly called out for everyone to stop. ‘Venkappa!’ He said. ‘Vanaradu!’ ‘The rains will not come.

And the clouds scattered, the day brightened, the threat was over! A few quiet words, a small palm silhouetted against the dark sky for a moment and up above, in far space, the wind, the clouds, and the rain obeyed! Everyone turned back home with no bundle of leaves, for they had the young Lord of the Elements in their midst.”

Eashwaramma concluded her story triumphantly and turned to watch my face with eager satisfaction. I did not disappoint her. “This Krishna has saved this Gokulam by lifting a single finger!” I said.

Sathya became the hero, who was admired and feared, loved (and suspected). Eashwaramma, too, was caught in the whirlpool of affection and amazement, suspense and caution. Often, she spent her days in prayer, seeking divine intervention to turn Sathya into just a normal, Puttaparthi boy, with perhaps a wee bit more intelligence and sense of direction. She could see in Him the potentials of a poet, a singer, a dancer, and a playwright, a director. She found that Sathya was attracting the ‘evil eye’, for she attributed all illness of His to His ability to demonstrate the impossible as possible. She protested vehemently, when her daughters spread the news that Sathya could dance even better, the very intricate item a child-artiste had demonstrated, during a drama performed in Bukkapatnam. But, she herself was so lost in Sathya’s skill that she wept aloud, witnessing His being ‘tortured’ in a play He took part in

The father simmered in silent helplessness over this amazing child of his, but it was Eashwaramma, who had to bear the brunt of Sathya’s vagaries. His crusading spirit was ever alert. He would not let any ill alone. The nine-year old Sathya was daring enough to write audacious limericks and lilts against – believe it or not? – the Hitlerian moustache, paraded by none other than the Karnam, the husband of His ‘foster mother’, Subbamma. Sathya taught His friends a parody to be sung before the man’s house, until that dignitary was forced to wipe the anaemic stubble off his face. Poor Eashwaramma had no need to explain to Subbamma that the boy was incorrigible, she transferred the task of putting some worldly wisdom in the boy’s head to Subbamma herself. But, Subbamma was only too glad that the
guru was busy teaching. She laughed the panic away from the head of Eashwaramma. “Let Him be what He is. He knows what is best!” she advised.

Very soon, Eashwaramma had to reprimand Sathya for hurting, through His poetic pricks, the sensitive skin of the seigniors of the village. Sathya made up a ten-line lampoon about the ingratitude meted out to the men, who toil in sun and rain to grow rice for the rich to revel in conspicuous luxury. When the lines were sung by the urchins, as they followed the cattle to the pastures, tempers were frayed and inquiries were set on foot. The elders wondered how the Ratnakara could host this spark of revolution in His little head. They suspected that some sinister force was working through Him; Subbamma asked Him to disclose who had composed the lines. They spoke of the iniquities of the caste system, as it had degenerated into a medium of agony for the toilers. Sathya however could not be cajoled into silence. He had come to condemn and correct. It was His world and He stuck to His rights. Eashwaramma and Subbamma had to wring their hands and wish Him well.

Another day, about noon, a liveried chauffeur set all the birds of the village screaming; he came striding along the crooked roads, in search of the ‘wonder boy’, who created Vibhuti. The boy was discovered at last, squatting on a veranda, relating stories to a band of chums. The children scuttled to save their skins, but Sathya stood His ground. The man wanted from Sathya a few grains of the miraculous ash, to cure the engine of his jeep, stranded on the road along the eastern bank of the river, leading to Anantapur Town from the jungles amidst the mountains. “The Saheb is waiting; he is very angry.” Sathya was led by the hefty intruder to the incapacitated vehicle. A few boys followed them. He saw the Saheb seated inside, triumphantly stroking the ears of a dead tiger. Sathya started with a “fie”. “This tiger did no harm to you. Why have you sought it out in the jungle, where it was bringing up three tender cubs and shot it dead? I willed the jeep to stop. Go back and collect the orphans, and present them to a zoo. And do not shoot and kill anymore, for sheer pleasure and pride. Take a camera instead; that will make you a greater hero. Go!” And, the engine purred and the driver took the vehicle back. Reprimanding a white man, an Englishman with a topee and gun, stopping his jeep and denying him what he asked – the father nearly fainted. He had frightening visions of policemen and lock-ups.

Sathya’s elder brother, Seshama Raju was the brain of the family. He had jogged triumphantly through all his exams, to earn the degree of Vidwan in Telugu language and literature. But, although the saint-poets of classical Telugu literature have written ecstatically on ‘Leela divine’, when it came to interpreting Sathya’s behaviour, Seshama Raju could only agree with his father’s conclusion that he was ‘possessed’ by a clever spirit from the nether worlds! In the thirties and forties of this century, pedagogy had, as the only instrument of instruction, the cane and the child psychology they knew imparted but one lesson, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” Seshama Raju, who had finished a course in teacher-training and was appointed at the High School at Uravakonda, Serpent Hill, sixty miles away, took Sathya along with him, determined to extinguish the freaks of fantasy that marked Him out as
peculiarly problematic.

Questions

1. Which picture did Dr.Jayalakshmi show to Eashwaramma and ask about Swami’s childhood
miracles?

2. When it was about to rain on Venkappa’s under-construction house, what did Swami say?

Eashwaramma grieved at the thought of separation; she was afraid of the undeserved ridicule Sathya was sure to earn, when his own brother believed that he was indulging in involuntary trickery under the influence of evil spirits. But, there was no high school within a radius of twenty miles and Sathya was so bright that keeping Him away from further education seemed a sacrilege. To be able to go to Uravakonda and live under the care of His brother was the best possible thing for Him, she knew – as she prayed to the divine to smoothen and sweeten His days at the ‘Serpent Hill’. Pedda Venkappa Raju, however, had little sympathy to spare. He was aghast at the strange doings of his son. His mind was soaked in the folk culture that attributed every deviation from the normal to the machination of rivals, the rites of witches, or the designs of the devil. Eashwaramma had to sigh and cry alone; and it must be added, now and then, to exult and enthuse.

For, stories began to seep through the intervening miles of the marvels Sathya had authored, of the cures He had effected, of the problems He had solved, as well as of the hardships He had to undergo, the head loads of fuel He had to carry home from the jungle.

During Sathya’s visit to Puttaparthi, while He was at Uravakonda, Eashwaramma gave Him the invigorating ‘oil bath’, that is to say, smearing ‘til’ oil on the head, trunk, and limbs, massaging the muscles to make them tougher and more malleable and washing the oil off with a forceful douche of hot water and soap-nut solution. She observed one day, on Sathya’s left shoulder, a broadish length of blackened, thickened skin. She found that Sathya did not complain of pain, when the patch was touched or even pressed. Sathya laughed, when she wanted to know how He had acquired that mark, but when Eashwaramma insisted, He told her that perhaps the skin was rendered so, as the result of His carrying water pots hung on both ends of a pole, borne on His shoulder. There was only one well at Uravakonda, wherein the water was potable; all the others yielded brackish stuff. And that one well was nearly a kilometre away. So, He had to walk to and fro about six times, thrice each in the morning and in the evening, in order to quench the thirst of the family of the brother, with whom He stayed as well as the families of two neighbours, who appealed for help. Eashwaramma said, “You must come away from there. They are exploiting Your goodness and Your desire to serve. Why should they depend on You for water?” Baba intervened with the answer, “I felt it as My duty. Amma! How long can the children survive on the brackish poison? I carry the water of life from that distance, gladly, Mother. I have come to do this service.” That made Eashwaramma stop arguments and keep silent.

The Dawn Of Declaration

The 11th day of March, 1940 dawned at Puttaparthi. The Sun peeped into the valley from atop the hills; and a messenger peeped into the Raju home from Uravakonda. There was a letter from Seshama Raju to his father. Eashwaramma watched her husband’s face as he read it. She saw the tears trickle down. “It’s Sathya,” he said, “but, it’s nothing serious. Only a scorpion… It happened three days ago, at dusk. And, listen! Seshama writes that Sathya was in deep sleep for a whole day after, but had no pain!” No one is allowed to sleep after a sting, for fear of heightening the effect of the poison. So, Eashwaramma was scared.

Eashwaramma was luckily unaware of how disastrous a scorpion sting could be, when it happened at Uravakonda of all places. It was named Serpent Hill, because on the crest of the hill was a tall rock, ending in a hood that threatened to strike the town. Spending their days in the shadow of that rock, people believed that scorpions and snakes strike only to kill in the area, commanded by the petrified ‘Uraga’ (Cobra). Venkappa Raju, however, knew that stings there had to be fatal. So, he got ready to leave at once for the fateful spot.

Within hours, however, there came another messenger with a second letter, which announced that Sathya had recovered consciousness, though still in rather bad shape. He would not eat or drink. He seemed unaware of what was happening around Him. He seemed to be somewhere else, conversing with invisible Beings. Eashwaramma could not bear to hear more. She begged her husband to take her along and she muttered desperate prayers all the way. She asked for but one boon, that Sathya be normal. She no longer wanted Him to be unique, or even cleverer than the rest.

Those were long days and nights of anxiety for Eashwaramma. None had the balm that could calm her. Seshama Raju could only wring his hands in despair. He had exhausted all the remedies he knew. He had brought in astrologers, priests, palmists, homeopaths, naturopaths, and no less a dignitary than the District Medical Officer. But, all their efforts proved futile, while Sathya sat calm and indifferent as the centre of the whirlpool of worry.

Everyone was at their ‘wits’ end, when Eashwaramma finally insisted that He be brought back to Puttaparthi. The company of His little brother, six years old now and anxious to begin playing with the famous Sathya, would, she hoped, bring Him back to normalcy. And home they returned. But, the very boys once led by Sathya through the streets of many a village, singing and dancing the glory of God, were now confronted with a forbidding flash in the eye and a faraway tune on the tongue.

Grandfather Kondama Raju quoted stories from the Puranas and from the Yoga Vashishta to quell the agitation of the parents. The Yoga Vashishta, the famous Sanskrit text, relates that Rama passed through a similar state of inner indolence at about the same age: “His body grew emaciated, His mind flirted from one idea to another, He sat silent like a painting on the wall,” Kondama Raju recited the first two lines of the verse, describing Rama’s condition as depicted in the epic.

Kim Sampada, Kim Vipada, Kim Gehena, Kim Ingitaih (What is wealth? What is calamity? What is home? What is desire?)

Sarvam Eva Asad Ityuktwa Tushnim Ekopatishthate (All are only unreal; thus saying, silent and alone He sat)

Kondama Raju, always mystically inclined, found comfort in these words, but it could not satisfy others. Pedda Venkappa Raju was accused of being callous and insensitive by groups that had gathered around the ‘dumb-struck’ boy. And poor Eashwaramma could not bear the insinuations about the origin of His illness and the dire predictions of its future course. She shut herself in a room away from everyone, praying in despair to the divine.

Sathya, though indifferent to the upsets He was causing, was not unaware of them. He evinced deep pity at times and derisive tolerance. His face would light up, when someone among the people around Him claimed ability to cure Him. And periodically, the guru in Him blossomed into poetic exhortations, urging everyone to resist the craving for exploitation and cultivate self-restraint and self-respect. These outpourings were signs of the victory of His will over the predominantly apathetic state of His mind. His sisters, who were always beside Him, anxiously awaiting a chance to offer Him something to eat or drink, noted down these poetic teachings, but Eashwaramma discouraged them, afraid of the lines reaching elders and inflaming the exploiters, who would undoubtedly recognise themselves as the boy’s target.

But, the time for patience ran out soon. Seshama Raju sent a message that Sathya had already been too long absent from school. Anxiety fogged the faces of his father and uncle and the ‘wise men’ of the village. Others advised change of place. The intention of those, who advised patience and pilgrimage, penance and propitiation was understandably suspect, being prompted by the envy or hatred of those, who would like to see the Raju family harried by a handicapped freak. A family conclave decided that Sathya was possessed by a spirit, for His horoscope revealed this to an aged pundit at Kadiri. Sathya was to be taken to an exorcist with quite a reputation, at Brahmanapalli, a village near Kadiri. Kondama Raju was the only one, who demurred, advising a longer period of wait; and of course, nobody bothered to ask the opinion of the poor mother, torn between hope and despair.

The exorcist, on hearing that Sathya was to be brought to him, evinced pugnacious bravado. He could invoke the goddesses Chandi, Chamundi, Simhi, and Varahi (to ferret out the spirit and release the boy from its fell hold). No spirit, Hindu or Muslim, bestial or demonic could face the ferocity of his mantras, he promised. Eashwaramma and the two sisters accompanied Sathya and Venkappa Raju. As they jogged along in the bullock cart, the father tried to reassure the women, frightened at the fate that awaited Sathya at the other end. “This fellow will perform a puja for his Chandi and Chamundi and perhaps, sacrifice a fowl. He will apply the blood as a dot on the boy’s forehead and that will be the end of this distressing story,” he said confidently, refusing to allow Sathya to shout him down, when the fowl was mentioned.

The man at Brahmanapalli was a terror, with his tangled hair and grating voice. His eyes burnt like live embers. A pair of heavy iron tongs was held in his hand and he struck the ground with it each time he roared a mantra against the ‘spirit’. The force of that stroke was terrific and the vibrations it set up were so horrendous that the Puttaparthi family shuddered, appalled at the ordeal that Sathya had obviously to undergo at the hands of such a monster. But, there was not a ripple or winkle of fear on Sathya’s face. His placidity gradually imbued them with courage. They decided to stay on, until the man declared that Sathya was rid of the spirit and was alone with Himself.

Nine years later, when I was at Puttaparthi, pundit Rama Sarma from Venkatagiri was given permission by Swami to recite a ‘Burra Katha’, a poetic narration of the story of Bala Sai (of Sai as child and boy) before a small group of devotees. As the recital approached Brahmanapalli and was about to describe the dreadful scene, Swami asked Sarma to skip those verses as it would be too painful to hear. I took courage into my hands to ask Him, “Swami, then why did You go through that torture?” “I willed that people should know that I remain unaffected by what happens to this body. I have come to remind mankind of this truth they have ignored; how can they have faith, unless I act as they should?” was Swami’s answer.

The exorcist began lashing Sathya to beat the spirit out of the boy. The parents couldn’t stand it; Eashwaramma begged him to stop, but he refused to halt the ‘treatment’ halfway through. “You may take him, but the spirit (pichchi) in him is mine. Take what belongs to you, after giving me what belongs to me!” he yelled. The ‘treatment’ included shaving Sathya’s scalp clean and incising a deep cross into it. Lemon juice was squeezed into the wound and pots of chilled water poured over His head. Then, a paste that would broil the victim in excruciating pain was applied to His eyes. Sathya’s eyes became bloodshot, His face swelled with pain; through it all, He remained silent and almost unaware of the fuss going on around Him. Eashwaramma could bear it no longer. Here was her son with a strayed
body, damaged eyes, and wounds with burning pain, and, even then, the wizard did not guarantee that the boy would be normal. It seemed far better to put up with the ghost in Him, for it limited itself to producing alternate bouts of tears and laughter, Sanskrit and Telugu wisdom and satire. After desperate pleading, Sathya was finally removed from the man’s clutches. He allowed them to take Him home on one condition; He was to be brought back within six months…or else. Luckily, he did not spell out what that last threat boded. He insisted, too, that Venkamma, Sathya’s elder sister was not to be brought along again. She had been continually foiling the witch-doctor’s efforts, by secretly applying an ointment to Sathya’s eyes under her brother’s whispered instructions.

At Puttaparthi, Eashwaramma tried reasoning with the son, telling Him of the fear and suspicion He had aroused. “Everyone is worried, because You are ill. When You are quiet, that man at Brahmanapalli tells us You have ‘rock’ fever. When You walk a little fast, he says it is ‘stag’ fever. It’s absurd. I know You don’t have ‘fever’. When You begin talking like a pundit, people say You are possessed and when You find fault with Your uncle and cousins, they say that it cannot be You that is talking. When You make statements, like asking Venkamma to look up at night and see the Devatas (gods) passing across, they say You are mad. Oh, Sathya! Be a Raju child, be ordinary. Return to Your brother and go back to school. Don’t behave like a guru, a Brahmagnyani. People call You so, only to ridicule You.” But, her plea did not help. Sathya stuck stoutly to His reality.

Prescriptions galore continued to be offered by well-wishers. Eashwaramma listened to them with deep hope. One such suggestion was to take Him to Gorantla, to a physician there, who was certain he could rid the boy of His hallucinations. A cart packed with people with Sathya and His mother in their midst was on its way, when suddenly the bullocks stood stiff and still. When everyone gave up pushing and prodding, the cart turned back towards Puttaparthi.

Questions

1.How did Kondama Raju try to quell the agitation of the parents after Sathya’s scorpion sting?

2. When Kasturi asked why Swami willed to undergo the Brahmanapalli episode, what did He
reply?

3. What happened when Swami was being taken to a physician at Gorantla?

Hope flared up again, when an erudite lawyer, Krishnamachari from Penukonda, the ‘metropolis’ of the Taluk, came to see Sathya. His forefathers were honoured residents of the village and he had spent his childhood there. Now, having heard of the super-psychic words and behaviour of Sathyanarayana Raju, he had come to Puttaparthi to see things for himself. He came, he saw, and he, the learned B.A., B.L., pronounced judgement. Sathya and His father were with him and Eashwaramma with her daughters behind the door, with their ears glued to wood. “A demon has entered this boy, an extraordinarily powerful one,” was the profound conclusion. “Human exorcists cannot help and even ordinary Gods will fail. It is God Narasimha (the divine incarnation as Man-Lion) alone, who has the power to frighten the demon and force him to free Sathya. Take him to Ghatikachalam to the big Narasimha Temple there, where hundred such cases have been cured by His Grace.” Venkappa welcomed the idea, for he knew all about Narasimha, having read about this incarnation. He had gone on pilgrimage to other Narasimha shrines. He had seen the fury of Narasimha at many a village play. He was about to write down directions to get there, when Sathya held his hand, “Krishnamacharigaru! This is funny, the advice you give! Who do you think is there in the Ghatikachalam temple? I, and you want these people to take Me to Me?”

Eashwaramma felt a surge of elation. But, it was only a flash amidst the clouds. Sathya continued as before with His unpredictable moods. Life dragged on, drowsily most times, but dramatically now and then. Then came the climax. Venkappa brought it on. He was upset at the rude reply his son had given the big man from Penukonda. Watching the crowds flock around Sathya, he lost his temper. “How dare this brat, running around these streets, claim that he is Narasimha? What impertinence! I cannot put up with this anymore!” he exploded. “What is that fellow doing now, on his grandfather’s veanda with a crowd?” He grabbed a formidable bamboo staff. Seldom had his wife seen such superlative anger on his face. She screamed.

Someone in the crowd turned to Venkappa, “Sathya gets sugar candy in his palm from nowhere, when he waves his hand. He gets flowers that are already strung. Look! He gave me these. Everyone got something.” Venkappa was outraged. “Sugar! Flowers! The cheat! Everything, a trick,” he yelled. “This must be the last!” and he pushed himself towards the boy. Eashwaramma stood alone on the edge of the crowd. She closed her eyes tight, not to see the stick coming down on Sathya’s head. She prayed to the village gods.

Venkappa reached Sathya, “Stop this stupid drama. Tell me, are you a ghost, or a rogue, or a madcap? Are you a God? Are you Narasimha or Narayana?” “I AM SAI BABA!” said Sathya, calm and fearless, for He spoke the Truth! Eashwaramma gasped. This was someone no one knew! “Sai Baba?” his father queried, “Sai Baba?” The lathi had fallen from his hands, but he went on, angrily, “You may be Sai Baba or Hai Baba. It doesn’t concern us. But, you had better leave this boy and this place!” He was apparently addressing the spirit he thought dwelt in his son. “No,” said Sathya with the same composure. “I have come, because Venka Avadhoota and other saints prayed for My coming. I shall bless you and remove all that troubles you. Worship Me on every Guru Var (Thursday, the day of the guru). Keep your mind and homes pure.” No one could resist the overwhelming wave of adoration that swept over the people. The angry father had nearly become one of the admiring crowd.

But, there was yet another problem to worry the family and every curious man and woman of Puttaparthi: “Who or what was this Sai Baba?” Soon enough, news drifted into the village that the Sub-Registrar at Penukonda was a follower of a Sai Baba. He did special puja to that saint every Thursday, with hundreds gathering at his place. Venkappa decided to take Sathya to him. If the boy was pretending, the Sub-Registrar would see through it and they could have their doubts set at rest. Eashwaramma longed for an end to the confusion and controversy But, Sathya was Narasimha at Ghatikachalam and also, Sai Baba at Penukonda? And it was He, who interrogated the Sub-Registrar, “Can’t you see Me, the Sai Baba? You have worshipped Me for years and I am here before you. Here, take this udi,” and with a wave of His palm, He created a handful of hot ash and gave it to him, exactly as Sai Baba of Shirdi used to do for those He loved. But, the man was too frightened to hold out his hand and Sathya scattered the ash before the figure of Shirdi Sai Baba, instead. Intense devotion makes a man lose his vanity, says the Bhakti Sutra of Narada. But, the Sub-Registrar was too self-contained to react to the truth. He pronounced that Sathya was suffering from delusion and sent the family back. They returned to Puttaparthi. Sathya cast off the pose of  impersonality. He was no longer difficult.

Gone were the bouts of gloom. He seemed determined to be congenial and co-operative, and Eashwaramma and Subbamma were allowed to feed Him with delicacies to their full delight. One day, someone from Penukonda came to the Raju home. Having heard of Sathya’s audacious claim that He was the Sai Baba of Shirdi, he threw out a challenge with a glaring eye. “We know who You are! You are just a small boy, the son of Venkappa and Eashwaramma. But, if You are the same Sai Baba the Sub-Registrar worships, let us have the proof, now!” Hearing the unknown voice ringing arrogantly through the house, Eashwaramma came out of the inner apartments. “I shall give you the proof,” said Sathya, unruffled. He asked that flowers be brought to Him. The man asked Eashwaramma herself to bring them and she did so, with trepidation. In a quick gesture, Sathya flung them on the floor. “There! That is who I am.” They all saw the petals arrange themselves to form the Telugu words ‘Sai Baba’.

Sai Baba? Muslim or Hindu? Brahmin or Kshatriya? Eashwaramma told Subbamma of a vision she had. Sathya appeared before her, as an old, bearded man. She remembered another time, when Sathya spoke of an old Fakir, who used to feed Him rotis. Those puzzling events seemed to take on a dimension of mystery, now. Subbamma, the good lady, had instinctive grasp of the situation. She told anxious Eashwaramma not to be misled by her son’s pranks. “Wasn’t Krishna, too, equally mischievous, calling Himself Hari at one time and Gopala at another?” Both women found relief in the fact that Sathya was now more active, going around again, though not with His old companions. He walked the hills alone, now and sat silent on the rocks for hours. And it was Subbamma, childless and with less encumbrances and chores to tie her down, who scouted around for Sathya in His favourite
sports on the banks of the Chitravati, to feed her dear Gopala with her own hands.

Seshama Raju had come back home to Puttaparthi for a fortnight. Sathya’s behaviour had become more manageable and the name He had now assumed wasn’t too bad, after all. (To be Sai Baba of Shirdi, a little known saint of some faraway place, was obviously better than a claim to be the divine incarnation of Narasimha!) And Seshama Raju was confident that Uravakonda would soon clear Sathya’s fancy of that hallucination, too. As a teacher, he had great faith in the curative potency of the rod, which he was banned from flourishing in the family home, where Eashwaramma ruled. And so, he kept dinning into his parents that Sathya should be sent back to school and put to more useful tasks, than be allowed to spend His time climbing hills, scattering flowers and weaving stories. They yielded at last and Sathya went back with His brother. Eashwaramma walked with them across the Chitravati and waved them off, only when Karnatanagapalli hove into sight.

Questions

1.Where did Krishnamachati want Sathya to be taken to?

2. What did Sathya give the Sub-Registrar of Penukonda?

Separated again from Sathya, Eashwaramma tried to picture her son as she wanted Him to be, but she could not erase from her mind the image of Sathya as He wanted to be – serene, sedentary. And it wasn’t long before they heard more of Him, for news came that one Thursday evening, when Sathya was speaking and acting as Sai Baba, He had actually reprimanded Seshama Raju in front of a large gathering, saying, “He does not believe in Me!” Spanking was inevitable, though Eashwaramma prayed that somehow Sathya would escape this. And so He did – for, His brother not only allowed the remark to go with the wind, but actually treated Sathya not with his favourite remedy, but with a new prescription -a picnic on the Tungabhadra river amidst the ruins of the Vijayanagar Empire.

The parents, however, were destined to be deluged by further doses of surprise. Sathya had returned from Hampi on the Tungabhadra, with an even larger number of ‘adorers’, drawn by a few miraculous happenings at Hampi and at Hospet, the town nearby. And on the very day He returned, He had turned recluse, casting off books and mates, declaring that hearth and home could not hold Him in bondage any more.

Sri Shankaracharya, the eighth century sage, who formulated and propagated Vedanta metaphysics, who co-ordinated and reconciled contemporary cults and creeds into a consistent structure of faith, wisdom, and power, has composed five verses on his mother, the Matru Panchakam. An incident immortalised therein, depicting his mother’s love, is very similar to the situation that Eashwaramma had to face. They were both mothers and the reactions, then and now, are identical

“Gurukulam upasritya swapna Kale tu drishtwa Yati samuchitvesham prarudo mam twamuchhaiah Gurukulam api sarvam prarudat te samaksham.”

“My mother, in her dream, saw me wearing the dress worn by ascetics; she believed it to be true; she ran all the way to the school, where I was and cried aloud and the whole school cried with her.”

The differences in the two situations were: Shankara’s mother had dreamt, but Eashwaramma was wide awake as she heard the news from someone, who had actually seen it all happen. Secondly, the sage’s mother rushed to the school and enfolded the child in her arms. But, Eashwaramma was bound tight by tradition and pitiably separated by space. She could not rush to the school to rescue her child. Sathya was, like Shankara, past retrieval.

Unwelcome news arrives soonest. As it travels, it gathers a great deal of dross. This story about the son of Pedda Venkappa Raju, the brother of the Telugu pundit of the Uravakonda High School, flew to Anantapur and thence, to Dharmavaram 25 miles away; from there, it leaped 22 miles to Bukkapatnam; then, it trudged through mouth to ear, trailing gloom and glee to Puttaparthi and the Raju home and to Eashwaramma and Subbamma, too, yearning to hear about beloved Sathya. “Sathya has left school.” That was the solid core. But, it was so enveloped in exaggeration and excitement that Eashwaramma was plunged in perplexity

The weekly market on Mondays, at Bukkapatnam was the headquarters of the news agency, serving the need for sensation in twenty villages. The agency was interested in fiction, rather than fact, in friction, rather than fraternity. Once it imparted momentum to a rumour, it developed tentacles on its own initiative, causing furore. To Puttaparthi from the market, that Monday, set free bulletins from rumour’s aviary into the calm blue of that village. “Sathya has escaped to Shirdi… Sathya has become Bala Yogi… Sathya has gone underground… Sathya entered a chariot, which rose beyond sight; where Sathya stood, only a handful of jasmines were seen… Sathya is no more…”

Puttaparthi was caught in a whirlpool of perplexity. Which version is true, everyone asked everyone else. What has really happened? Why is Seshama Raju silent? The mother and Subbamma sat weeping together, for hours. Then, Venkappa Raju shouldered a bag of clothes, saying, “I’m off to find out the truth!” Fortunately, for Eashwaramma, he didn’t have the heart to leave her behind.

As they stood together at the bus station, at Anantapur, someone waiting for the Bukkapatnam bus recognised Venkappa Raju and gave him a letter. It was from Seshama Raju. Anxiously the father scanned it; he looked relieved, for the news was not too bad after all. He turned to the impatient Eashwaramma beside him. “The boy is alive, he is not ill and he is still at Uravakonda. He had run away, but he is back at home, though he lives there as a stranger. It seems that he announced at school, that there is nothing he has to study. He threw away his books on the porch of the house and went and sat on a rock, in front of the Excise Inspector Anjaneyulu’s house. This Anjaneyulu goes every Thursday, to worship Sathya. Your son poses himself as a Jagadguru, now. He has a number of devotees praying for Darshan. But, Seshama has done one good thing; he has not let Sathya be in the houses of these devotees, though there are many, who would gladly have him. Seshama has told Sathya
that he is writing to us and that we should decide his future.”

Questions

1.What did Sathya do on the day He returned from Hampi?

2. What is the ‘Matru Panchakam’?

Uravakonda is a town bigger than Bukkapatnam, bigger even than Penukonda. The parents alighted from the bus and headed straight for their eldest son’s residence. Inevitably, there was a big crowd milling around. It took quite some time and a great deal of push to get into the inner room, where fumes of incense and flames of camphor greeted them. As soon as the congregation recognised the new arrivals, they cheered them on with the cry, “Mata Pita ki jai,” close on the heels of each full throated “Sai Baba ki jai.”

Sathya was seated on a chair with flower garland piling on His right, as He accepted each one that was offered and added it to the growing mound. The bewildered Seshama Raju was perforce being kept busy by the onrush of visitors and persuading earlier ones to leave to make room for the later. He sighed with relief as he saw his parents. “Tell me who these two are?” he asked, as he walked up to Sathya with them. The answer, when it came, was Vedantic, but it was devastating, who could expect such startling words from the lips of a fourteen-year old? When pressed to identify His parents, Sathya said, very concisely, “They are Maya!”

Maya? Delusion? Each one of us, as Baba revealed in later years, is not one entity, but three. Two of these are unreal, transitory, and trivial – the first is the one we think we are, namely, the body with its component, the heart which, like a muffled drum, is beating our funeral march to the grave. Second, the one others think we are, that is, the bundle of reactions we exhibit through our responses of instinct, impulse, emotion, passion, and imagination. The third is the one we really are, the Atma, imperishable, resplendent, ever-blissful. Sathya, when referring to His parents as Maya, had thus denied as delusion and refused as invalid the first two, temporary, subordinate facets of the ‘persons’ standing before
Him.

The scene reminds us of the one described by Matthew in the New Testament. “While He (Jesus) yet talked to the people, behold, His mother, His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him. Then, one said unto Him, ‘Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.’ But, He answered and said unto him that told Him, ‘Who is My mother and who are My brethren? For, whosoever shall do the will of My Father, which is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother.’”

“Maya!” exclaimed Eashwaramma and fell in a faint. But, Venkappa Raju grasped the gravity of that remark. He realised that the names ‘Guru’ and ‘Brahmagnyani’ earned by Sathya in His childhood were not nicknames, but descriptions of deep insight, indicators of this day of the Renunciation of transient family affinities. He tried to educate the mother into acceptance of an irremediable situation. But, Eashwaramma reacted with resentment. She sat by Sathya’s side, tears coursing down her face, for her son was but a shadow of His former self, though only three months had elapsed since she had last seen Him. “Sathya, speak to Your mother!” she begged. A few minutes of silence ensued. Then… “Who belongs to whom?” asked Sathya, remote and cold. It was not a question. It was a pronouncement, an
unveiling, a lightning streak. Sathya continued with His lesson: “It is all maya, it is all maya…” And men stood wondering at this sight, at this thin stripling, who sat before them like the great Shankaracharya, proclaiming, as authentically as he did, the key that unlocks the mystery of the Cosmos.

But, Eashwaramma was not awed by these profundities. She only yearned to feed her son, to seat Him on her lap, to brush His hair, to hear the songs He loved to sing, to see again His Pandhari Dance. As she remembered the days that had gone by, she burst into sobbing and had to be led away. In an attempt to distract her from her tears, she was shown a block of stone and told its amazing story. When Sathya had thrown away His school books and walked out, refusing to stay at home, He had sat on a boulder with this piece of stone lying beside Him. A photographer asked Him to move it aside as his camera clicked, but Sathya refused. And when the film was developed, the stone was seen to have become an idol of Shirdi Sai Baba, who, Sathya said, He once was. An excited group showed her the photograph, their eyes glistening with glee, but Eashwaramma was unmoved. “When did Sathya eat, today?” she asked. “Did He eat at all? What food does He like best now?” All that concerned her was the longing to engage in some act of service for Him, as release from the tension and fear that gripped her.

Sathya, meanwhile, was growing fidgety, impatient to be out in the open, to get back to His favourite seat, that boulder. But, when told that His mother herself was to the kitchen, readying a meal, He replied, quite surprisingly, that He would wait. Those words were balm to the mother’s heart. She began cooking more varieties, with added zest. Then, at last, Sathya rose and walked in. His parents stood by as He sat on a reed mat on the floor, the plate before Him. He looked on, drowsy and distant, as His mother placed on the plate her affection and anxiety, her desire, despair, and delight sweetened, salted, fried, and boiled into ‘sankati’, ‘pulusu’, ‘koora’, ‘vadiyalu’, ‘chitrannamu’, ‘chutney’, and ‘payasam’.

She finished serving and nervously signalled that her offerings be accepted. With a swift movement, Sathya swept all the food into one mass and rolled it into three balls. “Maya! Maya!” He kept repeating. Someone told the stupefied mother that Sathya was bidding her come near. She moved a few feet forward. He put one of the balls of food in her right palm and kept His palm before her to receive it. As she gave it back, Sathya ate, whispering, “Maya is gone, maya has left.” The two other balls got the same treatment of inscrutable indifference. The extraordinary supper struck the elders, including Seshama Raju, as the culmination of the process of disassociation from filial and fraternal ties. Sathya had finally labelled Himself a stranger, though nearest kin of all. Though part of history, He was a
mystery. Though unreachable, He was within reach.

The parents of Krishna, too, had to live their days with this near-but-far dilemma, this on-but-off conundrum. When Abhimanyu, the son of Krishna’s sister, wed Uttara, the daughter of King Virata, Krishna’s parents were received as guests by the King. But, Vasudeva, the father, replied, “Oh King, do not flatter us as the parents of Krishna, for Krishna says, ‘I am not especially concerned with the persons you designate as father and mother. I am concerned only with bhaktas devoted to Me.’ He says that He suffers, when those who belong to Him suffer. He says that He is happy, when those, who are His, are happy. He does not worry over wife and children, brother and sister. He is not attached to wealth or power. He is attached to all, who call on Him, whether as Hari, or Narayana, or any other name. My son’s behaviour is not like that of others. His heart melts, when His devotees are injured or insulted. Why? He gifts Himself to those, who insult or injure Him. He declares that He lives in order to deliver mankind from grief.” These lines from the Epic of the Mahabharata, referring to an earlier Avatar, shed the light of understanding over the behaviour of Sathya, when His parents yearned for His affection.

The night of this memorable Day of Renunciation was spent on the now famous ‘Bhajan Boulder’, on which Sathya sat as He sang, ‘Manasa Bhajarey Guru Charanam’… the call to instal the Feet of the guru in their hearts. Eashwaramma could not leave Him out there in the cold. She joined the cluster of devotees, who sang bhajans until late at night and again, in the early dawn. But, all through that night, the mother struggled to reconcile herself to the appalling future of her home. She knew that the ‘son’, who proclaims, “I don’t belong to you. I have not come for your sake. I have My own work to attend to…” would soon be travelling on foot towards hills and caves, holy rivers and shrines, and even to the Himalayas. He would live on alms, or on fruits and roots, or even on dry leaves and the thin air. She peered into Sathya’s youth and looked beyond His middle age into His later years, and saw Him lean, lonely, haggard, and naked; she saw Him beaded and bearded, though with eyes that clearly announced the illumination within. The mother shuddered at the prospect and was determined to pray for a boon from the son, at the first opportunity.

Her husband refused to share in her anxiety, urging her not to worsen the situation with any hasty move. “Let us leave Him alone,” he said, “All this shall pass away…!” But, Seshama Raju approved the idea enthusiastically and promised to use his skills of persuasion, too. When there were only about a dozen people around Sathya on His boulder, Eashwaramma and Seshama Raju approached Him. “Sathya”, said His mother. “We are in maya, we are maya, but You are free from maya. And we will not interfere, we will not argue. You can be whatever You are. But, Sathya, not in the Himalayas, not in caves and hills, far away from us. Give me Your word that You will remain at Puttaparthi. Let Your devotees come there. We will welcome them gladly and treat them kindly.” Thus was the scene of Destiny set for Sathya’s momentous answer: “I have chosen Puttaparthi as My kshetra,” He announced. “The boon is granted not to you, but to the village, the world itself. I shall leave this place and come there, on Thursday.”

Eashwaramma was speechless with delight, her face beaming the good news to all around. Her heart was full, for now, she was assured that she could witness her son’s glory all her life! He could be saved from collecting alms. He could be well cared for, at least as far as food was concerned, by His mother and sisters and aunts, and by the adoring Subbamma, too.

Her happy thoughts were abruptly interrupted, however, by the impetuosity of a man,who suddenly fell full length before her, touching her feet. “Swami’s mother!” he gasped, “Bless me!” This tall, fair man, a native of Uravakonda, was a Shastri, that is, a Brahmin, a pundit. Once, when he had been expounding the ancient Sanskrit text of the Ramayana, Sathya had heard him, though he was far beyond earshot. Sathya sent a messenger to him with the correct interpretation. The pundit was naturally resentful at first, but he soon surrendered. Now, he stood exclaiming, “Sarvagnya Murti!” (the All-Knowing One), in an ecstasy of awe and admiration.

Sathya’s recognition of the insufficiency of this pundit brings to my mind the advice Jesus gave to the teacher Zacchaeus, as mentioned in the Gospel of Thomas. “But, Jesus looketh upon Zacchaeus and saith unto him: Thou knowest not the Alpha according to its nature, how canst thou teach others the Beta, thou hypocrite! First, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha and then will we believe thee concerning the Beta.”

Eashwaramma was embarrassed at his homage to her, this precursor of the role, with which the world would soon clothe her. For, deep in her heart was the feeling that she, as mother or even as Eashwaramma, was but maya, a mere idea and image superimposed on something behind and beyond both. Like Sage Kapila, who chose his mother Devahuti as his first disciple, Sathya had opened the inner eye of Eashwaramma with that one word, maya, the word that can unveil the Truth of Truths.

The news spread with lightning speed that Sathya was to go to Puttaparthi and wouldperhaps, not return. The town was on wild fire. Men of all sorts, traders, artisans, and labourers, teachers and students, and women and children rushed to the boulder-strewn garden of Anjaneyulu, where Sathya sat teaching more bhajans to the people, To His teachers seated in front, He gave vibhuti emanating instantly from His hand. One of the women there, who had the good fortune of being at Shirdi with Sai Baba Himself, told them that this Udi (vibhuti) was ash, collected from the fireplace at the Shirdi Dwarakamayi. “Now,” she said, “He has fire in His palm!” – and indeed, the vibhuti was a bit warm.

Oh! The entire town was on the road, moving in a procession deliberately slow. Sathya sat on a decorated cart, drawn by caparisoned-bullocks. Seshama Raju and the youngest brother, Janakiram went immediately in front. Eashwaramma, her daughters, and daughter-in-law were among the hundreds of women in that throng. An enthusiastic devotee placed garlands on both the father and mother. They struggled out of them and rid themselves of the adulation inflicted. Seshama Raju’s brother-in-law Rama Raju, along with his friend Subbanna, organised a band of volunteers to trim the lines and keep them straight on track. A band of drums, bagpipes, clarinets, and jingles played at the head of that long moving mass of devotion.

When the limits of the town were reached, people were gently asked to turn back, but few had the heart to return to dreariness without their dear Sathya. Many had resolved to accompany Him and be at Puttaparthi for at least a week.

Eashwaramma was bringing Sai Baba to Puttaparthi. He was no longer Sathyanarayana Raju, a student of the High School at Uravakonda. He had stepped out of the swaddling clothes and stood forward as the Teacher of Truth. The people around Him were His pupils.

Questions

1. After announcing His Reality, what did Swami address His parents as?

2. What did Swami do to the food items His mother had put on His plate?

3. What was the boon that Sathya granted His mother?

Sathya has revealed His Sathya (Truth has revealed the Truth) – that was the simple summary of the historic event at Uravakonda, as it was relayed to the village folk around. Curiosity rose to surprise, surprise welled into yearning. Townsmen and villagers from around – Dharmavaram, Penukonda, Gorantla, Mudigubba, and Bukkapatnam – streamed out of their houses and huts. The crowd was great, when at last they reached Puttaparthi and Subbamma, the Yashoda of modern Gokul, opened wide the doors of the Karnam Mansion to welcome the young saviour with His huge entourage.

She had never had any doubts. She had seen enough to convince her of His reality  whatever the name, Sai Baba or any other, that Sathya might give Himself. She had heard the call, long before the day He had ascended the Uravakonda Boulder to summon mankind, to enshrine the Feet of the guru in their hearts; she had long accepted His Feet as those of guru and God; she had long laid her faith in Him as the incarnation that had to descend in this Kali Age. She had not stopped to ask whether Puttaparthi was named in Bhavishya Purana! If it was not, it did not matter! She had imbibed enough of the teachings of the ancient sages.

She felt that the time cried for Sathya. Has not Shankaracharya described the nature of Krishna Avatar and the circumstances, under which He would come? Shankara was referring to the Lord, who gave the Gita to humanity, but Subbamma knew that Sathya, too, would soon set aside the flute to take the whip in hand. Shankara described thus the role of the Avatar: “After people practised the codes of morality, ordained by religion for their liberation from grief and bondage, the lust for sensual pleasure and worldly power and possessions arises again among them. Discrimination is lost. Wisdom declines. Unrighteousness outweighs righteousness. Then, the Lord, the Primal Cause, the First Creator, wishing to ensure the continuance of the universe in the manner He had resolved, incarnates Himself in part as man. The eternal Source, which is the repository of all knowledge, power, energy, and vigour, now personalises and makes patent the maya that has lain dormant and latent within Him. And vestured in maya with its three strands, the gunas (the three characteristics, Tamas, Rajas, and Satwa), He is seen as though born, as though endowed with a body, and as though showing compassion to living beings – but He is, in reality, unborn, unchanging, pure, illumined, and free.”

Eashwaramma was eager to take Sathya back to the Raju home and Subbamma, knowing the mother’s heart, let Him go. Sathya, however, could not be happy long, where people wanted Him all for themselves. “I do not belong to you alone,” He told His parents, “I belong to all, who need Me.” He was restless, too, at the home of His sister Venkamma, who was now married, as custom sanctions it, to her mother’s brother. A homily in the home, an angry word, a sharp look pained Him much more than the one, who received it! Eashwaramma, too, was tied up with the fortunes and families of her other son and daughters, and particularly with the youngest Janakiram, who suffered from a chronic cold which brought bronchitis and the dreaded T.B. in its wake. Thus, life within a family, absorbed in this personal pursuit, could not be congenial to the Avatar of the age.

Subbamma’s home, too, soon proved too small for the pilgrims, who came seeking refuge at the feet of the guru. There was, however, a Sanyasi living at the populous market town of Kottacheruvu, five miles away, who had built a hermitage there. It stood atop a knoll, overlooking a huge artificial lake formed by impounding the waters of the Chitravati. The Sanyasi spoke to Sathya’s father and grandfather of taking the boy with him there, as his ward, successor, and spiritual heir. He pointed out that the place was on the highway between Dharmavaram and Gorantla and only a few minutes’ walk from the square, where major roads from Penukonda to Mudigubba and from Dharmavaram to Kadiri (on the Anantapur-Madras Road) intersected. It would be the most appropriate site for Sathya, he urged. But, Eashwaramma, alarmed at yet another threat to snatch her son away from her, gave a curt reply. Her husband had nothing more to add.

When Subbamma heard of this suggestion to take Sathya away, she acted quickly and offered some land by the western bank of the Chitravati, on which a shed could be built to accommodate the crowds. Subbamma was the embodiment of honest hospitality. She was most anxious that the visitors trekking into Puttaparthi, to her beloved Sathya, should be welcomed and fed with care. Swami talks of her to this day, of her incessant work from dawn until midnight, boiling rice, grinding chutneys, mixing curries, and frying papads – all the many exacting processes of cooking, for the varied groups of people, arriving at all hours of the day. “The grinder in her home was never silent,” Swami says.

Many, who came to worship Bala Sai (a name fast gaining currency), sought out the mother and father too, to pay their respects. Venkappa Raju was rarely available, for he was busy in his provision stores and spent much of his time scouring the markets of nearby towns, to obtain bargains. Eashwaramma, however, was at home to receive the brunt of this homage and suffer the anxiety caused by people, who said that Sai Baba had promised to grace their homes and villages. How far would the journey take Him and how long would He be out of sight, she worried, for how could she know that He could manifest Himself in as many places as He willed? Eashwaramma’s simple and trustful approach was such that once, when her son was acting in the play ‘Kanakatara’, she had rushed to the stage during the execution scene, to save His life! Now, after Sathya’s triumphal return to Puttaparthi as Bala Sai, she never failed each night to observe the customary rites of averting the evil-eye, the ritual swinging of a coconut thrice around Him, before it was broken and waving burning camphor around Him.

Those, who gained much from Baba’s Darshan, Sparshan, and Sambhashan, spread the news far and wide. More and more came and the village reverberated with bhajans sung to Him. Baba gave Darshan from a tiny room, eight feet long and six feet wide, that was open towards the road. This road that led from the river to the Karnam’s house used to be packed with pilgrims, seated in thick rows 60 yards long, on Thursdays and about half of that, on other days. Subbamma built a prayer hall to accommodate the ever swelling throngs. The main hall of the building had verandas along its flanks north and south, and Subbamma was thoughtful enough to have brick walls built at both ends of the two verandas, so that four, habitable rooms were available.

Eashwaramma was taken by surprise one afternoon, when a group of about six people, men and women, came into the house in inexpressible excitement. They had, they said, come to pay homage to the Sathya Narayana Raju, who had blossomed into Sai Baba at Uravakonda. Sathya, they said, had related to them many incidents that had happened at Shirdi, while He was there – the wrestling duel, the musical discourses of Das Ganu, and the headgear He had paraded on that occasion, of His being hailed as Shiva, Rama, Krishna, and Maruti by devotees. They told her that her son had explained that, there was no need to adore Him as Maruti, since Rama has Maruti inseparably incorporated in Him, even as Maruti had Rama vitalising the very breath of life. “I am Rama. I am Krishna. I have My worshippers in many lands. People pray to Me in many languages,” Sathya had confided in them.

One of them exclaimed, “Krishna?” for, he was a staunch devotee of the blue, cowherd God. Sathya said, “Yes, Krishna too. Do you desire to hear the Flute?” “Who would answer, ‘No’?” the devotee queried the mother. “He persuaded me to place my cheek on His chest. And I heard the divine Breath transformed into entrancing delight!” At this, Eashwaramma rose rapidly and accompanied them back into the mandir, hoping to hear soon the strains that induced the trees to bloom into floral domes, that arrested the flow of the Jamuna waters, that stilled the racing clouds and raging winds, that bathed in fragrant silence insects, birds, beasts, and humans. Once in the presence, however, she dared not ask. She hoped that Sathya would notice her with the Kamalapur group behind her and ask why she had concretised herself suddenly, before Him, at that odd hour. She sat for a long time, sunk in admiration
and apprehension.

She was sorely tried. She could keep mum no longer. Suddenly, she asked, “Did Sai Baba hold Krishna’s Flute?” Sathya answered, “I have it now. I had it then. I am the Krishna, then and now.” A long, audible sigh was the response from Eashwaramma. “Listen!” said Baba. They were all seated on the bare floor of the central hall of the mandir. “That Form will come to melt into this,” He said. A few seconds of silence, then, the heavy thud of wooden sandals up the steps from the shed, along the eight-foot wide veranda and even on the floor, on which they were seated – right, left, right, left, deliberate, distinguished, disturbing. Eashwaramma intervened with a, “No footwear permitted,” but the person, whom the sandals brought in with them, was not visible and was in no mood either, to respond to the
warning. The sandals, too, were not there, though the toot-tutt was authentic! The sound moved right to where Sathya was; there, they faded fast. “That was what I was, then,” Baba said, “when I played on the flute in the ruined mosque.” “This is the reason You have named Yourself Sai Baba. That is what You say. I can’t believe it quite, yet,” Eashwaramma muttered to herself, afraid that Swami would hear the words! The surprise stayed with her long; for, when all is said and seen, surprise is the only reasonable response to the utterly improbable.

Her elder daughter had developed a curiosity to gather as much knowledge as the pilgrims from Shirdi could give her, about the life and doings of that Sai Baba. She had asked Sathya to show her a picture of the body He had at that place. One night, during the small hours, there was a rustle behind a bag of paddy leaning against the wall of the room, in which she was sleeping. It was neither a rodent, nor a reptile. It was a sheet of thick paper, rolled and thrust into the crevice between the bulge of the bag and the wall. When she unrolled it, she found a multi-coloured portrait of a bearded, old saint, sitting on a flat-topped boulder! Later, she found that it was the very picture she had prayed to her ‘younger brother’ to procure for her.

She related interesting Shirdi incidents to her mother and sister and Eashwaramma drank with gusto the delicious stories, always asking Venkamma for more. She was happy to hear that Baba had stuck to Shirdi, from the day He entered the village to the day He entered the tomb and she took the chance to squeeze in the question, “If You are that Sai Baba, why don’t You remain here always? You did not go to distant places, then. He was not away from Shirdi for a single day.” But, Sathya replied, “That is the very reason why I had to come again to make amends. I must now bless people, whoever calls on Me from wherever they are.” That answer silenced the mother’s tongue.

As time went by, Sathya became more and more the property of His devotees and increasingly distant from His family. To Eashwaramma’s sorrow, He decided to live permanently in one of those Veranda rooms. It was on the northern veranda, the one which led people into the hall. His family could have access to Him, only if they came into the gatherings of devotees. His sister Venkamma was an enthusiastic singer of bhajans. Grandfather Kondama Raju, now 95 years and more, would never miss darshan, coming to the Bhajan mandir with his walking stick to help him along. Eashwaramma would slip in silently around noon, to survey the scene affectionately and to examine the menu. The cooking was done by a small group of devotees, who had found refuge at the Lotus Feet and lived with Baba. They occupied most of the available space in the rough learn-to shelters that served as kitchens and had divided between them the enviable task of providing their young guru with whatever they thought He would relish.

Among those, who came to Baba in those early years, were unfortunates possessed by ghosts, brought to this new hope on the horizon by their grief stricken relatives. I heard the story of a Marwari lady, whose life was being sucked dry by a ghoul that was controlling her. The incubus made her repeat, endlessly, the words, “Bring me Puttaparthi, I will go.” What did that word mean? No one knew. Was it a place, a person, a drug, a gem, an idol? When at last her family discovered that Puttaparthi was a village nearly 800 miles away, they sent her along, alone, with only a note clutched in her hand. “The demon that has enslaved this woman wants to be driven out only by Bala Sai at Puttaparthi. Please command it to go and send her back.” The lucky ones, freed of their tormentors at Baba’s touch, would then make a beeline for Eashwaramma to receive her blessings. She obliged, but she was pardonably nervous and reluctant. Not only did she step back from the publicity, but she was never quite sure whether they were fully harmless!

Drawn by the call of Sai Baba, dozens now streamed into this isolated village every day. Bus transport came into the region and those, who reached Penukonda or Dharamavaram by train, could now get to Puttaparthi in four or five hours, but it was a most exacting journey. Srimati Susheelamma, one of these, who made the pilgrimage in those early years, wrote a description of her journey in 1942. “From the Penukonda railway station, there was a bone breaking jutka (cart) ride of two miles to the town. Then, as we waited at the bus station, a crowd gathered round, ridiculing us, for Baba was to them a joke or a fake. How could they accept the divinity of one, who was for them a village boy? There were mocking grins and irreverent laughter from the young boys loitering there, as we climbed in. We were
exhausted and only half alive as we were dropped off at Bukkapatnam, just under the huge temple car in the heart of the town.

‘But, what now?’ The rest of the journey had to be by cart, but the bullocks that were to drag it were on the grazing hills, while the cart itself stood somewhere else, peacefully restingn on its hind portion with its yoke cocked up in the air. Nobody seemed willing to oblige and bring about the necessary co-operation between the two. We stood helpless, but there was someone, who at last took pity on us, some kind lady, who invited us into her home when she saw our plight and arranged for the cart and bullocks to meet together. Her kindness did not limit itself to that one day either. We were to call on her for any help we needed, whenever we passed that way again; she said we had only to ask for the ‘Yadalams’.

The cart was laden with our luggage, but we walked behind all the four miles of the way, for the track was impossibly bumpy. We got to the Chitravati at last, to find the river in spate. The cart man refused to ford the river. He turned aggressive and was about to turn back to Bukkapatnam, but incredibly, there were two men, wading across the rushing waters and making straight for us. Sai Baba had known we were coming and had sent them to take us across the river, cart and all! The river was fast receding, they told us and so it was! Holding each other’s hands, we struggled through the water, waist deep.”

(My wife and I first went to Puttaparthi in 1948, six long years after this journey by Susheelamma. The train journey to Penukonda, the jutka jolt, the bus bother, the bullock hunt, the humpty… bumpty of the track, the walk behind the cart, the slush, the sand, the series of surprises, they were all intact and awaiting us, too.)

To get back to Susheelamma’s story, “Baba was waiting to welcome us and came running, as a mother runs towards her children too tired to walk. He seemed to feel every bit of our exhaustion far more than we did ourselves. ‘Come! Come!’ He said, ‘How tired you must be … travel, hunger, thirst, and now, this river. I have been waiting since noon for you.’ He took us into the mandir, where some devotees, Chayamma, Krishtamma, Sowbhagyamma, and Sathyavathamma were. ‘Here are My children, who have come.’ He said, ‘Heap their plates. They are very hungry.’ He sat by us and His sweet words of consolation took all our tiredness away. He told the others of all that we had gone through to get there, all the incidents that had occurred on the way, our hope and despair. He had an occasional crack, too, at our wayward faith. His words, His glance, His smile – we filled ourselves with these and we were not hungry and tired any longer. When the leaf plates were laid out and dinner was served, we had no appetite. We simply gazed and gazed at His face. Seeing this, He mixed up the food in His own plate as balls and came up to lay one on each of ours.

Throughout that hot night, we slept in the inner quadrangle open to the sky, the men on one side of Swami’s bed and the women on the other. Around two or three in the morning, Swami retired into His room. We awoke early too, bathed in the river and returned for Darshan. Oh! What a heavenly moment it was, when we held up the burning camphor flame.”

Chayamma showed them the way to the village, where Eashwaramma lived. She was staying, at the time, with her daughter Venkamma. They touched her feet, but she shied away, clearly unhappy at all that was happening. Venkamma explained that she (Eashwaramma) was grieved that her son chose to live away from them. “I do not belong to you. I have My work to do. My people are yearning for Me.” These words of His were clear in her memory and here were His dear and chosen people. “But,” says Susheelamma, “they were determined to seek the blessings of Swami’s mother and undaunted, they tried again another day. It was at Venkamma’s house once more that they saw her. On this occasion, they were greeted with a smile. She was all concern and kindness for them, but there was an anxious inquiry too. “How is your Swami? Is He keeping well? Does He eat anything at all?”

Every now and then, Eashwaramma would go into the mandir, for there were no regular hours for her or anyone else. The doors were always open and anyone could walk into it and meet the sixteen-year old Sai Baba, in the hall, in His tiny room, in the open space in front of the mandir, or at Bhajans twice a day. Eashwaramma would notice the new arrivals, talk to them, and then move quietly towards the women, who were mothering her son. “Serve Him and nurse Him with care,” she would say ‘pleadingly’. “Look at Him, one can count the ribs, they are coming through so clear! He won’t listen to what we say. He insists on His own ways, all the while telling us how to behave! And somehow, He justifies everything He does as good for Himself.”

(Twenty-eight years later, when Arnold Schulman of New York arrived in Puttaparthi, the agony of the mother had not yet abated. She was living then, in one of seven rooms in a building behind the Prayer Hall. Schulman found her “complaining to no one in particular” (as he writes in his book – ‘Baba’) about the hundreds and thousands streaming in now, to Prasanthi Nilayam to her son. He had met her apparently on a day, when she had been especially worried. “Why don’t they leave Him alone? He does not sleep, He does not eat enough. All they care is about themselves.” And, “she added in a confiding whisper to the doctor, a resident of Prasanthi Nilayam, who had brought Schulman along to her, ‘He does not like their cooking. He likes only mine. That is why He does not eat!’” As the years had gone by and more and more of the world had discovered the source of almighty love, power, and wisdom that Swami is, Eashwaramma, too, had realised that her ‘son’ was indeed the Father, who fosters all beings – but, there were moments, when the curtain of maya fell and the mother in her cried out in pain.)

But, to get back to Susheelamma – they met Swami’s father, too, who used to drop in at the mandir, once or twice a day. Seeing the makeshift kitchen Susheelamma had set up in the open yard behind the Prayer Hall, he offered to get them provisions for cooking, rice, flour and dal, oil and fuel from Bukkapatnam or elsewhere. When they had become familiar figures at the mandir and village, they ventured to plead with Swami’s parents to give them the chance to pay their homage to them, with puja. Swami was not too encouraging at first, but when they persisted, He acquiesced with a non-committal nod and a ‘Do what you like’. His parents sat together and accepted the puja, blessed them, and made them happy beyond words. It was indeed a rare gift, as they were told by the residents of the mandir.

Susheelamma was talking to Swami’s mother, one day, of His leelas that make us live again in the Gokulam and Brindavan of the Bhagavatam. “Why do you get sad and worry so?” she asked Eashwaramma. “You are the woman most blessed by the Lord!” Eashwaramma was silent for a while, before she said, “How can you know why? If you had given birth to a precious gem and He had grown famous and gone far away from you, then you might have understood. Oh, how divine was this child. No other child around could compare. He was so fair with bright red lips and pink cheeks, and such lovely curls on His head. It was not only His looks that captivated. He had such a lovable nature. He behaved supremely well, so quiet, so serene, so understanding. And what sympathy flowed from Him
towards the poor and the persecuted, from His earliest childhood. He loved all the children of the village, without thought of caste or colour or even cleanliness. And His pity did not limit itself to feeling alone. He was always ready to do something positive about it. Anyone who was hungry was always fed from our kitchen. I’ll tell you a few such incidents.

One day, He was seen giving food to a beggar and got shouted at by everybody in the house. ‘Look at the child! What effrontery! He thinks he is the master of this house. We must stop this habit before it ruins the home!’ – thus, they found fault with His innate goodness. But, the child’s reply shocked us and made us dumb. ‘I only gave the beggar My share, what you would give Me to eat,’ He said. And when it was mealtime and the plates were laid out, He refused to come. ‘When that man’s hunger was appeased, Mine was satisfied, too,’ He said and stuck to His resolve. Not all our threats and pleas would make Him eat that day.

In those days, our family was very large and no one had too many clothes. The children had only the ones they wore and another set for change. One day, a child stood in the street, shivering in the cold with no clothes on. As soon as Sathya saw him, he took off His own shirt and helped the child into it. He must relieve pain and suffering as soon as He sees it in anyone, young or old, high born or low.

During His childhood, the family passed through lean and hard times, but, let me tell you, my children were my consolation. Later, we had to send Sathya away from home, so that He could get on with His education. But, He was worked so hard in the home we sent Him to, that there was barely time for His studies. Sathya never told us of this, however. He bore it all in silence. It was the neighbours, who did so. Once, when He had come on holiday, I wanted to give Him an oil bath and I was rubbing medicated oil on His body, when I noticed patches of discoloured skin on His shoulders. I asked Him about it, but the only reply I got was that He had never noticed it, because there was no pain! There were marks all over His body too, showing that He was often beaten with a rod. We were told later by others, that He had to go to a well on the outskirts of the village, every day, and carry big pots of water slung on poles
over His shoulders. That was what had caused those black blotches of thickened skin.

Here, at home, we believed that He was happy and healthy and going to school. We didn’t know the truth that He had little to eat and was being put through many hardships. When, at last, I did find out, what else could I do, but vow many things to many Gods and spend sleepless nights, hoping He would return to Puttaparthi. A few years went by with no relief. Then, we were told that Sathya was improving fast, singing and playing and speaking soft and sweet on subjects He wanted to. Yet, soon enough came another shock from Uravakonda. Sathya had announced one day that we, His parents, were maya, to which He refused to be attached. When I stood before Him face to face, He said, ‘Maya! You are not bound to Me, nor I to you!’ and He left home to be with those, to whom He felt He was
bound

How many days have I lived through, without eating or sleeping, crying to the Gods to restore my son to me. You call Him beauty, tenderness, and joy and talk of me as the Mother of this lovely Form, but do I ever get the chance to feed Him with food cooked by my own hands, give Him an oil bath or tend Him in the way that is the mother’s privilege?” And she relapsed into gloomy silence. The oncoming of this overwhelming resentment, despair, and even jealousy was followed, however, by a surge of self-criticism and condemnation that matured in philosophical resignation. Susheelamma and others, witnesses of this disheartening phase of grief, waited patiently for it to exhaust itself, in order to enthuse her over her eminent role as the Mother of Sai Baba. It was plain though that ‘tears were the
pillow of her couch’, in spite of the homage piled at her feet.

How she wished that Sathya had remained just Sathya! Who could ever have anticipated this seemingly inexhaustible stream – the flow of unfortunate unloved ones, who sought this Source of love! She had been congratulated by many, when Sathya had given her His word that He would not yield to the pleas of His urban devotees, but would stay on at Puttaparthi. But, that victory had been snatched away from her in the very village! Now, there were few precious memories. The Vedas require the father to speak thus to the mother, as he places the new born baby on her lap to suckle, “O Saraswati! Thy maternal breast is generous with sweet nourishment, which strengthens not merely the body, but also the intelligence and skills. May this baby suck!” How happy she had been, then. That picture remained bright with her, untarnished for fifteen years of fair weather and foul. That was the treasure she held in the casket of her heart, opening and fondling it with a sigh, when no one was about.

She was terribly afraid that the envy of people would bring illness and ill-fame to her son. Orthodoxy had hissed, when the Raju boy of the Kshatriya caste had first captured the heart of the Brahmin Subbamma; and superstition had shaken in fear, when Subbamma announced that He had shown her the astral body of her dead husband, in a form as real and true as when living. Groups of villagers now discussed her son as they would a phenomenon, like a comet on the horizon or a rain of honey from the skies. Like children afraid of darkness, these adults were afraid of the light! Eashwaramma shared her fears with the visitors, who revered Baba. “These demons tried to poison Sathya, but He vomited out the stuff and even pardoned the Brahmin woman responsible. What will they not do now, when Sathya is Sai Baba? These endless lines of bhaktas terrify me. The more the bhaktas, the greater is the danger from those, who speak ill of Him!” Eashwaramma was unaware of the fact that she was being both toughened and softened for the super Mary role she was soon to play, on the coming, love-lit, global stage.

Questions

1.Why was Swami not comfortable staying in His own family’s home?

2. When Eashwaramma asked Swami if Sai Baba held Krishna’s flute, what did Swami say?

3. When Eashwaramma asked Swami why He was visiting other places while Shirdi Baba never left Shirdi, what did Swami reply?

Sathya, acclaimed as Sai Baba, was surrounded and served by those, who had once sought consolation from Sai Baba at Shirdi and now, had discovered that He had appeared in the world once again, after Seemollanghana – the Crossing of the Border. (This ritual is observed by kings and rulers, who cross the borders of their territories on Vijayadashami, the Day of Victory. Shirdi Sai Baba had chosen this day of Vijayadashami, 1918, to leave His body, thus giving to this ritual the subtler meaning of crossing the borders of worldly existence). The people, who came, drawn by the teen-aged Baba, into His presence, were the four types spoken of as the Lord’s devotees by Sri Krishna: (1) Those stricken with physical, or mental illness, (2) Those drawn through curiosity, (3) Those seeking relief from poverty, and (4) Those, who are consciously seeking the divine. The trickle of bhaktas from Bangalore
swelled to a steady stream, fed by tributaries from Tiruchirapalli, Madras, Hyderabad, Kuppam, and Erode. Eashwaramma staggered under the impact of the Mystery that generated such love and adulation.

Sathya continued to harp on the ‘Mayic’ role she was destined to play. He no longer referred to her as Amma or Talli (Mother). The word He used instead was cold and distant,  with no acknowledgement whatever of a filial tie.

‘Griham Ammayi’, daughter of the House! It was a term appropriate from an ageless patron towards a very young innocent. ‘Griham’, perhaps, gave her some slight comfort. It meant at least that she was no wandering waif, but belonged to a home, to a family. Swami says that He can be known, however fragmentarily, only by those, who have mastered the scriptures. The Krishna Avatar, according to the Bhagavata, was announced by Vishnu in a disembodied voice. The Voice declared, “I will be born in the griham (house) of Vasudeva. So, the ‘father’ was griham abbayi and the ‘mother’ was griham ammayi for Krishna, also. And there was the unforgettable day Sathya had led her into a dark room in the Puttaparthi house and pointed to the south-western corner – there, glowing in the dark was a mosque with the old saint Shirdi Baba seated before it, on a mat. Fortunately, Swami had not followed this old fakir too closely in the manner of dress, for that Baba seemed to favour tears and stitches,
His kafni showing gaping holes on the shoulders and chest.

“Swami!” It had taken Eashwaramma a few months to get acclimatised to that word. She had first heard it being used by some women devotees from Kuppam and she liked it much better than the other one, “Baba,” that sounded strange and outlandish. “Baba” seemed to render Sathya unapproachable, beyond the horizon of adoration and affection. But, this Kuppam word brought Sathya near, though yet a little far; it allowed speech though a little whisper; it tolerated touch, though only the feet if permitted. So, Eashwaramma joined the groups of devotees, who venerated her ‘son’ as Swami (Master). The word became sweeter and sweeter, as the days went by.

Eager inquiries on ponderous pundit problems were pressing around Sathya and when Eashwaramma saw Him surrounded, she petitioned God fervently that His answers to them may turn out correct and satisfying. Many of them were learned scholars and it was easy to guess that their questions were chiefly intended as challenges and tests. The Uravakonda Shastry, who was learned in the classic texts of India, had told her that Sathya must have been a prodigious pundit in His previous life. Yet, Eashwaramma felt that her prayers would help to sustain Him in this role. Pilgrims complained to her that as they boarded the bus to Bukkapatnam, they were ridiculed by the people there, who wanted to turn them away. They announced that Baba had been exposed, that He had lost His powers and that He no longer granted Darshan. There was a rumour rife in Penukonda and Dharmavaram that the Sai Baba
phase in Sathya would not last long and when it ended, the relapse into the native Raju consciousness would prove disastrous. Naturally, she prayed more and more earnestly that the miraculous and the mysterious in her son would persist for years and years.

One afternoon, a sixty-year old ascetic, stark naked and legless, was carried in a litter into the inner hall of the mandir. The old man was observing a vow of silence, but his disciples demanded that the young Baba should touch the old guru’s stumps and seek his blessings. About thirty people waited expectantly for Baba’s reaction. Swami’s first move was to throw a towel at the old man, so that he could cover himself! Eashwaramma was shocked. A shudder of fear crept up her spine. What would this man’s disciples do, now? But, Baba began to speak soft and low. “The vow of silence allows you to speak, when it is most necessary,” He told the Sanyasi. “And silence must prevail in the head and heart and mind, not on the tongue. When you have to be carried about in this way by men, however devout, the best you can do is always to remain still, somewhere. Why place your burden on four others? I shall bear your burden. I will feed you, clothe you, and provide you shelter wherever you may be. I have come for this, to give you guidance and take you to the goal!” To everybody’s relief, the disciples silently picked up the litter and bore their guru, now wrapped up in his towel, back to Bukkapatnam and beyond. Those that remained in the mandir were lost in silence. Eashwaramma, however, was versed in the folkways of rural India; she feared that the silent guru might revenge himself, with a black formula aimed at Sathya and promptly vowed that she would perform a propitiatory rite in the Shiva Temple. Poor mother, swinging between courage and fear, yet experiencing glimpses of a strange joy, when the veil over the unknowable was occasionally blown aside by the breeze of Baba’s benediction!

Gradually, Eashwaramma’s visits to the mandir became more frequent. She lingered in the hall longer and longer, gazing upon Swami; she sat, watching with awe the expanding aura of His Love. Slowly, but surely, Eashwaramma was freeing herself from the bonds of affection and slipping in the role of a devotee.

There were many like the Rani of Chincholi, the Princes of Sandur, the Princesses of Mysore, and Sakamma the ‘Coffee Queen’, whose efforts transformed the popular festival of Dasara into ten, highly holy days. They brought their jewels here for Dasara. After hours of protesting, teasing, and refusal, Swami gave in at last and agreed to wear them: The women devotees of Karnataka, Andhra, and Tamil Nadu were delighted to dress their guru in orange, brocade-bordered robes, silken dhotis edged with zari, and rich, zari-embroidered slippers. There were rings of diamond, amethyst, aquamarine, fire opal, emerald, sapphire, turquoise, and heliotrope, for all His fingers. What delight it was for Eashwaramma each of these Dasara days, watching the blazing splendour of her son as He stepped into the flower-decked palanquin.

The palanquin left the mandir at about nine each night, to be taken around the village in procession. Eashwaramma could watch them leave, then go down to the village herself to see the chariot pass by her house, surrounded by bhajan groups, pipers, drummers, devotees, and villagers. It could be well past midnight, when the procession reached there, for nobody was in a hurry. There would be a halt at every square, while the musicians, who had come from Bangalore, began a long elaboration on the ragas they loved. And everyone in the village, Hindu, Muslim, rich, poor, high-caste and low wanted the chariot stopped at their doorstep, to offer garlands and perform arati of burning camphor. Eashwaramma’s gasp was added to the homage of the vast crowds, as they saw the Vibhuti and Kumkum that emanated spontaneously from His brow.

On Vijayadashami, the last day of Dasara, the Jamboo Sawari and Shani Puja ceremonies (traditional rites observed by the rulers of States) were daringly enacted at Puttaparthi by the royal devotees. Swami, as the central figure, was taken in a colourful procession to a Shani tree that grew at the outskirts of the village, where He shot a ritual arrow, symbolic of the battle against the evil forces that endanger the progress of mankind, and returned in triumph to the mandir. Would this arouse public outrage, Eashwaramma worried, but how could she suppress her joy that bubbled through the fear? She saw Sathya revered as the Sathya Sai “Sat Chakravarti”, the Lord of a vast and mighty domain.

Soon, the mandir built on the eastern end of Subbamma’s street (she did not live, though, to see Swami occupy it) grew too small for the devotees streaming in. Swami, now, pointed to an expanse of land, nestling under the shadow of a range of high hills to the South of the mandir and foretold its future as another Tirupati, where millions would gather for His Darshan. ‘What a tall tale? What a thin dream!’ thought those, who were around Him as He spoke – until, to their amazement, all that land was soon acquired by devotees and engineers grew busy with plans.

Questions

1.Who were the four kinds of devotees who were coming to young Baba?

2. Why did Eashwaramma prefer the word ‘Swami’ to ‘Baba’?

3. On Vijayadashami, why was Swami taken to the Shani tree at the outskirts of the village?

Eashwaramma was the one most aggrieved, at what she considered Swami’s determination to keep her Puttaparthi at arm’s length. The existing mandir was already at the very fringe of the village and the new site was a half kilometre away from the mandir itself. She gathered all the arguments she could find against the project and went to the mandir. “Swami! What is this I hear?” she cried, rushing into the hall where He sat among a group of devotees from Kuppam. “They say You are going to build a new mandir on that hill. How can You go to a place that is so far from the village, a place that is surrounded by jungle and filled with snakes and scorpions? How will people, who are old and sick and mothers with tiny children get to You? Aren’t You going to bother, hereafter, with their troubles? Are You going to deny them Your Darshan? What is the fate of those, who come to You in the future?”

“You have the mark of the wheel (the chakra) under Your foot and You will never stay in one place!” she went on agitatedly, “You must always be climbing a hill or crossing a river, to find a place to sit singing bhajans. Which god-forsaken place have You found, now? Don’t You know that You must consult astrologers, before You think of moving anywhere? And, listen to me!” she warned, “This mandir is enough for You. It is better to have a small place that is filled with people, than a huge building half empty!” There was no interruption to this torrent of protest. Swami sat in patient silence, letting her say what she would and merely smiled at the end of it all. “Speak to me! Tell me something in reply!” she had to exclaim at last, in sheer vexation. Swami softened, “Why do you bother with people’s talk?” He asked gently. “There will be no jungle and no snakes, when I go there,” He said, “There will be hundreds of pilgrims, pouring in everyday and that place will become a Shirdi, a Tirupati, and a Kashi!”

Stumped by this ringing pronouncement, Eashwaramma fell back on her eldest son as her Court of Last Resort. Swami must be persuaded to contain Himself within the Puttaparthi mandir, she pleaded. Seshama Raju then wrote to Swami, voicing their protests, but the letter he got in reply knocked them more breathless still. Immeasurable audacity from a mere sixteen-year old! He was not to be considered a ‘son’ any longer, Sathya had written, for He was not that indeed. It was at the decision of His own Will that He had come as Man among men in order to liberate all men, the good and the bad, from misery. Millions from the four quarters of the world would come seeking Him and very soon, those standing at the far edge of the crowd would consider themselves lucky indeed, if they could but get Darshan of an orange speck in the distance.

“Millions would come? Here? Where would they stay or stand?” Eashwaramma asked. Seshama Raju, however, was tactful enough at this point not to make matters worse, by producing his favourite and uncomplimentary theory of Sathya’s behaviour. But, when Lakshmayya, a devotee, whom Sathya had taken to the new building site and described the day, when millions would strain to glimpse that orange speck, related that conversation to him, Seshama Raju could not contain his exasperation. “Who will believe this Ramayana?” he sneered derisively, while Eashwaramma sent up frantic supplications to the gods, to solve this maze of events with gargantuan dimensions that threatened to overwhelm them all.

But, Swami, the all-knowing, was filled with compassion at this rustic woman’s bewilderment, at her acceptance of all that glitters as gold and of all that was rumoured as real. Travel was the best thing to broaden her views He decided, for she had been confined nearly all her life to the rural hinterland. Sathya persuaded her to come along with Him and the devotees to Bangalore. Fast cars sped them along macadamized highways, through stretching brown barrenness and then, to carpets of cool green, of jowar, paddy, and ragi, of sweet sugar cane and cotton. At Madras, she looked at the sea for the first time. Swami had described the Ocean to her in epic terms, for these were the waters that Rama and His
monkey hordes had once crossed in the Treta Yuga, on their way to Lanka. A few drops sprinkled on the head purifies a person to perfection, He said, for into it flows the holy rivers Ganga, Jamuna, Kaveri, and Godavari.

Eashwaramma was touched to the depths of her being, as she gazed in awe at this very first vision of the ocean, boundless in its immensity, eternal in its rhythm of surge and swell, changing forever and yet, ever the same. The expanse is endless, with the horizon at its limits, with the sky as its roof, with the subtle colours of space as its own, blue, deep grey-green, cloudy-white. She burst into an exclamation of wonder that this was the very mirror of God, reflecting the majesty of His many moods!

For the first time, Eashwaramma knew the hurry and scurry of cities, the noise of bazaars. She greeted lions and tigers, pythons and peacocks, and those most strange creatures of creation, the giraffe and the kangaroo, all at the Mysore zoo. She liked the cool comfort of Bangalore. She survived the biting cold of Ootacamund on the Nilgiris, the Blue Mountains of Tamil Nadu. She visited the fabled temples of India and the sacred rivers, too. All the while, Swami was showering His constant attention upon her, giving her as much care indeed as He gave His devotees. And this was His special grace, she knew, for she had not yet completely severed the fear-breeding ties of affection as a mother and soared in the freedom of trust and devotion.

Questions

1.When His mother was worried that Swami was moving to the new Mandir, what did Swami reply?

2. What did Swami do to broaden the views of Eashwaramma?

3. What touched Eashwaramma to the depths of her being?

4. Which was the first zoo that Eashwaramma visited?

This was about the time, when a new India was in the making, seeking its fruit of freedom. The pioneers of independence were straining their every nerve to break down the hide-bound taboos of society, but this simple woman of the village, who had hardly heard of the crusade against orthodoxy, found that she too was hustled willy-nilly against the barricades of tradition. She sat beside not only princesses, but women of the Anglo-Indian community and those of castes considered ‘untouchable’. Who dares pick and choose among devotees? It is the inalienable right of all mankind to reach towards the divine! And Eashwaramma was ‘Mother’ to whole neighbourhoods in the cities. Her ‘daughters’ gathered around, speaking a medley of tongues, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. To them all, her answer was one simple sentence in Telugu, the only language she knew. “Anta Swami daya, Amma,” ”It is all Swami’s Grace, my child.” But, it was uttered with so much benediction and assurance that no one wished to miss the sweetness of hearing them spoken.

Among the devotees were Hanumantha Rao, the Inspector General of Prisons of the Madras Presidency, Navaneetam Naidu, the Commissioner of Excise, Mysore, Ranajodh Singh, Mysore’s Inspector General of Police, the Raja of Sandur, and others, seeking Swami’s advice on matters both official and personal. Eashwaramma sat confounded, as she watched this line-up of the powerful and the prestigious. How is He going to set right the affairs of palaces? She wondered, when the aristocrats of Mysore sat at His feet. What does He know of Patel (Vallabhbhai Patel) at Delhi? She questioned herself anxiously, as she overheard Swami’s words to the Raja. But, she did not have to worry that Swami was over-reaching Himself. Soon enough, these people were back with beaming smiles on happy faces.

Sathya’s absence from Puttaparthi became more frequent. Who heeded the ‘boon’ she had extracted from her son that He would remain at Puttaparthi? Certainly not the devotees like Sakamma from Bangalore, the Princesses from Mysore, the Chincholi family from Hyderabad, the Mudaliars of Madras, and the Chettiars from Kuppam, Karur, Udumalpet, and Tiruchirappali. They were convinced that Swami belonged to them, for had He not indeed come for His devotees? And not Sathya either. He, like Krishna, wished to bless the poor, the sick, and the old, who could not afford or survive the journey to Puttaparthi. And all those, who delighted so greatly in Swami’s company, in His pranks, songs, and conversation, wished to share this incomparable discovery of theirs, this unfailing source of joy with everyone they knew, their relatives and their rivals, their friends and their foes, their neighbours and non-believers, too. They begged Swami to stay a ‘few’ days with them, but not even a whole month ever amounted to a ‘few’ days, as they counted!

Eashwaramma longed to accompany Him, whenever He left His ‘Sthan’ (that is, His permanent place of residence, as she loved to refer to Puttaparthi, feeling the comfort and reassurance of this possessive phrase). But, how could she do so every time, when so many family problems pressed upon her? Her younger daughter Parvathamma had just been widowed with two children, a girl and a deaf and dumb boy to care for; and there was Janakiram, her youngest son, whose chronic illness of the lungs had hospitalised him. When Sathya went off on His journey, Eashwaramma could only pray to the guardian gods and goddesses to protect Him from the many strange types of food and perhaps, the unfamiliar
varieties of air and water too, which He would have to imbibe!

Swami was just out of His teens and at Bangalore, when He did fall ill just as Eashwaramma had feared. His hosts, Raja Setty and Sakamma, called in the doctors. But, no one could diagnose the trouble. How could they, for Swami announced, “I have willed the illness!” He quoted precedent from the lives of Rama and Shirdi Baba, to show that They, too, had had an apathetic distaste for food and fun for some years, during Their teenage. This ‘illness’ was, therefore, indispensable for Him, Swami said, spending hours trying to reassure His devotees

At last, besieged by insistent questioning, Swami confessed that He was in the process of remoulding His physical frame, so that it might withstand the divine energy stirring within, for He had to embark on His Avataric tasks. Such incomprehensible words, such tremendous, mysterious happenings. Whoever had the experience of anything like this? Men and women stood around Him, dumb and distraught.

When I saw Swami for the first time, I was told that His body had only just got back to normal. His voice was still feeble and faint then, His walk, slow and hesitant, and His mop of hair almost too heavy for His neck. I could imagine the mother’s anguish, as she helplessly watched the tender body of her son being ‘overhauled” by the very source of its sustenance. And this wasn’t all. There were many such moments of tension in store for her, still. They were obviously lessons, designed to promote her from the consciousness of being ‘Amma’ to an awareness of being ‘Eashwaramma’; from the delusion that she was the ‘mother of Sathya’ to the truth that she was the ‘woman blessed to be the mother of Eshwara’ (Eshwara is the concept of the absolute, as conditioned by name and form). She was, therefore, soon to be a mother, showering affection on all living beings. “I do not belong to you,” Sathya told her. “To whom, then, do I belong?” was her response. “To you belong the world and its peoples,” was the answer, the lesson He was giving her.

Eashwaramma was to see many repetitions of that first Uravakonda ‘fall’, which they had mistaken for a scorpion sting. It was on Vijayadashami, the tenth day of Dasara, that Shirdi Sai Baba had given up His mortal body. Now, at Puttaparthi, even as puja, bhajans, processions, and the mass feeding of the poor were being organised by devotees, Swami, who had announced that He was that Shirdi spirit come again to expand and continue the same task, would ‘fall’ at Puttaparthi to ‘rise’ at Shirdi and bless the devotees, during the festivities there. When Swami came back, He told the gathering at the mandir that He had been to Shirdi and had decided to grant Darshan there, on every Vijayadashami day. Year after year, Eashwaramma witnessed this scene that strengthened her faith in the divine origin of her son.

But, these incidents were not limited to Vijayadashami day, Eashwaramma was soon to make the discovery that Swami belonged to the world, that even as His body was there before her very eyes, He himself flees to answer someone, who calls on God. There were out-of-the body journeys at all hours of the day and night. He would often tell them the details of His errands of mercy, when He returned from these distant sojourns – dacoity in a Telangana valley, floods in Rajahmundry, a car accident on the roads of Karnataka, a fire in Madras – He was here, there, everywhere, in homes, hospitals, or jungles with His miraculous help.

Eashwaramma listened with rapt wonder. It was only natural that her mind ran to the stories from the epics, in which the villages are steeped. Didn’t Krishna rush to the city of Hastinapur to save the honour of the Queen of the Pandavas, when their enemies, the Kauravas tried to disrobe her in open court? Wasn’t He there, again, with them in the jungles, where they lived in exile, when the Kauravas arranged a provocative situation to expose the Pandavas to the curses of the bad-tempered Sage Durvasa? As soon as Swami came back to consciousness, there would be excited questions from Eashwaramma. “Did Draupadi call You to Hastinapur or to the jungle? Did You hear the elephant trumpet in despair, when the crocodile gripped its leg?” (This last refers to a story from the Puranas, when the Lord Narayana hurries to save the king of the elephants). And Swami would say, “Yes. There are Draupadis now, too and wicked Kauravas also, determined to insult them. There are still Durvasas with fiery tempers, ever ready to bully the helpless and parade their power to curse. There are human crocodiles, hiding in calm waters, waiting to pounce on their victims. I have come to show them all that I am here to protect whoever calls on God.”

Swami’s words to Eashwaramma were the same that once were spoken by the Lord to Joshua: “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whither-so-ever thou goest.”

“Neither be thou dismayed?” But, who would not be alarmed at Swami’s ever increasing display of His powers? He had begun surgical operations, now! He did a tonsils operation on a child, who was the nephew of no less a dignitary than the Inspector General of Prisons of the Madras Presidency. He coolly invited Dr. Padmanabhan of Bangalore to send his 17 year old brother to Puttaparthi, saying, “Why take the trouble to put him in the Victoria Hospital? I shall do the hernia operation and he will be up and about, perfectly fine, ten minutes later.” There was an operation on Tirumala Rao, another VIP from Bangalore. The surgery was done with knives, scissors, needles, and swabs, all created in seconds with just a few circular movements of His right or left hand. The vibhuti He produced was anaesthetic,
antiseptic, and tonic, all in one. The patients recovered in record time. And the wonder grew in Eashwaramma’s voice and eyes. There was greater and greater fervour each time she spoke the word ‘Swami’, now.

It was not wonder alone, but a measure of resignation, too, that had come. The old puzzlement and fear were dying fast in her. She grew to accept the fact that the circumstances of her life, the who and the what, the where and the why, were unalterable and most often incomprehensible acts of God. The stories from the epics, the great ‘oral culture’ of India that pervades the subconscious of its people, had long ago taught them that the truths of life are mysteries that lie beyond the mind’s mere understanding. But, there still did linger a thin haze of dust that hid the total Swami from her view. She could not quite rid herself of the belief that the ‘evil eye’ could affect this wondrous boy of hers. He would protest, but she insisted on carrying out the ritual of averting it – the coconut waved around the body to draw the subtle waves or particles of evil towards it, which was then broken in a symbolic act of destruction.

Questions

1. What did Swami quote as the reason for His illness at Bangalore?

2. When Swami came back from His out-of-the-body journeys, what would Eashwaramma ask
Him?

Meanwhile, the mandir at the new site was fast nearing completion and now, there was a new source of heartache for the Mother. The Old mandir beside the Gopalaswami temple at the edge of the village was close enough for Eashwaramma to walk in, to see and hear Swami, every now and then. But, the new building stood aloof and distant on its hilly site and Eashwaramma realised, with a sinking heart, that it announced the dawn of a new stage in Swami’s life. The village mandir was small, cosy, and comfortable and life there had been informal. There were the ageing devotees, who had sought refuge at the old mandir and others, who had pitched tents or built thatched huts on the open ground to the North of the building. Swami could be seen any time. He was granting Darshan and giving directions, wherever He sat or stood, to the engineers and workmen, who sought His blessings and guidance. The pilgrims, too, moved freely in and out and earned interviews and blessings without long waits.

But, conditions in the new mandir were certain to be different. Eashwaramma did not appreciate the storeyed building and the circular stairway that led to Swami’s rooms on the upper floor. It only meant that Swami was going to be less accessible; surely, someone will be posted on the ground floor to climb up and tell Swami that a devotee stood below, waiting for permission. No longer could they just walk into Him. The very name, by which the new mandir was to be known, sounded ominous. ‘Prasanthi Nilayam’, its literal meaning was ‘the Abode of Supreme Peace’, but was it going to bring peace for her? Rather, it signified the confluence of the whole world.

Swami had given a preview of its import, one day, to a group of men sitting on the sands of the Chitravati. It is not an ashram, for you cannot place Me in anyone of the four Ashramas of life (‘Ashramas’ in this sense means the stages of life – the four stages as prescribed in the ancient scriptures, student, householder, recluse, and renunciant). Nor am I a hermit, a monk, or an ascetic. It is not a mandir (temple), for I do not prescribe any mode of ritual worship or propagate a Sai cult. There is nothing occult in Me! Nevertheless, it is a temple and a church, a mosque, a synagogue too, a shrine, where all human beings can achieve Prasanthi, Supreme Peace, by merging in Infinite Love that has been embodied as God, god-man, godhead. My task is to transform every heart into a Prasanthi Nilayam, so that the world may shine as one, vibrant, vital Prasanthi Nilayam. I am the Avatar come with this resolve!”

Prasanthi Nilayam! Eashwaramma shuddered at the mere name, at the vast vistas of meaning it held, of the yawning spaces it indicated between herself and Swami, who could no longer be considered her son, between Swami and all the other swamis she had known, or of whom she had heard. Would she ever be worthy enough to enter the portals of this monumental Abode of Peace that He would create?

On the eve of His ceremonial move to the new mandir, Eashwaramma secured another ‘boon’ from Swami that He would have His dining room on the east side of the upper floor, even though He had chosen the rooms at the other end, in which to live. Swami was very strict in enforcing the disciplinary rule that men and women must keep apart, so while the men used the staircase at the west end, Eashwaramma and her daughters climbed up the one at the east end and spoke to Him there. They were not allowed free entry into His apartment any more. But, this promise of Swami’s was like the earlier one Eashwaramma had won out of Him, that He would remain at Puttaparthi. What person, promise, or place, or predicament can hold such a One as He? How could one, who is all Spirit, be anything but elusive?

They would be waiting and waiting, anxiously, in the dining room and only when they were almost desperate would He come sauntering along the long veranda. He came to give Darshan and not really to eat. Sitting at the small table, He would finger just one or two of the carefully prepared and fearfully offered items, release a few repartees or replies to their questions and rise, humming a tune, to return to the regions inaccessible to them. Swami, like Shirdi Baba, allowed each yearning devotee to place his offerings, too, on the table, but the hope that He would eat something from these was a vain one, on most days.

The easy, familiar days at the old mandir were gone forever. But, Swami, in His compassion, had, however, granted Eashwaramma a few minutes of access to Him, whenever she needed the healing touch of His vibhuti, or relief from depressing routine.

The only means that Eashwaramma could resort to, in order to be at peace with herself, was to re-live Sathya’s childhood and boyhood days and to remind herself of His pranks and repartees. When Swami announced that He had resolved to confer joy and wisdom to all men everywhere, she persuaded her mind to have faith in these words, by counting the number of beggars He had led by the hand at her door and the quantities of warm clothing and food the boy had insisted on being given to them. She longed for similar revelations from Swami, so that she could stamp the claim as authentic with the help of her memory.

As time flowed on, she became an ardent listener of the stories the devotees brought, of their experience of Swami and the Baba of Shirdi. Her faith became firmer, her sympathy became wider. Her counsel granted warmer comfort to the pilgrims, who approached her with their tales of Swami’s love and learning.

She loved children. In every child, she found Sathya hiding, inviting her to seek and succeed. Naturally, they cuddled in flocks around her. They watched with delight the twinkle in her eyes and the wrinkles on her cheeks and chin, as she joked and laughed. They were amused and their attention was aroused, when the many gold and glass bangle jingled as she gesticulated, while stressing a point or underlining a warning. When she found a child chubby, she squeezed and pulled its cheeks to see the patch of pink, the thrill the impact lent to the angel face.

She could be easily inveigled into the narration of hair raising or heart-warming tales, in order to keep the children wrapped in excitement. Her pleasing, pliant voice reproduced the screams for the kidnapped heroine, the wail of the wounded demon, the plaint of the frightened son, the roar of the victorious warrior, and the crooning of the child cast on the jungle track. In fact, she was quick in adding to her repertory stories about the Sai Baba of Shirdi and Swami.

The children watched the pictures she so realistically designed and described – the white umbrella with tassels of gold held over a pair of sandals, the emergence of the lion– faced God from the marble pillar of the royal audience hall, the dance of the child on the hoods of an angry serpent. Eashwaramma forgot her physical ailments, the deeper deprivations, and the assaults on her inner peace, when engaged in story-telling. Invariably, she rounded up the tales with emphatic perorations on humility and honesty, love and loyalty. These lessons were lapped up by the kids, for they were soaked in the syrup of her affection.

Whenever I left Puttaparthi village, at the end of my stay, I hired a bullock cart to transport me to Bukkapatnam, four miles, by road, for I had to take a box of things and a bedroll. The cart belonged to Kesava, the young man, who lived next door to the Ratnakaram family house. He was of the same age as Sathya and Eashwaramma, being the champion story teller of the village, he loved to hear the tales she narrated and he remembered all of them.

Let me anticipate events that happened a quarter of a century later. The night before Eashwaramma’s passing away from the mortal stage, she was at Brindavan Bungalow with Swami. There were a thousand college students in the adjacent Hostel. They were participating in a month-long course on Indian Culture and Spirituality, under the guidance of Swami. The bungalow was buzzing with activity and I happened to be there. At about 9 p.m., as I was flitting from room to room to locate my bed, I beheld the Mother in the inner veranda of the open quadrangle of the bungalow, with three of her great-grandchildren before  her, their attention glued to a fairy tale she was relating to them.

Kesava told me that the Mother developed the plot and counterplot and added villains and heroes, adventures and accidents as her narration proceeded, whenever she felt the attention of the children straying far.

Here is one such story spun by Eashwaramma, as related by Kesava. Once upon a time, a widowed mother lived in a village home with her only child, a son. She doted on him so much that when he married and brought home his wife, she found in her a rival and not the lovely little angel the son saw in her. The mother-in-law found fault with every act of hers. Her tongue lashed all day long in anger. The wife could not tolerate the mother-in-law’s temper. One day, all three of them were at the temple of Mari, the Deity of Disease and Vengeance. The entire population of the village was there, for it was the annual festival, when the Goddess would possess one or more among the worshippers and issue warnings to the villagers on how to behave. Goats were sacrificed, drums deafened the ear, and pipes
droned pitilessly. The temple priest danced wildly. The daughter-in-law decided that she would pretend to be possessed, even before the priest and others started screaming warnings. She worked herself up into a frenzy. She reeled and rotated, she shook her head and waved her hands as she had seen the victims of ‘possession’ do. She gasped and grunted; she laughed and whimpered; she shouted and whispered. Everyone clutched their hands in fear. She frightened the mother-in-law, leaping forward to where she sat shuddering. Mari evidently spoke through her. “I will set your house on fire. I will pull your bones apart. If one drop of a tear, from the eye of that little woman in your custody, falls on the ground, I will fry your body on hot coal. Stop it. Swallow your foul tongue.” The mother-in-law kept repeating her responses, “I shall not,” “I will do as you command.” Then, Mari turned to the son, in order to rebuke him for being too weak-kneed to protect his wife, but he was not there. Terrified by the Mari that his wife had become, he fled and fled… and was never seen again!

The grown-ups, too, pleaded for stories. They longed to hear stories of Swami’s childhood and boyhood. Eashwaramma did not yield without protesting and procrastinating, for as soon as she searched her memory for an incident, the picture of Swami as Vittal, or Krishna, or Mohini, or Sai Baba came before her eyes and filled them with tears. She would pine to regain the joy of possession. But, when she found that her silence or avoidance was making others sad, she would award them an incident or two, interspersed with apologies. “You know more of Him. He gives you more chances. He was always a bit afar from us. Subbamma could tell you much about His pranks and powers. Many have heard her describe that incident one day, when Swami brought down her husband from the realm of the departed and showed him standing in the backyard of her house. She can tell you how Swami was given poison by some woman of this village, who wanted to test Him and see if He was the God He said He was.” Eashwaramma would heave a long sigh and whisper, “It was a joint  family. There were about twenty children, who had to be bathed, clothed, fed, and put to sleep. Every day, it was a new Swami for us.”

Eashwaramma appreciated the earnestness and enthusiasm of young children. Her grandsons were a bright lot and she insisted that they join higher classes and educate themselves to the utmost. She loved to encourage the sons and grandsons of others, too. She prevailed upon Swami to agree with her choice and send money to them to meet their tuition fees and the cost of books and boarding. I was the person, who filled forms for the money-orders and remitted the amounts at the Post Office; I was myself the Post Master, for some years. Therefore, it was from me that Eashwaramma used to verify if the money had been sent to the boys, studying in widely scattered schools. She felt pained, whenever she discovered that the dispatch had suffered delay. “The boys cannot study well, now,” she used to say, “They will be too worried to read in peace.” When she found that a name had been dropped, because the boy had left school, she pressed me to correspond with the parents and persuade them to keep him at school, until he came to some shape.

And the sick? Eashwaramma was, perhaps, the person most gratified, when Swami announced that a twelve bed hospital would be raised on the hill to the South of the mandir. She grumbled about the site, however. “How could those, who are ill pull themselves up to that height?” she queried and she was not satisfied, when Swami replied that they can be brought to the hospital by devotees and volunteers in stretchers, or they can come in bullock carts along the road specially laid for the purpose. The hospital, however, was welcomed whole-heartedly

For her part, while Swami was at the village mandir and even later, she could avail herself of the expert medical advice of Dr. Lakshmi, the famous physician and gynaecologist from Nellore, who stayed for weeks in the presence of Swami. Whenever she, her daughters, or others of the Ratnakaram family received the kind attention of that doctor, Eashwaramma prayed to her to examine, diagnose, and prescribe medicines for other village women, too. She longed for a lady doctor, who could stay at the mandir year in and year out and help women in times of dire need.

And she mingled among the women devotees hauling sand, stone, bricks, and cement from the road up to the site of the hospital. She lifted bricks herself, brushing aside the protests from the women. When the wards were ready, she sought out women patients, brought them to the doctor, pleaded that they be admitted, and looked after them, until they could move about and take their normal share in the work at home and in the fields. Dr. Jayalakshmi, the gynaecologist trained in Wales, who is serving in the Sathya Sai hospital, tells me that Eashwaramma was a pioneer in serving enceinte women and babies. She advised against magical rites and the offering of fowls and lambs to Mariamma and lesser deities, to drive diseases away. She sat with the patients, while they were interrogated, waited until the diagnosis ended, and held them firm as the dreaded needle was administered. And when women were admitted as in-patients, she climbed the bulge of the hill more often, in order to make the unfortunates know that there was a Mother interested in their recovery.

The mother had to face a bolt from Fate, a few years after the inauguration of Prasanthi Nilayam. Her elder daughter, married to Eashwaramma’s own brother, was widowed under tragic circumstances. He was bitten by a dog that was soon discovered to be rabid. The villagers had not heard of Pasteur. They interpreted the illness as due to black magic, or the evil eye and indulged in countermeasures against unseen forces. But, verbal incantations and herbal potions proved ineffective. It was late by the time the patient was taken to the hospital at Anantapur, forty-four miles away. Subba Raju’s life, spent in dedication and service, ended abruptly and tragically. He was for, some years, the supervisor of labour, when Prasanthi Nilayam was under construction.

Eashwaramma reeled under the impact. Swami soothed and sustained her, during those dark days. He poured courage into her heart. His words were balm to the lacerated mind. She engaged herself more earnestly in caring for the young son of her bereaved daughter. The other daughter, too, had suffered the same fate, a few years earlier. She had two sons and a daughter. Eashwaramma felt a painful pang, whenever she reminded herself that one of the sons was deaf and dumb. The cross she bore was heavy indeed.

However, when the Mother contemplated the physical and mental condition of the men and women, who streamed into Puttaparthi to benefit from the healing hand of Swami, she felt that life is but a journey from one dire misery to another. The new-born baby wails, because someone tells it that it has to encounter endless pain. Death is the curtain that falls to mark the end of the unrelieved tragedy, called life. She was not made bitter by these thoughts, though; but, she drew strength from them and floated buoyantly on the briny waters of sorrow. She decided to seek out despair and despondency and drop the dew of compassion on drooping hearts. She spent hours consoling and counselling the women, who came to Prasanthi Nilayam, in her own simple, sincere, sunshine way, instilling faith in God and confidence in themselves. Eashwaramma had a soft heart towards young women, who were widowed by fate and who were, therefore, ostracised by society, as if their misfortune was infectious! She also sought out young women deserted by their husbands and left alone and helpless. Many such were brought by their parents or kinsmen, so that they may recover from the shock and renew their lives afresh. She discovered that a large number of women, who were brought to Puttaparthi as afflicted by ‘ghosts’ and as victims of spirits, were amenable to softness and sweetness. The wild fury and frenzied cries of many unfortunates cooled down considerably, when they received kind words and mild soothing from the Mother, for the basic cause of their malady was the denial of Love.

The love, with which she treated these women, blossomed wider as she watched Swami healing the stricken. He showered compassion on them and applied vibhuti profusely on their brows. When they were restored to normalcy and taken back home, Swami used to narrate the reasons why their thoughts went awry and their words were soaked in spite. Listening to Him, Eashwaramma decided that she would not condemn or ridicule any woman on the basis of her apparent faults or failings, for they were only, she knew, the symptoms of maladjustment, or neglect, or persecution and poverty.

The Mother thus became more than their own mother, to an ever-increasing number of women in distress. She was a friend with a burnished mind. Contemplating the Mother among those, who were rescued by Swami, I’d like to repeat Rabindranth’s exclamatory poem on Women:

‘Woman! You are blest!
You have your home, your household work
In the midst of it you keep a little gap
Through which you hear the cry of the weak.
You bring your offering of service,
And pour out your love.
Your patience is endless –
Their helplessness calls out your mercy.

The devotees discovered in her a never failing source of strength and wisdom. They sought her out more and more often, and honoured her as the Mother, assigning her distinct roles during festivals and holy days. Eashwaramma did not yield, as soon as the women surrounded her and pleaded that she should guide them or bless them. But, how long could she keep them at bay? On holy days dedicated to the worship of Varalakshmi (the Goddess of Wealth ready to grant boons), or Gowri (the Fair Consort of Shiva, mother of Ganesh), she had to accept the first offering of homage from every woman, who needed her. During the nine days of Navaratri, the Festival of the Mother, she was honoured for the first three days as Durga (the smoothener of the path, the provider of safety and security for Her children), in the next three days as Lakshmi (the provider of food, clothng and shelter, status, power, and renown) and on the last three as Saraswati (the teacher, who implants the yearning for learning and for liberation, for material skills and moral strength).

During these days, Swami directed the women devotees to assemble at the Prayer Hall of the Nilayam, every morning and evening, to worship the Mother Goddess, reciting the thousand and eight names, which attempt to capture a glimpse of Her Glory. Eashwaramma vehemently declined to be installed on this occasion, as the visible symbol of the divine Mother. She even wriggled out of participation, since the women insisted that she must at least be seated at the head of the row. She preferred to enter unannounced, sit through the ritual unmarked, and slip away unnoticed.

But, on the jhoola evening at least, she had to yield to the chorus of importunity. This, the granting of Darshan by Swami while on a floral swing, was the valedictory event in Navaratri. While Swami was on the swing, the women devotees placed heaps of fruits, flowers, and sweets and arranged lamps in attractive patterns before Him. Arati would be offered to Him as He got off the swing. So, when Swami indicated that He intended to leave and the camphor flame should be readied, a series of flames were waved before Him by the women, singing traditional lilts the while. They sought out Eashwaramma and brought her to the Nilayam, in time to wave the first Arati, warding off her arguments and protestations that the privilege must be granted to this or that other woman, who was much more deeply devoted than she was!

Every Hindu child has his ‘birthday’ celebrated at home, as a festival with extra prayers and the special offerings of sweets to the family deity. The child is seated facing East on a sanctified plank. The mother pours a few drops of oil on the head and others follow her. The child is given a ceremonial bath and dressed in new clothes. It has to touch the feet of elders and sit in the shrine, while prayers are offered by the parents for its long life, health, progress, and prosperity. Prasanthi Nilayam was inaugurated on Swami’s Birthday, in 1950. The Birthday, until that year, had been rather informal. Swami delighted the Mother and the Father and their sons and daughters, by visiting their home and going through the ritual of lunch in their company. After the parents had placed a few drops of oil on His cluster of hair, the ceremonial bath was gone through and Swami fulfilled the longing of some devotee, by accepting the robe and dhoti he placed at His feet. All those present, then, touched His feet,
praying for boons and blessings.

Prasanthi Nilayam, however, challenged the devotees to inaugurate a more impressive, although still intimate celebration of the birthday of their dear Lord. Elderly women gathered at the Nilayam, in the early hours of the twenty-third day of November. Each one had a plate, on which were piles of flowers, fruits, sweets, coconuts, turmeric, kumkum, rice grains, betel leaves and areca, sandal paste, blocks of jaggery, glass bangles, and other auspicious materials. Shining pots filled with consecrated water were carried on their hips. One of the group bore a silver plate with a silk sari upon it. A few elderly men joined them with a silk dhoti for the father and they proceeded to Puttaparthi village, preceded by pipers and drummers. When they reached the Ratnakaram home, they announced to the parents that it
was the Birthday of Bhagawan and invited them to Prasanthi Nilayam. One could sense a feeling of awkwardness and unpreparedness that dimmed their eyes, for both of them would rather be left alone, than be placed before the flood lights on the centre of the stage. Nevertheless, the Mother and Pedda Venkappa Raju did fulfil the wishes of the thousands. They were overwhelmed with the gratitude for the opportunity given to them by Swami.

As soon as they stood before Him, they lost all sense of time and space. Eashwaramma placed flowers on Swami’s feet and stood up to dip a rose in oil. When she lifted her palm to drop the oil on the son’s hair, He bent low so that the head would be within reach. The father, too, did the same and as both of them descended from the dais, the devotees hailed the occasion, expressing their joy in loud acclaim. It was only then, that Eashwaramma became aware of the Hall and the crowd, the Nilayam and the village. It was an embarrassing moment for her. But, she was soon relieved, for she found another wedded couple, climbing the steps to place flowers at Swami’s feet and apply oil on His hair. Swami selects about eight others to share in the joyous ceremony. They come from different linguistic and geographical regions and are invariably old in age and rooted in faith. Eashwaramma shunned publicity
and prominence and loved to lose her identity in a group of devotees, but on the Birthday, she had to submit to what she dreaded most – a pre-eminent role.

During Swami’s discourses, she stood for a few minutes somewhere, on the circumference of the audience, thrilled by the free flow of His silver voice. And when the applause sounded in the auditorium, she wondered what He had said that could evoke such spontaneous acclamation. When she next passed by my residence, she would ask me in confidence, “Was what Swami spoke so profound? Where does He gather all these mantras?” By ‘mantras’, she meant the Sanskrit verses, the Upanishadic lines, the Vedic hymns that Swami quoted. When the monthly magazine, Sanathana Sarathi, was inaugurated, she could not suppress her curiosity to know the number of people, to whom it was sent. When I informed her that devotees not merely demanded it, but actually adored the issues as they arrived by post, considering them as ‘prasad’ granted by Swami Himself, I found her not quite happy. She could not forget the fact that Sathya had left school too early and that He was venturing into depths that no one, known to her, would dare plumb!

Eashwaramma found that doctors and lawyers, monks and merchants, Rajas and Princes were coming to Puttaparthi and, sitting around Swami, pleading for answers and solutions to the doubts and questions they placed before Him. She herself only understood conversational Telugu, but she could see the relief and rejoicing that settled on their distracted faces, when they heard Swami’s words in reply. She gasped, when Swami gave them His assurance, “Don’t worry. I will be with you. Why bother? I am yours!” He was promising too much to too many, she felt in alarm and it took years for her to get rid of this fear. She had no knowledge that Avatars could address gatherings and transform base metal into gold through the alchemy of speech. The Rama and Krishna she knew had been householders, who had themselves learnt from sages. Krishna inspired and instructed others to obey Him and be saved. Rama had no time or inclination to give discourses on Dharma; He just lived it and people learnt it. Eashwaramma feared that someday, some pundit would arrive and silence her son. It took some years, before her heart was set at rest. Meanwhile, people of all races and all levels of civilization were arriving with hope and departing with faith, after hearing Swami’s intimate instructions, imparted in confidence in their own native dialects and languages.

Mother was happy, when Swami was before her eyes. She grew nervous, whenever He proposed to leave Puttaparthi on a visit to distant villages and towns. She was afraid that He would stay on indefinitely, or go on from there to other places nearby. She had heard that there was a wave of atheism and religious irreverence, invading village after village in the Southern parts of the country and so, when a group of elders from V. arrived and prayed that Swami accompany them to their town, she resolved to countermand the visit at all costs.

Srimati Susheelamma, who witnessed her frantic efforts, gives this description of her agitation: “They do not know the real situation in that place, or if they do, they don’t care what happens to Swami or themselves. It is sheer bravado,” Eashwaramma told herself as she hurried to the Nilayam in hot haste. Swami was in the dining room and at the table, ready to go through the rite, called lunch, when Eashwaramma came in gasping for breath, for she had climbed the steps at one stretch. “Why this excitement? What has happened?” Swami asked, pretending to be ignorant of her mission. The Mother said, “I have heard some news. Is it true?” “First, tell Me what they have told you,” Swami replied. “I won’t go now to any town,” she insisted. Swami had a hearty laugh at her anxiety. “How can I stick to this one room all the time? I have come from where I was, in order to go to places near and far,” He said. “That is not the point. Have You agreed to go with these people to V? Tell me,” the Mother asked, her voice shaking with trepidation. “Promise me that You won’t go to that place. That is all I ask. Listen to me. Heed my prayer. They say it is a centre of wickedness and cruelty. When I say ‘don’t’, don’t,” she pleaded. “That is the very reason I have agreed to go there. The doctor visits only the sick. How can people, who are seriously ill, harm the doctor? I do not hate them; so, they will not hate Me. I am not angry with them; so, they won’t be angry with Me,” He replied. But, the mother’s fears held on. She shed tears and looking straight into Swami’s eyes, said, “What more can I say? Bangaroo! Send these people away. Give me this one boon.” Swami rose and holding both her hands in His soft grasp, He wiped her tears and spoke so sweetly, that she left the room greatly relieved.

Yet, she met the group of hosts and requested them to be ever vigilant of who approached Swami and when. She was lost in prayer all the days that Baba was away and she was right there at the door, when He returned. As soon as He spotted her, Swami said, “Do you care to know what happened there? I plucked the fangs of every serpent!”

Questions

1. How would Eashwaramma show her love to children?

2. How did Eashwaramma help the building of the hospital and the female patients?

3. What opportunity were Swami’s parents blessed with on His birthday?

In July, 1957, Swami left for Rishikesh, accompanied by Swami Satchidananda of the divine Life Society. Satchidananda had attached himself to Swami, ever since he had first met Swami at Venkatagiri, in March that year. The President of the divine Life Society was the celebrated Swami Shivananda, the Founder and Chancellor of the Forest University at Rishikesh. Eashwaramma gathered information from us about this Swami, about his large and ever expanding group of monastic disciples, his erudition, and his famous proficiency in medicine. She was told that his health was causing concern and that the primary aim of Satchidananda, in getting Swami to travel to Rishikesh, was to have his aged guru cured through Swami’s divine grace.

Eashwaramma had heard and seen many Sanyasins and Anandas. She, in her innocence and ignorance, clung to the role of mother, which was but a short parenthesis in her career. She allowed herself to be tortured by flimsy fears. Sanyasins, who had built institutions around themselves, develop narrowness of vision. Masters, who accumulate disciples, degrade themselves into underlings. There is only one Jagat, but each of them claims to be the indisputable guru of that one Jagat! As a consequence, controversy, conflict, slander, thrust and counter thrust, black magic, riot, war, vendetta – these follow in a series. Eashwaramma reminded herself of the long–drawn conflict between the sages Vishwamitra and Vashishta, two gladiator Gurus, who are depicted in the Epics.

So, Eashwaramma failed to appreciate the worth of the North Indian tour. She approached me and many others to dissuade Swami from the journey. When we opened her eyes to the truth that Swami’s ‘will’ can never be changed by anyone into ‘won’t’, she then pleaded with us to be vigilant against the tactics of the Anandas ‘up there’. “Now, I understand how a story told by Swami about you could have happened!” I told the Mother. “What story?” she asked. “The story of your running onto the stage, during a drama at the Kottacheruvu Temple Festival, when the hero, who was Swami, was about to be punished for a crime he had not committed. Your affection compelled you to intervene. You forgot that it was just a drama with hundreds witnessing it!” “Yes, that was a drama. Now, the danger is real,” she argued, “He may be incapacitated or even…” I intervened with a clap of laughter intended to scatter the clouds of panic away. “We are going to the holy Ganga and to a greatly respected guru, who has invited Swami. He is the guide of thousands of highly placed officers, judges, and magistrates. Swami Satchidananda, who is with us, was himself a big officer of the government of Madras, before he became a monk,” I said.

“But, it is always better to be alert wherever you are,” she advised. “Rama was a prince, the mother of Krishna was the sister of King Kamsa, but we are only poor villagers. Swami has not learned the Shastras, while Rishikesh is the land of Rishis. The Chitravati is dry most days of the year. The Ganga flows full and fast. Why take Swami, now, to that place?” she persisted. I had to clinch the conversation by quoting what Swami had declared. “Mother! Remember what Swami has announced to you and me and all the world! The first sixteen years of His life will be filled with Leela, play. You have been blessed with experiencing that. The next sixteen will be filled with mahima, miracles. We have enjoyed that. Now, He is nearing the age of thirty-two. What has He said about His work, during the years that lie ahead? Upadesh, teaching, transforming the world. So, He is proceeding to teach the Rishis of the Himalayan forests. Let us watch and wonder, adore, and worship.”

Naturally, she was in high tension throughout the three weeks of Swami’s absence and when Swami returned, she was the one person at Puttaparthi, who felt the maximum relief and joy. Even the father had refused to listen to her importunity to halve her anxiety by sharing it!

When Swami described, in His inimitable, picturesque style, the ghats at Haridwar, the peacocks of Mathura, the houseboats on the Sutlej, Eashwaramma longed to join the group, when Swami went next on a visit, especially if it was to places hallowed in the epics or sanctified by temples. She never forgot that she had been named Eashwaramma, since she was born to her parents as a boon from Eshwara (Shiva) and she concluded that she could not miss any chance that would enable her to worship the Lord at temples, made alive and active by generations of genuine devotees.

When Swami decided to confer the joy of His presence at Surandai, the village of two long-standing applicants for that act of grace, He suggested that Eashwaramma could join their wives and a few other women devotees, for He was travelling via Coimbatore (with the temple of Ratnasabhapati at Perur), Trivandrum (Padmanabha Temple), Courtallam Falls (of the holy Tamraparni), and Kanyakumari. Eashwaramma had been fascinated by the Parthasarathi Temple at Triplicate, in Madras, with its sky-high Gopurams (Entrance Towers). She longed to see more of them and adore the gods, who could inspire artists and artisans to design and erect such monuments of human aspiration. At Trivandrum, Swami and His party stayed with a Headmaster, the father-in-law of one of the Surandai cousins, and
Eashwaramma enjoyed her days there with the group of women. Later, her thrill, as she touched the waters of the three seas that meet at the Cape, was far more than even at Madras, where she had filled her eyes with the vastness of the ocean, with which the waters of the Godavari, the Krishna, and the Kaveri merged.

Swami visited the West Coast again, soon; the Governor of Kerala, Dr. B. Ramakrishna Rao, a devotee for years, had discovered that Swami had come to the State and indeed to the very city, in which he lived, and had stayed three days without allowing him to know of His movements! The Governor blamed himself for not sensing the presence of His guru and God, and pleaded for a chance to make amends for the lapse. This time, Swami had six carloads of devotees with Him, including Eashwaramma. Swami did not agree to crowd Raj Bhavan with such a large number and had only Raja Reddy and myself with Him. However, He was about to yield to the prayer of the Governor’s wife to have Eashwaramma there, so that she could serve the Mother, but Eashwaramma shied away at that sign of special attention. She always liked to withdraw into a group of women devotees, who respected her dread of publicity and who refrained from loud demonstration of devotion to the woman, who had given the Avatar to the world. So, she wriggled out of the fanfare and stayed, on that occasion, with the
Headmaster, whose house was on a by-lane near the Padmanabha Swami Temple.

This humility was no pose. She was very shy before the camera and argued persistently against being photographed. It was not the humility that paraded itself on all occasions and drew the attention of others to the possessor of that virtue. Many are proud that they are not proud; they protest against praise, but are sad if praise is denied. But, Eashwaramma was temperamentally allergic to the limelight. She had grown in a cloistered hamlet and she stuck to the boundary stones, which her forefathers had set up to demarcate the fields of feminine activity. Fate brought women from all the corners of the world, speaking a hundred languages and from all castes, classes, and creeds to her door. She let them come and speak what they wished. But, she seldom sought to know what their words meant, for, as she confessed, “Why bother yourself with wishes you cannot fulfil and problems you cannot solve?” She had no desire to mislead visitors into the belief that she had easier access to the Lord and could win His Grace for those, in whom she was interested. She was aware that there were millions, who deserved His Grace and that she was only a candidate eager to qualify.

She had the age-old reverence for the husband, which prescribed mutual distance and silence and proscribed joint appearances on the same seat or even the same room. She retreated into the inner apartments, whenever Pedda Venkappa Raju was around and avoided all chances of a dialogue. But, as an obligatory duty, on Swami’s Birthday, they had to submit to the demand of the devotees and allow themselves to be honoured as the ‘parents’ and be taken in procession to the Nilayam. At Badrinath and Benares, the sacred idols had to be offered worship by the husband and wife together, according to the ancient lawgivers. In fact, the absence of the wife might even annul the fruits of the worship. Every gift made by the man has to be endorsed by the woman. He holds the coins in his hand and waits for the wife to pour some water on them, before they are handed over. Rama had sent Sita to a hermitage and could not get her back. So, when He performed a Vedic Yagnya, He had to keep a golden image of her by His side and invoke Sita on it, in order to satisfy the priests and the texts.

Eashwaramma was the model Hindu wife, on these and other occasions. Allow me to antedate an event. The day when Swami and the devotees left Lucknow for Benares, the Secretary to the Governor drew up the order of precedence for cars, according to protocol for the entourage of cars; the pilot car, the car with Swami and the Governor, the Police car, the Rolls Royce with the parents, the Secretary’s car, the car with the Editor of the Sanathana Sarathi, and so on. But, Eashwaramma declined the distinct demarcation. She preferred the van full of her sister devotees, whom she could regale with her raillery and colourful anecdotes

She witnessed Swami’s ‘miracles’ in the company of others, but her response was anxiety, rather than awe. She calculated that one miracle would lead to another, for those, whom it attracts, would clamour for it again and again. The mother feared that every miracle would drain Swami’s spiritual power. A few townsmen had whispered in her ear that the power would not last long, for Swami was using it up at a fast pace. She had dared warn Swami, once or twice, about this prospect, but had received in reply only a loud, “Bah! I must make everyone happy. I have come for this, to lead the poor and the miserable into ananda. The ananda is the food that sustains Me!”

Food! Noon and night, lunch time and dinner time, whenever she thought about it, Eashwaramma was confronted by a conundrum. How could the Ananda of others be Ahara (food) for Him? Her daughters and she were there in the room right around the table, with six or seven other women devotees from Madras, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. Not one of them was in Ananda, watching Him have His meals. He ate so meagrely. He relished so little; He set aside so much. He had no obvious preference, no visible appetite, no taste to satisfy, no hunger to appease, no time to spare. How could He derive sustenance from this ‘Anandaless’ atmosphere? She prayed, she protested, she persisted, but it was all in vain. A mouthful was taken just to satisfy their wails and then, He rose and walked away.

It took Eashwaramma a long, long time to reconcile herself to this Avataric trait. Whenever she was around, she personally supervised the preparation of the menu for Swami, by going into the host’s kitchen. She believed that Swami would eat a few more spoonfuls, if the cuisine was Telugu, or better still, if it was genuine Rayalaseema, the region to which Puttaparthi belonged. When Swami was at Jamnagar with the Rajmata of Nawanagar, Eashwaramma feared that the Gujarati menu might not be acceptable to her ‘son’. She smuggled herself into the palace kitchen and sought permission to prepare a little ‘chaar’, a soup based on boiled pulses. While we were all at lunch, with Swami at a table, facing the lines of men and women sitting on carpets to His right and left, I overheard Him tell the Mother, “I liked it. I took a cupful.” Seeing the question on my face, Swami explained, “She thought I was having a surfeit of Gujarati dishes, here; so, she herself made Puttaparthi chaar for Me, today!”

The mother’s concern never left her alone. Her eyes were on His plate, to discover how much He tasted of what and how His health reacted to the restraints He imposed on Himself. Arnold Schulman in his Book, ‘Sai Baba’ describes a scene, where the mother complained to ‘no one in particular’ that Swami did not eat enough for the incessant work that He did. Her words were translated for him by Dr. Jayalakshmi. “He does not like their cooking. He used to eat well as a boy and I cooked His food. But, He does not care for my cooking, now. He says I must have rest and quiet and not worry about such things.” Bhagawan was, then, fortyfour years old, when Schulman was in Prasanthi Nilayam in 1970!

Eashwaramma promised herself, whatever be the pressure of events at home, she would certainly join Swami, when He went North again. It took three long years for that chance to arrive. In early 1960, Swami agreed to spend a few days with Dr. B. Ramakrishna Rao, who had left Trivandrum for Lucknow as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. The Mother went, happy in the knowledge that the Governor’s wife would let her move around unnoticed, in the midst of her companions, without being singled out to be pampered, flattered, and publicised. Since the trip was also to be a pilgrimage to Ayodhya, Kashi, and Prayag, the ‘father’, too, joined the party of twenty, who were to go along with Swami.

This opportunity given to her to bathe in the holy waters of epic rivers – the Sarayu, Yamuna, and Ganga – overwhelmed the Mother with gratitude. She re-lived the Ramayana at Ayodhya and there was a bitter pang in her heart as she placed flowers on the Sarayu, remembering the manner in which Rama ended His Avataric career, silently walking into the waters of the river to return to the divine abode, from which He had come. The Yamuna became for her the Chitravati of Krishna. And both mother and father carried the precious water from the Ganga to the shrine of Vishwanath at Kashi, to pour it together over the Linga in the presence of Bhagawan, as priests chanted Vedic mantras. Swami, then, created a circular jewel that adorned the Linga and heightened its divine potency.

Good fortune, like its opposite, seldom comes alone; it happens again and again, once  you deserve the Grace of the Lord. In June, 1961, Mother won another chance of a pilgrimage to Uttar Pradesh with Swami. It was to Badrinath, the most fruitful of all journeys in the Holy Himalayan region and was indeed the acme of her ambition. Despite a rigorous elimination of names, Swami’s compassion permitted over a hundred people, men and women, to join Him, basking in His presence and benefitting by it, during the pilgrimage. They travelled from Madras to New Delhi, by the Grand Trunk Express and were transported from there to Haridwar, by bus. The Governor and his party of about fifty joined Swami, there. The devotees, then, boarded buses more narrow than usual, specially designed to creep with circumspection along the narrow, nervous edge of steep, Himalayan river-banks. Srinagar, nestling on a patch of green, was the first halt. The tribals of the area came clambering up the steeps and crawling down the slopes to earn precious Darshan. Their joy that could not be contained within, poured out profusely as song and dance, until their feet could stand no longer. This was like being in the midst of a ‘lambadi’ group at Puttaparthi, Eashwaramma remarked to me at the close, “Only, these jump about as young children, laughing and making fun of each other!”

We boarded the buses again, the next morning, after a quick meal. The buses had bumped and swayed as the road from Rishikesh swerved this way and that, mischievously intent on making us sick and angry. Even this first lap had laid a few of us low. The father was vomiting at frequent intervals, as the bus negotiated the sharp bends and was downed by high fever all night, at Srinagar. The next morning, as the hundred of us were surrounding the vehicles, ready to get in, we were told that he was critically ill and the doctors felt that he had reached the brink. Mother, however, was exceptionally brave. “Didn’t Swami tell us, at Haridwar, that we were going to the image of Narayana in the company of the real Narayana Himself? The moment He comes, father will wake and walk!” Swami was having a bath,
when the information reached Him. He floated in, leisurely and unconcerned. He sat beside the sick man, placed His finger on the pulse, and said, “He is all right. You are in a false scare. Go, get into the buses.” We obeyed, the father seated on my right as he had sat throughout the journey, and the buses moved on, when Swami waved His Blessings. Mother’s faith in the Narayana that Swami is, was vindicated.

From Joshi Math, the party could continue the journey on foot, or on horseback, or in heavy cradles, carried along by four hill men, or riding ensconced in a basket on the backs of tribal heavyweights. Like everyone else, Mother, too, donned a thick woollen sweater, tied a muffler around her neck, and wore dark glasses, so that the glare of the sunlight on snow would not injure the eyes. It was a tense, silent throng, moving along the narrow, ribbon track between the canyon on the left and the precipice on the right. Swami and the Governor, on foot, led the sinuous file, followed by about seventy, determined pedestrians and an assortment of horses, cradles, and chairs with frightened riders perched on top.

Eashwaramma was inveigled into a chair basket bound to the back of a tribal. She saw a line of such “vehicles” going along with people, who looked cosy and comfortable. But, when she saw the yawning threat on one side, the overhanging disaster on the other, and the sweating human beast the basket was on, she managed to intimate her desire for a change. She began repenting loudly in Telugu, for preferring the basket and the sherpa stood stupefied, fearing he would be dismissed with just a few chips. But, Mother insisted that he be paid the full fare, as if he had left her on the steps of the temple itself. The man grinned in relief and asked for more! Undoing the knot at the corner of her sari, Mother placed a rupee coin on his palm. A cradle, in which she could sit in comparative comfort, was then brought to her side. It hung from ropes bound to a pole, which two shoulders bore lightly, jogging
along with a song on their lips.

Badrinath, when we reached there, was fairyland for Mother and the rest of us. Snow shone on the high rise peaks, as well as on the rocks nearby. It was a place so high up, that rice grains could not be cooked soft. God’s glory was sung by every tongue! Shivering cold! High speed wind! A roaring freezing stream! And, within yards, a hot, steaming spring, gushing from a crevice on the cliff. Mother spent hours sitting inside the temple, beside the idol, with a small group of her companions, wondering at the inexhaustible grandeur, into  which she had come.

Swami brought out the Linga He had willed to emerge, from its receptacle under the stone idol of Narayana in the Holy Shrine of Badrinath. “This was gifted by Shiva at Kailash to Shankaracharya, who planted it here, before he installed the Narayana,” Swami told her. “Why have You brought it out, now?” was her innocent query. “To charge it with the power to bless, to answer prayers, to grant boons!” was the answer.

With Eashwaramma seated in the midst of the women as the ostensible target of His elucidatory remarks, Swami helped all those, who heard Him, to understand the steps in the process of that mysterious ritual. “This is the Linga drawn from the base of the idol. And this silver vessel created by Me is filled with holy water from the very source of the river Ganga, wherein it was dipped just now. These are golden bilva leaves prescribed for the Linga puja,” Swami explained, while waving His palm. During this while, Brahmin scholars from among us had been reciting Vedic hymns, propitiating Shiva symbolised in the Linga form. Now,  one of them stood up with folded hands. “Tumme flowers, Swami,” He prayed. “Of course! They don’t grow in the Himalayan valleys and slopes, do they? Well, here are a handful!” He waved His hand and, strange indeed, a pile of fresh, white, dew-sprinkled Tumme flowers arrived from where they grew. Swami placed them, too, on the heap of golden leaves around the Lingam. Then, Swami announced, “It is all over. It has been charged with Shiva Shakti. It
will now go back,” and lo! the Linga was no longer in sight.

The next day, at the holy spot called Brahmakapala (the ‘scalp of Brahma’ – a wide, concave patch of bald rock), Eashwaramma and Pedda Venkappa Raju shared in a ritual that gave both immeasurable relief, for they could, thereby, liquidate the debts due from them to their ancestors. Every wedded couple in the party was there, seated together on the Kapala. The mantras, invoking and inviting the spirits of the departed, were repeated by the priests of the temple. The offering of rice and sesame grains were ready in our hands. What we were to offer at that thrice-sacred spot was the food that was consecrated that very day, by being offered ceremonially to Narayana by the arch-priest of the temple, the prasad, which, believe it or not, would save the departed from the pangs of hunger, forever more. They were indeed blessed. For, the prasad, to be ceremonially offered to the souls invoked by the mantras, were placed in our hands not by the arch-priest, but by Narayana Himself, come as Bhagawan
Sri Sathya Sai.

Millions, for millennia, have believed that once this Vedic ceremony has been performed at Brahmakapala and the sacred food given to the dear departed, nothing more need be done for them, for they have reached the cosmic Region of eternal Bliss, beyond the reach of mind and mantra. The sacred prasad, filled with mysterious potency by the touch of Bhagawan, was not offered to the loved ones alone. Custom and compassion insisted that besides one’s own forefathers and direct ancestors, who were invoked by name, many others, too, cousins and comrades, schoolmates and teachers, pets and pals, bosses and servants, friends and foes (de mortuis nil nisi bonum), yes, even foes, must share in the divine gift at the Brahma spot, on the bank of the holy river Alaknanda.

That day was the Day of Days for Eashwaramma. Her thoughts meandered over that moving ceremony, for years. She relived it, whenever she met, again, the women, who had shared those rapturous moments in the shadow of Himalayan peaks.

Imagine Mother’s surprise, when barely four months after their return from Badrinath, a glorious galaxy of Vedic pundits from all parts of India (Uttar Pradesh included), arrived at Puttaparthi. By the inscrutable Will of Swami, they were to celebrate a yagnya, adhering meticulously to the rigorous rules laid down in the dim, distant past. The pundits adored Swami as the Veda Purusha, the very inspirer of those priceless divine scriptures. The village resounded with hymns in praise of the Veda Purusha, for seven, sublime days. The sacrificial fire was fed with ghee, sandal sticks, and with mantras from the age-old texts. The pundits declared that they were indeed blessed by the divine presence itself. And Mother was elated that Puttaparthi was the holy spot, towards which all centuries and all countries were converging. Swami’s miracles were growing more and more mysterious. Indeed, Swami was standing forth as the guru of Mankind!

Thus did Eashwaramma think at the time of Guru Purnima. On this annual festival, when students and disciples bow before their gurus, groups of accredited gurus themselves, widely revered for long, came to pay homage to Swami.

Questions

1.What did Kasturi tell Eashwaramma when she feared Swami’s trip to Rishikesh?

2. Name some pilgrimage sites visited by Eashwaramma along with Swami?

3. What ritual did the parents perform at Brahmakapala?

Guru Purnima, 1963, however, brought fear and despair as a consequence of a unique leela by Swami. A week before the sacred day, on June 29th, Swami fainted and fell in His bedroom at about 6-30 in the morning. Raja Reddy and I, who were there, lifted Him on to the bed. His left arm had stiffened and the left palm curled into a fist. We found that the left leg, too, would not bend and the toes had grown stiff.

We assured ourselves that this paralytic stroke had been assumed by Bhagawan to protect a devotee, whose career could have been ruined and that He would soon emerge from it, active and smiling, as He had done more than once in our own presence. We remained mum behind closed doors and kept up a gentle massage of the affected limbs. Bhajans began in the Prayer Hall, at eight. There were no signs of Swami recovering and I finally spoke through the window of the first floor, directing the bhajans to close and the arati to be consummated. Swami’s absence created a stir, a burst of whispering; and when He did not walk to the dining room, at 10 as usual, or even at 11, anxiety grew. There were sobs and
groans, wailing and whisperings, wherever the women assembled.

Mother sensed the tearful tension and came up the staircase at the western end, determined to find out what was happening. She banged on the door and we were compelled to let her in. Swami’s condition was apparently worsening by then, but we tried to reassure her, saying that the stroke had only been donned by Swami and He would doff it any moment to resume His normal activities. We called in the Nilayam doctors, now, to lull her. The Mother suggested that a telegram be sent to Dr. Seetaramiah, too, who had left for Razole and another to Smt. Susheelamma at Madras.

Meanwhile, a cousin, who could not hold back his forebodings of calamity, borrowed someone’s car, sped to Bangalore, and came back with the Deputy Director of Medical Services, Karnataka State. It was late at night, when they reached Puttaparthi. He could be brought into the room, only the next morning. Swami’s eye was affected by then and the teeth were clenched. There was no indication of His being aware of what was going on around Him. The doctor felt the pulse, twiddled with the stethoscope, and tried to set up a ‘drip contraption’, but Swami brushed him aside. With a face gone glum, the doctor left Puttaparthi at about 9 a.m.

When they reached Bangalore, the doctor confided to the cousin, who had accompanied him back in order to get the truth out. “I don’t hope to see Him again. It is a fatal attack of tubercular meningitis. What can a doctor do, when a lumbar puncture is obstructed and even a commonplace drip is objected to?”

Indeed, it was well-nigh impossible to convince ourselves that the doctor was mistaken. Baba was rolling restlessly in bed, groaning in ‘pain’. The facial muscles had become taut and twisted; the tongue lolled, the voice was murky and repetitive; the left eye had lost its vision; the thermometer registered a few degrees above normal. Baba had curtained Himself in mystery and made the dense vapour of doubt His canopy.

Eashwaramma was totally unprepared to meet the tragedy that hovered over the bed. She could climb the steps only after reinforcing herself for a long time, sitting in the room below and she broke down when she saw Baba in this state. Susheelamma arrived from Madras at noon, on Monday and installed herself as resident nurse and the mother could, thereafter, go through the anxious days with a modicum of courage, for she knew that Susheelamma was an intelligent and dedicated devotee.

That evening, Swami indicated by tentative signs and gestures that He wished to see a few of those, who were busy with the Sanskrit school, the Canteen, the allotment of accommodation, etc. We inferred that He was directing us to carry on as usual in spite of… Rather a heart breaking assignment, that! We repeated to Him, slowly and deliberately, what we understood His directions to be, and when He nodded or gave some other sign of approval at our understanding, we could proceed with our work in peace. When He shook His head to tell us that we had not guessed aright, we posed another version for His consideration. I secured confirmation from Him that the ‘paralytic’ stroke was a vicarious act of grace. I asked Him who the lucky person was. From His gestures, I understood Him to say that He would not disclose the name. I asked Him why. His gestures were translated by me to myself, to mean, “You would, then, catch him and beat him up!”

The Mother was relieved, when I informed her that Baba had only donned the disease and we need, therefore, only await the moment He would doff it. But, yet, she found it difficult to resist the mounting wave of fear and foreboding that was sweeping the villagers off their feet. “It is black magic,” “It is possession by a demon,” “It is the end of all the uniqueness,” “From this day, he lives on as an invalid,” – such were the conclusions of the elders and wise men of the village.

They suggested various, ameliorative rites and forced the sisters, cousins, and kinsmen to run helter-skelter in search of quacks, priests, and medicine men. Eashwaramma could not muster enough strength and authority to countermand these moves. They argued her into silence and even acceptance and approval, saying, “These rituals have a good chance to alleviate the illness and even if they do not, they won’t make things any worse!” Mother’s hopes swayed from ‘yes’ to ‘may’ and often, she stood aghast at our callousness, for we in the room were only watching and waiting, listening and obeying!

Though there was no evidence of any improvement, Swami told us, in His language of hum and haw, that after five days, the intensity of the illness would start fading, on Thursday. He would be free from pain thenceforth, He seemed to say. The revelation was indeed too rosy to fit in with the visible traits, but it was a straw we fain would catch to save our sanity. Half an hour after sunrise on Thursday, July 4th, Swami announced the welcome news, “I have no pain!” In addition, He asked me to inform the devotees gathered in the Prayer Hall that He had fulfilled His mission of Mercy and would grant the coveted darshan on Saturday, Guru Purnima, the day dedicated to the worship of the spiritual Preceptor. He asked me to repeat what I had told them in the Hall. Then, He asked me to go down
the stairs again and give them a detailed description of His physical condition, so that they would not suffer too sudden a shock on Saturday. Shock, of course, the devotees had in plenty, about 4000 of them, who had gathered by then at the Nilayam, for Guru Purnima was only two days away.

When Mother heard that Swami had promised to give darshan on Saturday, she hurried to the Nilayam and consulted elderly devotees to find out how the darshan was to be arranged. When approached, Sri Ramanatha Reddy, a Civil Engineer, a long standing devotee, and a scholar in Tamil classics, elaborated upon his favourite plan to have Swami cured. He proposed to take Swami away from the ever-thickening crowd of panic-stricken devotees, up into the inaccessible Horsley Hills and bring specialist doctors from Vellore, who could diagnose the illness and prescribe the proper course of treatment. As for the darshan, which Swami wished to give the Guru Purnima pilgrims, it could be done from the veranda of the first floor. It would involve minimum exhaustion, for He need take only about twelve steps after crossing the doorstep of the room, in which He lay. This was the most popular suggestion and all of us fell for it; but, Swami would not agree. “However weak I am, I must give them darshan, sitting on the silver chair, there, in the Prayer Hall, while they sing bhajans,” He insisted. His Will is impregnable. Who dare disagree? Eashwaramma and Pedda Venkappa Raju, however, blamed the lot of us for our intransigence and servility!

The momentous day dawned, July 6th, 1963, and the Hall was fast getting filled that evening. The parents could not bear to see the incapacitated Swami being brought down the winding steps and placed on the Chair; they could not stay away in the village either. They stood transfixed on the veranda of one of the houses close to the Nilayam on the West side, while grandsons and granddaughters ran up to them with news of what was happening. “Kittappa and Raja Reddy are bringing Him down the steps; Kasturi is holding the left foot and keeping it firm and straight,” “Swami has a kerchief tied over His head and under the chin; only a part of His face is seen,” “Swami is placed on a chair in the room next to the veranda door,” “The door is opened; Swami is held straight by two people; He finds it difficult to step over the sill,” “He has stepped over. His left leg is stiff and has to be helped to move,” “He has entered the Hall; the silver Chair is on the floor.”

The parents heard the groan, the loud wail, the sudden sob. They saw groups of stricken men and women rush out into the open in great grief, weeping aloud like orphaned babes thrown into blinding wilderness. They both burst into tears. “He has gone!” cried the father and hit his own head. “I feared this would happen,” the Mother stuttered and fell in a faint. The grandchildren stood too deep in sorrow to run errands, now. The sisters and brothers were struck dumb. Horrendous silence thickened the atmosphere, even inside the Hall.

A few minutes of tension. Then, a thunderous roar of ‘Jai!’ of ‘Jai Sai Ram!’ was heard. Everyone ran into the Hall. Swami was blessing the devotees with the Guru Purnima message – erect stance, sparkling eyes, smiling face, veena voice, Gita discourse. “We call Him Sathya; but, His Sathya (truth) we cannot know!” Eashwaramma exclaimed. The father took a long time to recover

The daughters, who had sat through Swami’s hour long discourse, narrated it to the Mother that very night, for they could not keep the wonder locked in their memory. It had to be shared and celebrated.

“Mother! He is Shiva Shakti! He announced it, today. He sprinkled a few drops of water with the right palm, on the paralysed left hand and leg and that was enough to cure the eye, the face, the shoulder, the arm, and the feet. He stood up and spoke. His voice was silver, His message was golden. And mother, He said it was all due to a punishment Shiva had imposed on Himself and on Parvati, His Shakti, for the pain they had unwittingly caused the great sage Bharadwaja. Sathya’s right half is Shiva and His left half, Shakti. His left was stricken for a week, because Shakti had to make amends for Her misdemeanour.” “What’s this you say?” Eashwaramma interposed, “Ardhanarishwara?” “Yes!” Venkappa asserted, “That’s what He proclaimed He is.”

Eashwaramma had only a sparse acquaintance with the legends woven by poets and saints around Shiva and Shakti, their residence in the Himalayan peak of Kailasha, their two sons, Ganesha and Subrahmanya, and Shiva’s vehicle, the sacred Bull, Nandi. She had heard them recited by musical exponents at the Shiva temple, at Puttaparthi, but this story of the punishment they had invited on themselves was not in the repertory of any of these scholars. “There is more in Kailasha and Vaikuntha than the puranas know!” she thought. “Bharadwaja had to be appeased. Was that the reason Swami chose the clan bearing the sage’s name, for His incarnation? He is all in One and the One in all! Why bother myself with doubts and questions,” she told herself at last. “He is Swami. That is enough for me.”

After Arati, Swami climbed the winding stairs all by Himself, amidst shouts of acclamation and a fanfare of trumpets. He had resumed His role. No one dare speak to Him of the week that had ended, for He was concerned with the thousands, who had come seeking the blessings of the guru and busy giving directions for their food and stay, and the padanamaskar they looked forward to. The dark days were over. The Sai Sun shone brighter than ever before. Eashwaramma was happy that Swami had revealed another facet of His divine Glory. The trees around the Nilayam dropped their droop and donned thick, green foliage. Every branch and twig twittered joy. The air was full of fragrance, wafted from joyous hearts soaked in peace and hope.

Four months rolled past… A short and sudden illness snatched father away, on the fourth day of November, 1963. He breathed his last in the house of the youngest son. Bhajans were on at the time in the Nilayam and no schedule was upset. Everyone bore the bolt bravely in silence. Swami approached the bier at the site of the grave and placed a garland on the body, while it was being lowered. Eashwaramma faced the calamity with fortitude. Swami had become her fortress and her rock, her shield, her stronghold. Swami’s life was His message for her. She listened to the article Swami had written for the Sanathana Sarathi about this and derived much sustenance and strength from the truths it communicated. She told Swami what she had learnt from that article. Swami had written that the Avatar confers the status of father on the person of His choice and that this honour is conferred only once in an era of time, since God decides to don human vesture, only when humanity descends deep into self-inflicted misery. Eashwaramma had heard devotees praise her as uniquely fortunate, since the Avatar had incarnated as her son. Now, it was confirmed beyond doubt that the fortune had been bestowed on her by the Son Himself!

The scholars, who had mastered the Vedas and Shastras, were not pestered by doubts about the authenticity of the Avatar, for as Swami says, “Only those, who have mastered the ancient scriptures of India, can recognise Me.” The scholars, therefore, welcomed the Academy of Vedic Scholarship, which Swami forged as an instrument for the revival of Sanathana Dharma. Under its auspices, they embarked upon a program of seminars and symposia in order to popularise the philosophic tenets and codes of morality embedded in the Vedas. They responded with enthusiasm to Bhagawan’s proposal in February, 1985, to revive the ritual of Upanayanam for boys. By means of this ritual, boys are initiated into the Gayatri Mantra, which is the key to spiritual progress. Swami’s Will overcame the sloth of centuries and the slackness of generations. It prompted teenagers, everywhere, to prevail upon parents
to listen to the call from across the centuries. Over five hundred of them, belonging to more than one caste and many sub-castes, long denied the privilege of that prayer, gathered in the presence. Swami invested them with the mark of initiation – the Yagnyopavitam – and imprinted on their tender minds the sacred invocation, addressed to the Light that illumines the Sun and the Cosmos, to illumine the intellect.

Eashwaramma watched the unfoldment of the foundational festival. She was overwhelmed by the sublimity of the occasion and the divine dimension of Swami, who had run out of school to run a school of all men everywhere! Many pundits honoured by maharajas, mahants, and mathadhipatis sought her out, during the Yagnya week, every Dasara. They longed to offer homage to the mother of the Kalpa-Vriksha of the kali age, of the Devadeva, Sri Krishna, Parameshwara. Eashwaramma winced at the exaltation and she felt in her heart of hearts a Voice, which echoed her faith. She spoke to herself, as Mary  confessed to Elizabeth, “My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God. For, He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden; for, henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed.”

During Dasara, Eashwaramma could see the elation of all these honoured personages, at the chance they secured of sharing in the heavenly ceremony. The pundits had already drawn Swami to the East and West Godavari Districts in Andhra Pradesh. A Vedic Yagnya was performed by them in His presence, on the banks of that holy river that had been rendered holier by its contact in the upper reaches; with Shirdi and the Sai Baba associated with that place. She knew of pundits from Kerala and Maharashtra states, who had found in Him the guide and guardian they were yearning for and she also remembered the sanyasins of Haridwar, Badrinath, and Benares, who longed to hear His Discourses.

But, where was all this leading to? He is here, today and there, tomorrow! When the bhajan sessions ended, each day, in the Prayer Hall and Arati was offered to Him, she  warmed up as she heard the congregation acclaim Swami as ‘Puttaparthi Mahatma’, for it was an assurance that Puttaparthi would be maintained as His residence, however far and however often He might travel over land and sky, in response to the prayers of people. But, the assurance never seemed strong enough. It grew flimsy and feeble every time, He left the Nilayam on a visit to some other place! Eashwaramma would drop into my ‘digs’, off and on, when she found herself swinging as a pendulum between faith and fear, conviction and conflict. “The Pundits declare that He is as genuine an Avatar as Rama and Krishna. He
asserts that He is Shiva Shakti, Gourishankar, Sathyam, Sivam, Sundaram, and Sai Baba, too. Sai Baba, they tell me, had announced that He is Vasudeva! The Pundits have learnt all the shastras, so what they say must be the Truth. Do you agree?” she would ask anxiously. I could not confess that my mind and my brain were often at loggerheads over the sameuestion. I could make only one suggestion to her: “Have faith in Swami’s statement on His  reality, however He makes it, whenever He makes it, and wherever He makes it. His statements lift the veil of maya, which He delights in wearing and removing.” I was never sure whether she welcomed the suggestion, but she did not stop posing this same problem to me and to others, for many years more. No one I knew could solve it, except Swami and His advice to her was the same He handed out to everyone, “Come, see, examine, experience, and
believe.”

I am reminded of Sister Nivedita’s words, describing the innate sincerity of another saintly woman, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother: “In her, one sees the realised sweetness and wisdom, which the simplest of women in this ancient land can attain. The stateliness of her courtesy and her open-mindedness are almost as wonderful as her saintliness. Her life is one long stillness of prayer.”

The Upanayanam day was something very special. The initiates and their parents were happy, but happier still were the Vedic scholars, for they realised that they had witnessed the dawn of a day, when the world would resume its pilgrimage towards Light and Love. Eashwaramma, too, sensed that the Upanayanam was an epochal event, although its implication was beyond her comprehension. Yet, she could not but notice the sea change that the Gayatri prayer had wrought in the lives of the young men of the Ratnakaram family, whom she had persuaded to receive that key to mental composure. The rows of bright faces became brighter the moment each one imbibed the mantra Swami whispered into the ear, as each one of the five hundred approached Him singly. Besides the Gayatri, Baba also granted them the potent formula for self–purification – the mantra, which was taught by Sage Narada to the young Dhruva as he entered upon his dhyana and tapas: Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.

In May, 1968, every resident of Prasanthi Nilayam and most of the members of the Ratnakaram family, too, travelled to Bombay by bus and train, to witness the inauguration of ‘Dharmakshetra’ – the architectural marvel dedicated to Swami to be used as His residence and the Headquarters of the Seva Organisation, operating under His guidance in the state of Maharashtra. This was the Mother’s first visit to the city of Bombay. She had been to Madras and New Delhi, Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Hyderabad, but Bombay was the city she least liked. She was not sorry, therefore, that she couldn’t see the ‘usual sights’ and ‘beauty spots’, since the hostel for trainees at the Aarey Milk Colony, where they were accommodated, was, luckily for her, too far from the din and bustle of Bombay city.

They were transported by bus to Dharmakshetra and other places, where Swami drew hundreds of thousands to His presence. She was surprised to find that the people, in Bombay and in such mammoth numbers, had imposed the vow of silence on their tongue. The vast shamianas were overflowing with devotees from all over India and many of them she remembered having seen before at the Nilayam. It was all too extraordinary to believe. She could only stand and stare. But, it wasn’t long before those, who caught sight of her, spread the news that the Mother was amongst them. Hundreds made a beeline towards her at the Aarey colony and at Dharmakshetra. She was persuaded to speak on what she knew of Swami’s early years, with Seshama Raju, the eldest son translating the questions in Telugu
and the answers back into English.

Soon, the Mother learnt from Dr. C.G. Patel that Swami had agreed to visit East Africa for a few days. She was greatly upset at the thought of a journey that involved a ride in an aeroplane over the sea. She had stood at the seashore at Madras and Bombay and found that the sea stretched beyond the horizon at both places. And discourses by Pundits had informed her that the sea was not a safe place at all, to cross. When Hanuman leaped across the ocean, a wicked demoness had grasped in her mortal hold the shadow that raced on the waters below and halted him in mid-air. Shastris expounding the Ramayana had described it as stock-full of mile long snakes and sharks and whales. And Swami made no attempt to calm her fears. Indeed, He enjoyed frightening her even more than the Ramayana did.

He spoke of sudden storms that would batter the plane, when up in the sky. He said that, Africa was a topsy-turvy world, where tribes of the shortest humans lived close to the tallest. He gave her the astounding information that it would be a journey of four hours into the past; they would leave Bombay at three in the evening, having had their afternoon tea and would reach Africa at 11 in that day’s morning, to join those there for lunch!

Greatly alarmed, Eashwaramma pleaded that the visit to this unearthly country be cancelled. Swami told her that His task lay in just such regions. Then, gleefully adding fuel to her fear, He said, “Until just a few years ago, there were tribes there that cooked human flesh and ate it with relish!” “I know what you say is true Swami!” Eashwaramma cried, “Ravana was of that tribe. He threatened Sita that if she did not yield in two months, he would cut her to pieces and have her served for breakfast! You must cancel the trip!” Swami consoled her, then, as usual, after frightening her. “Nothing can happen to Me. If there was any such danger, would I be taking Indulal shah and Kasturi with Me? There is an American couple coming, too and Gogineni Venkateswara Rao. And no one has so far eaten Dr. Patel, or anyone of the thousands of Gujaratis, who have been there for years!”

To frighten and then, reassure her in this way had been but another of His lessons, to teach her how to ‘dance’ through life’s pluses and minuses. Swami has said,

“I am the Dance Master,
I am Natarja, Prince of Dancers.
I alone know the agony
Of teaching you, each step
In the Dance of Life.”

Three quarters of her mind was appeased now, but a quarter still clamoured that this adventure over the seas be given up. She spoke to me and to Indulal Shah about it, but when we assured her that East Africa was a land of peace and plenty, she asked for convincing details. I told her that the greatest attraction in this country, where we would spend more than fifteen days, were its wild life sanctuaries – the opportunity of watching lions, elephants, bison, ostriches, and hippos – hundreds of them – in their natural habitat. I had to regret the revelation of this fact that Swami had kept tactfully away from her attention. She had seen these animals at the Mysore zoo and now, she grew even more panicky. Her fears assumed proportions beyond my powers of allaying and assuaging. “The glass shutters on the window can be broken by a single blow. An elephant can easily overturn a vehicle,” she argued.

Even at the airport, until we took refuge in the lounge after passing through the security check, Mother kept warning us against going too near the lions, or teasing African animals and men. However amusing her apprehensions, we had no doubt about their genuineness. But, she soon discovered that Swami could be contacted on the telephone, though miles of ocean lay between and her hosts, responding to her pleas, obliged her and themselves, too, by calling on Dr. Patel at Kampala, during Swami’s stay in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. After she heard our reassuring voices, twice successively, from across the Arabian Sea, the waves of anxiety were quelled at last and the telephone did not ring any more. She was there at the Bombay aerodrome, her face beaming with joy and gratitude, when Swami landed from what was reverentially called His Garuda, but the glisten of tears was still in her eyes, as she remembered the hippopotamuses and lions the party had to wade through!

Mother listened with elation as we described our trip – the enthusiasm and devotion of the native Africans, the thousands, who listened to the discourses at Kampala and Nairobi, the Bhajans, in which the Africans, too, participated. She prodded us with questions and spent hours, watching the photographs we had brought. She felt ashamed, now, at her apprehensions about the African tour and confessed that she was the victim of ignorance, ignorance about men and manners in that continent. “We women must learn more about the world,” she sighed. Swami had left Africa after addressing a Guru Purnima meeting there, in the morning and had arrived in Bombay in time for the Guru Purnima celebration at Dharmakshetra, in the evening. And so, it happened!

The guru heard the cry of the Mother on behalf of her daughters. Within a week of His landing on the soil of India, He inaugurated the Sri Sathya Sai Arts and Science College for Women at Anantapur, the Headquarters of the District, to which Puttaparthi belonged. “Swami, You have done the right thing! Women must be as well educated as men. When one animal is bold and alert and the other is cowardly and blind, how can the cart, to which they are yoked, move forward?” she commented. Laskhmidevamma, the Headmistress of the Girls’ High School, Anantapur, told her that Swami had promised this College a year ago, when He had presided over the High School Day. “I find that the girls, who complete their high school, have, now, to go to distant colleges at Tirupati and Kurnool,” He had said, “I shall, therefore, establish a college right here, very soon.” And so, the girls of Anantapur got a college, a college dedicated to the realisation of the universal and constructive ideals of
Sathya Sai Baba.

The Mother, it must be conceded, was the foremost pupil of the ‘son’. She was an exemplary housewife and an unquestioning conformist in the observance of vows, vigils, and fasts, declared as obligatory in the Hindu calendar. She delighted in visiting holy places, bathing in holy rivers, and offering worship at shrines. And like the high caste women of Puttaparthi and other villages, she was loyal to the law-makers, who laid down the do’s and don’ts which should govern daily living and social relationships.

Questions

1. What was Ramanatha Reddy’s plan for Swami?

2. When did Pedda Venkappa Raju reach Swami’s Lotus Feet?

3. When was the first time that Eashwaramma visited Bombay?

It took years for Mother to agree, even ostensibly, that ‘There is only one caste, the caste of humanity’. The new label ‘Harijan’ that was pasted over the old names “Madiga”, “Holeya”, and the like failed to remove age-long prejudices from the minds of people. It could not erase the ‘tattoo mark of sin’! Swami had told her that Harijan meant ‘God’s children’, “So, you are also a Harijan,” He said, “There is only one caste, God’s children, everywhere. But, village life still plodded on in the shadow of the pyramid of castes, the lowest engaged in the dirtiest of professions and the highest in the cleanest.

Mother sympathised with the hopelessness and helplessness of the ‘untouchables’ of the village and her face beamed with joy on occasions, when Swami deputed her to distribute saris to hundreds of poor women from the villages around. “Never would they have dreamed they would own such costly saris,” she would tell her companions, “and they will use these only on festival occasions and the marriages of their children.” Giving them gifts in this manner was one thing. But, going into their hovels, inviting them into the home, touching them, eating with them, these were quite another proposition. They remained unthinkable liberties for even the most radical among the villagers. She would be ostracised and blamed for circumventing a deep-rooted taboo and ushering in a disastrous, social revolution.

Mother never questioned the pilgrims to Puttaparthi about their caste. To her, they were all, all of them ‘touchables’. Hari’s (God’s) genuine jans (children); prying into their caste to calculate the degree of approachability and respectability was sacrilege, she felt. But, where she and everybody else knew the caste of a person, how could that fact be by-passed, ignored, or circumvented? In the village, she had perforce to trim her sails, in accordance with the winds that blew for or against a particular community, caste, or group.

Mother found it increasingly irksome to live in her village home. She could not survive in that atmosphere of caste bred conflict. As the years piled one over the other, she sensed more and more pollution in the village sky. Scandal, slander, sly eavesdropping, trickery, and teasing were the hobbies of the depressed and the disillusioned. The Ram mandir was seldom used for quiet meditation, or instruction on the Ramayana. It was the centre, most often, for gossip and, God forbid, ungodly confabulations. Mother found the atmosphere suffocating.

Gradually, her un-understanding subservience to custom and tradition was transmuted into conscious, meaningful adherence and joyful participation. Shivaratri, which had been an exercise in asceticism, became, as a result of Swami’s emphasis, a whole day spent in the sublime thought of God. Sankranti was welcomed less demonstratively and with much less expense of time and money, but with a greater flow of love and fellow-feeling. Every festival was extricated from the cocoon of correctitude and sublimated into an occasion to celebrate the blossoming of Love that is the core of the individual and the family. Holidays, redolent with reckless rumpus, were no longer extremely exhausting experiences for her. They became holy days, fragrant with the incense of prayer. Merry Dasara lost its adjective and changed into the worship of the Mother, who guards, gives, and guides.

Thus did prejudices and preferences deep-rooted in society perish, as they underwent ridicule by Swami. He had come, as He declared, to clear the ancient and authentic road to God, to free it from the weeds that thrived thereon and the road-blocks that pundits have placed across. Mother learnt to accept and appreciate the simplification of age old rites in ceremonies, such as the Upanayanam and weddings. The scholars, who conducted the  eremonies at Puttaparthi, told her that Swami had preserved the core rites of these ceremonies, the rites which would consecrate, the purpose of initiation in the case of the Upanayanam, and Integration in the case of marriage. What He had removed were only the elaborate accretions that served to feed the lust for conspicuous consumption.

Mother was happy beyond words that Swami accorded woman the honoured status of motherhood. During the nine days of Dasara, women gathered in the prayer hall every morning and evening, to worship the cosmic Feminine as Durga, Laskhmi, and Saraswati. Swami welcomed widows too, though such women, felled by misfortune, were not allowed by the orthodox to join the congregation of authorised women. Man’s despotism had made women believe that they had to seek only one credential, in order to earn spiritual boons: selfless service rendered to the lawfully wedded master. When that service by the woman had been put to an end by the inexorable decree of her Karma, she had no right to offer worship all by herself. That was the sentence, from which Swami saved the widows.

Mother was very happy, too, that women were permitted, nay, persuaded to recite the mystic syllable OM. In truth, the taboo was so respected by womenfolk that they had never dared challenge it. The highly educated wife of a District Magistrate left the Nilayam in a huff, when she heard OM loudly and enthusiastically emanating from women, in the pre￾dawn hours of the day! Mother felt that women should certainly not be denied access to the presence of God. If OM is the purest and fullest verbal symbol of the Impersonal, women, too, had a right to invoke ‘IT’ through OM. She told Swami how happy she was at this, His singular blessing to women of all castes and races.

During a discourse at Prasanthi Nilayam, He had made the revealing announcement that He could not be classified on the basis of any known criteria. If He needs to be categorised, people could know Him as Sathya Bodhaka, a Teacher of Truth. Recitals of the Bhagavata text she had heard dilated on Sage Kapila, honoured as an incarnation of Vishnu, and His teaching the Truth of Man, Nature, and God to his mother Devahuti. Eashwaramma, too, learnt the basic course for beatitude from the ‘son’, in a similar manner. As a result, social prejudices, food preferences, spiritual goals, familial affinities had all quietly loosened their grip. She was surprised at her own transformation, as she watched the devotees and listened to their stories of the impact of Swami on their attitudes and beliefs, and as she absorbed the lessons Swami conveyed to her and her daughters all the time, through His words and deeds.

She found that she had transcended the pettiness and profanity of village life and she longed to spend her life, what was left of it, in Prasanthi Nilayam, away from the frothy frenzy of the village. And Swami agreed. She was allotted a single living room with a narrow kitchen and a narrower bathroom attached – one amidst the many such apartments, in which ardent devotees were housed around the Prayer Hall, above which Swami resided. She no longer had any complaints. She was grateful for even the slightest gift of grace, even if it was but a jocular barb released from His tongue on her language or behaviour.

Nothing worried her any more – except the one persistent failing that Swami had had since His childhood. He was adamant against her catering to His alimentary needs. Hour-long persuasion was needed to make Him swallow a mouthful. The thinnest of excuses – a crow cawing for a morsel, a mendicant voice from afar, a frown that darkened the face of the mother, a child crying next door – sufficed for Him to run away from the plate placed before Him. And now, after having begun to live at Prasanthi Nilayam, she witnessed Swami denying Himself even the handfuls He lived upon. “The Ananda these devotees take in, is all the intake I need!” He said.

Standing in lines facing the Prayer Hall, the devotees waited eagerly to win Swami’s Darshan, as He walked along the open veranda from His room in the west to the dining room n the East, at about 8 a.m. for breakfast, 11 a.m. for lunch, 3 p.m. for snacks and coffee, and  8 at night for dinner. It was common knowledge that breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner were only labels affixed by the gathering for the few minutes that Swami spent in the room, before returning to the west end granting them another minute or two of Darshan. They did not realise that Swami arose from the table in such haste, because He was aware of their yearning to have Darshan again. Their Ananda was the menu He relished most. But, how could Eashwaramma, who had mothered Him, believe in this assertion of His?

Swami often adopted even more drastic denials, which had the devotees (and Eashwaramma, the most tender hearted of them all) plunged in deep distress. On one occasion in 1966, I witnessed the amusement on His face, watching the reactions of the devotees at Prasanthi Nilayam for 36 long days, when He resisted the urge to satisfy their pleadings and stuck to His resolve to drink only a glass of buttermilk each day. Despite that microscopic sustenance, His gait and gesture, His voice and vitality, the sparkle in the eye, the aura around the head, the charm of the smile, the wave of the hand, no one of these showed signs of debility or exhaustion. But, Eashwaramma walked many times to my place, to prod me to present her pleas to Swami. When I approached Him and prayed that He should resume the old routine, He turned on me abruptly, saying. “Why? Do you find Me tired? I am as active before, if not more. Don’t you see that the gathering of devotees is getting thicker and I am busy with them, the whole day?” I could not pursue my argument any further. Those questions silenced me.

But, no one could silence Mother. No one was inclined to agree that the regimen had not weakened Swami. “Their Ananda is what I live upon,” was Swami’s assertion. But, there was no Ananda available in the heart of anyone at the Nilayam. It was only gloom that prevailed in every heart. Many punished themselves by reducing their own diet to the barest minimum and everyone sympathised with Eashwaramma, struggling to hold back the tea s that clamoured for passage.

Swami yielded at last and directed me, one day, to announce to the devotees, as soon as the bhajan sessions closed, that Swami had graciously responded to their prayers and would be accepting the usual schedule of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Eashwaramma was happy beyond words as He resumed the ritual of fingering rice and curry, sauce and soup, and asked Him never to tease them again with such tactics. Whenever she recalled those 36 days in later years, it was with a sigh and expression of resignation. She would acknowledge with gratitude that the resumption was the effect of the prayers of every one of the devotees, who were in the presence. She was confirmed in her faith in prayer!

Another mind-blowing event that was planned and consummated at Puttaparthi by Swami, early in 1968, touched her motherly heart and gave her immense satisfaction. It was an Optical Diseases Diagnosis and Treatment Camp, which lasted ten days. Four thousand patients were examined and more than a thousand operations done to confer vision on those blinded by cataract, glaucoma, etc. Groups of old men and women, led by their children and grandchildren, came hobbling along the village roads to the Nilayam. Eashwaramma had never realised how many there were in need of the help Swami had offered. There was great enthusiasm among the devotees, men and women, to serve them. Women made up more than half the number of the optically ill. As a preliminary to the operation, their faces had to be washed, their hair oiled, subdued, and plaited, and their fears allayed. More than a hundred, women devotees volunteered to nurse them and Eashwaramma was with them, elated at the
bright future that awaited the sightless multitude. While the Mother was uplifted, embarrassed, and confused, when the Nilayam atmosphere reverberated with Vedic mantras and the environs grew thick with Vedic orthodoxy, she was quite at ease and full of joy as thousands of indigent and ailing villagers were fed and clothed, repaired and rehabilitated.

Swami encouraged her to share in the service activities and commissioned her to hand out saris to the women. Eashwaramma was delighted at the chance, at the gleam of gratitude in their eyes as the women held the saris in their hands. She had learnt the art of enthusiastic giving from Swami, as He in turn placed dhotis and towels in the palsied hands of the sons of toil. She experienced the thrill of sister meeting sister, when the sari brought them together. Earlier, when Eashwaramma walked through the long rows of women abed with bandaged eyes, who groped for her touch, they had sensed the presence of the Mother beside each of them.

Mother was very happy that Swami had decided to promote higher education for women. She, too, like all rural women, for many years nourished a prejudice against women, who stepped across the threshold of their homes into the open, determined to brave the challenge and ridicule that stemmed from the jealousy and fear of men. Eashwaramma had felt that it was unwomanly to venture out thus, into the open. Motherhood is woman’s highest reward; rocking the cradle is her holiest act. A woman must observe the do’s and don’ts that ancient wisdom had laid down, to keep her steps steady on the path that her husband trod.

But, when prayer and penitence brought into Puttaparthi literate women, literary women, English speaking women, and English women themselves and when she watched their humility, chastity, and loyalty to kith and kin, that prejudice could no longer reside within her. She found that education can and does open wide the doors of reverence, love, and sadhana. She repented that she had kept herself free of reading and writing abilities. She had to continue, now, in that state, until the end, but she was not against schooling for her sons and daughters and she encouraged her grandsons and granddaughters, too, to continue the process as long as they could.

The seed planted by the divine hand sprouted fast, growing strong and sturdy. The foundations were laid within a year, for magnificent buildings to house the college, hostel, library, and auditorium and eighteen months later, the President of India inaugurated the fully equipped educational complex. Eashwaramma was delighted as she watched the ceremony and the immense concourse of people, listening to the Governors and Ministers, who sat beside Swami and who expressed their gratitude and devotion to Him. It was Guru Purnima Day and Swami shone forth as the guru, who has come to lead the blind and the halting towards the Light.

In May, 1970, Eashwaramma was of the party that accompanied Swami to Bombay. Swami, yielding to the prayers of the devotees, had promised that He would be with them every year, at Bombay, when they celebrated the anniversary of the inauguration of Dharmakshetra. Pundits had told Eashwaramma that this name that Swami had given to the mandir, at Bombay, was as full of meaning as that of Prasanthi Nilayam. It announced to the world that Swami had assumed the revival of Dharma as His Task, besides His Mission of transforming every heart into a spring of Supreme Peace.

Another boon awaited us. The Rajmata of Nawanagar proposed a visit to Dwaraka in the company of Krishna Himself! So, a ‘caravan’ was readied and off we started. Mother had visited Ayodhya. She had walked along the epic banks of the Yamuna at Brindavan and Mathura. Now, she was speeding along to Dwaraka; familiar to her heart through legend, drama, and song. The spacious temple of Sri Krishna was jam-packed with people, awaiting Swami’s arrival. While we, who arrived later, could not even step beyond the outermost door, we found Mother and her small group emerging from inside, happy that they had won a glimpse of the inmost shrine with dots of light arched over it.

Swami did not propose to go inside, for that would only worsen the rush and those struggling within could even suffocate. He stood outside in the centre of an open quadrangle, helping to relieve the pressure in the crowd as people streamed out and milled around Him. Later, He went on to Mithapur. In the afternoon, Swami returned from there and Mother had another glimpse of the Dwaraka Temple through the glass windows of the car. She yearned to go in again, for she had not had a satisfactory eyeful of Krishna, because of the rough jostling of the crowd that forenoon, but how could her wish prevail against the Lord’s Will?

The cars sped on. About half-an-hour later, Swami noticed an embankment following the cars to the right. Beyond it, He recollected, was the sea, in which the city of Dwaraka had sunk. The vehicles halted and we clambered over the sandy bund and trudged behind Swami towards the sea. Swami reached the water’s edge and played with the waves for some time, delighted at the plight of some of us, who were drenched, caught unawares by the prankish billows that rushed gleefully forward to spray brine on us. Later, we sat around Him on the sands. At His word, we heaped a mound of sand before Him. His Will transformed those monotonous grains into sugar, vibhuti, and silver line plates with engravings of the various deities worshipped by the members of the party “How many of you missed Darshan this morning, at the Temple?” Swami asked. A dozen hands went up. Mother said, “I could not have full Darshan, Swami!” Swami said,
“You were the first to go in,” “Yes, but there was such a jostling,” she replied, “I could only see the smoke of incense.” “Well, don’t feel sorry,” Swami assured her, “You can look on Him for as long as you like.” He flattened the tip of the mound and drew a design with His finger on it. “ ook! He is here!” Swami announced and from right under the lines He had drawn, He took out a charming, gold idol of Krishna about eighteen inches high.

We were overcome with awe. Mother could not suppress her wonder-struck exclamations. Where had He got all that gold from and how could He melt and mould it so quick? The jewels, too, were just the ones described in the verses of the Bhagavata. Swami placed the golden idol in the hands of the Rajmata and rose to resume the journey.

But, Eashwaramma was busy on the sacred beach, picking up shells of strange shapes  and colours. “The children will be so excited to have these to play with,” she said, hurriedly tying a dozen of them in a corner of her sari. She liked making children happy with sweets and toys and she would have liked to have collected more of these shells, since her juvenile clientele was rather numerous, but Swami was already on top of the sand ridge. She had to hurry to meet Him, although the thick carpet of sand did not allow her to move fast.

There was yet another reason for Eashwaramma’s enthusiasm in accompanying Swami. He was to go to Somnath from Bombay, to inaugurate the Entrance Gopuram of the historic Shiva temple there. It had been renovated and revitalised by Hindu stalwarts of Free India, after decades of neglect. The Jam Saheb of Nawanagar was the chief among those, who had vowed to resuscitate the shrine. He had lived to see his dream fulfilled. The temple rose magnificently from its ruins, exactly as it had shone when it had been the cynosure for seekers from all over the land. The Jam Saheb had also planned an impressive Gopuram over the entrance to the main shrine, at his own expense. It was a gem of architectural brilliance.
He had invited Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba to inaugurate it, but he had passed away
before then. The Rajamata, therefore, pleaded with Baba to carry out her husband’s wish and
Baba had graciously agreed

The party stayed for a few days with the Rajmata in her palace, at Jamnagar. At Somnath, Mother stood by her side at the very doorstep of the innermost shrine, as Swami showered golden flowers emanating from His outspread palm over the four-foot high Lingam. Since the time invaders from the North-West had descended on the land about 900 A.D., there had been a series of predatory raids on the temple by iconoclastic fanatics and on most occasions, one of the more precious items of booty had been the consecrated Linga itself that received the adoration of ‘idolatrous infidels’. Swami had recounted the story of these greedy hordes to us devotees, while at Jamnagar, before we had embarked on the journey to Somnath. But, it was not until later that He disclosed the truth, that the Lingas they had carried away in unholy joy were not the real recipients of the ageless stream of devotion. There was an alabaster Linga of Light planted deep in the centre of the shrine, by a celebrated sage, millennia ago, which had lain unnoticed and unharmed, while the tall, cylindrical, stone Lingas above that spot had been removed and replaced.

The moment for revealing this mystery had now arrived. There was no longer any danger to the shrine, Swami said and so, He was now bringing to view the basic Jyotirlinga, whose divine vibrations had so long been a latent force there. As he spoke, the divine Hand waved in a circle and an oval ball of eye-piercing splendour was seen in His grasp. “Let the Primeval Linga of cosmic light offer Darshan for all!” He said. He waved His Hand again
and created a golden receptacle that just fitted the Linga He had drawn from the underground niche. Mother shed tears of joy. “It was so thrilling,” she said later, sharing with me her sense of supreme satisfaction. “I couldn’t believe I was still alive. I was wondering how I was to re-enter the life I was still bound to.”

Bhagawan visited Goa in December, 1970. June Schuyler, who, with three other ladies, made up the women’s group that accompanied Bhagawan, writes about the startling events that occurred on the 8th day of that month. “We ate lunch without Baba. It was a gloomy affair. Every one wondered why He did not come. I did not know that there were some, who were aware of what was happening, but were too distressed to talk of it. It is very strange for Baba not to come out of His room at Prasanthi Nilayam, or wherever He is. He gives of Himself plentifully, at all times, from early morning till late evening. I knew, too, that Baba was scheduled to address a public meeting. We had indeed passed the very maidan, where it was due to be held, on our way to church and had noticed the people streaming in hours before the time announced for its ‘commencement’.”

Why did Baba disappoint the gathering? Let Swami Himself continue the story and reveal the answer. “On the night of the seventh, strange events happened. I could not lie in bed, I could not sit up on it, I could not turn from one side to another. Nor could I speak or call out to anyone, for I did not wish to cause anxiety or trouble. I kept silent, pretending that all was well with Me.” The morning, however, brought a bevy of expert doctors to the bedside, summoned by the Lieutenant Governor Sri Nakul Sen, the host, to Cabo Raj Nivas, where we were. Their unanimous pronouncement was ‘Acute paracolic appendicitis; unwillingness for surgical intervention’.

I was sent to address the public gathering and assure them that Bhagawan would speak to them, three days later. I narrated the story of the paralytic stroke that Baba had donned and gone through, and assured them that this acute appendicitis, which did not belong to Him, would be cast off as mysteriously as it had been assumed. The appendicitis astounded the world. The unbelievable news was flashed all over the country and overseas, too. The morning editions of the national dailies sowed anxiety, distress, and despair in millions of hearts and telegrams, and telephone calls poured into the gubernatorial palace, praying, pleading, doubting, denying, hoping, and weeping. There were offers ‘to take the illness over’; there were pledges to perform expiatory vows.

Mother was at Puttaparthi, at this time. The memory of the Guru Purnima Miracle gave her solace, as the waves of despair at this new crisis rolled around. The assurance given by Swami on the evening of that day, when He had cured Himself of the paralytic stroke, echoed in her heart. “Illness can never afflict this body. It cannot even approach it. If it should come at some time, believe this – it belongs to someone else, not Me. And it goes just as it came, when I Will it to leave. I have no contact with it. I am not affected by it.” Mother quietened the agitation of others by her brave poise, but, when alone, she gave vent to her grief and she dared not meet others, for fear they would bring her worse news.

Meanwhile, Baba had cast away in a trice the pus-filled ball, which the surgeons longed to remove and He addressed the large gathering as promised, on the evening of the tenth of December. Lt. Governor Nakul Sen describes that miracle of miracles thus: “Bhagawan lives in the inner recesses of the heart of His devotees. There is nothing He would not do for them. He has assumed the illness of His devotees and suffered it for them, because they would, if left alone, have succumbed to it. We have witnessed a Leela now, which has greatly perplexed the medical experts of Goa. It leaves no doubt in our minds that there is nothing on Earth, which is beyond Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba!”

On the 11th, Swami asked me to go to Puttaparthi and narrate what had transpired at Goa to the residents of Prasanthi Nilayam. “They are panic-stricken there. All these wild rumours have unsettled them,” He told me. When I hesitated a moment and deferred acceptance of the assignment, He said, “If any others go, the residents and especially themother would have no confidence in what they said. But, she is certain that you would never leave My side, unless I was quite well and free from the appendix that the newspapers have exaggerated into a mortal affair.” That settled it. I reached Puttaparthi as fast as I could and was closeted with the Mother for an hour, reassuring her, before I finally got to the Prayer Hall and recounted the events at Cabo Raj Nivas, hour by hour, to the others.

Mother found that when Swami visited a region and returned, hundreds from that area started pouring into Puttaparthi. She noticed this trend as they streamed in from the Nilgiris, from Himachal Pradesh, from Maharashtra, from the Punjab. She learnt to distinguish the regional differences of costume and etiquette and soon, she could identify the nativity of the women, who entered her room to touch her feet, by their dress, the intonation of their homage, their varying gestures of namaste and namaskar. She was no passive observer,however, but always alert to learn the why and the whence of these women, who sought to earn her blessings and add them to the boons gained and garnered at Puttaparthi.

Prasanthi Nilayam had, overnight, become a multi-religious temple – silver doors and golden finales with cupolas on the terrace, sculptured images of all the Gods, and a central shrine, where the symbols of Sanathana Dharma, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Christianity, nd Islam were installed. No other prayer hall or shrine Mother had visited had these non-Hindu symbols. No church or mosque honoured other religions thus. Swami had come, she was glad to learn, to feed the roots of all faiths – to help the Hindu reach the goal marked out in Hinduism, the Muslim to be a genuine Muslim, a Christian to be a true Christian, so that they all met on the plateau of Light and Love, where differences are dissolved in the mergence with the ONE.

Mother was greatly pleased to find Muslims and Christians sit in the Prayer Hall, for bhajans and come with their babies in their arms, to seek her blessings. There were some yellow-robed sanyasins, too, who, she was told, were Bouddhas from Sri Lanka. To her, Sri Lanka was still the name of one of the three kingdoms, which (with Ayodhya and Kishkinda) fills the canvas of the Ramayana. Knowledge, that the island was now lit by the beatific smile of the Buddha, heartened her a great deal.

Soon, every day became a festival day at Puttaparthi. Mother had no respite, carried along by the full tide of inspiration and illumination, adulation and adoration that brightened the Nilayam, each day. The Bhajan room, eight feet by five, considered spacious enough in 1942, had soon to be supplemented by the gravel road outside, on which the devotees overflowed. The subsequent Prayer Hall in the Bhajan Mandali at the edge of the village, eighteen feet by eight, was discarded in favour of a walled shed, forty feet by ten, built by its side. Prasanthi Nilayam that was inaugurated in 1950 had a Prayer Hall, a hundred feet by twenty, but this, in turn, was found to be too small. A huge, tubular structure, enclosing the vast space of hundred and forty feet by twenty five, soon gave way to an even vaster shed to its north. Mother stood aghast at this increasing expansion. “How long will this suffice?” was the question that arose within her, each time she saw preparations for yet another Hall or Auditorium. There was no answer. She was told that conferences, which brought thousands of devotees from all parts of the world, were being held at Madras, Bombay, and other places. Her wonder could only take refuge, at last, in Swami’s declaration: “The sky alone will be the roof of the Auditorium, where these devotees will gather!”

The devotees returned from the presence of Swami, charged with fresh enthusiasm, the lamp of love in their hearts shining brighter than ever, for they had been trimmed by the divine Hands and fed with divine benediction. Mother also saw hundreds of volunteers, men and women, elated at the mission of service, to which they were bound by their vow of dedication, and intent on keeping Prasanthi Nilayam and the surrounding area free from noise, insecurity, and insanitary conditions. “How do we in this village deserve this generous sacrifice and this worship?” she often asked of her companions.

Questions

1.How did Swami respect widows during Dasara?

2. In 1966, what did Swami decide to do for 36 long days?

3. What service did Eashwaramma offer in the Eye camp of 1968?

Mother soon noted that Swami was showing a special interest in gathering children and mothers, students and teachers into His presence. She was exhilarated at the encouragement that Swami bestowed on intelligent and earnest boys and girls. She herself placed high hopes on the children of some poor devotees, who could not afford to give them higher education and used, in confidence, to send them a sum of money, every month. I knew of this, because I was acting as the Post Master of Prasanthi Nilayam, at the time and it was to me that she would come inquiring, if I had received the receipts the young boys had signed, when the postman paid them the money

In 1972, a month-long camp was planned at Brindavan, Whitefield, for over 800 boys and girls, students selected from Colleges situated in all the various states of India. When Mother learnt of this, she expressed a wish to be there, too, at Brindavan, for all those thirty days. Women devotees from Prasanthi Nilayam volunteered to help in the kitchen and stores and Mother took up residence on the ground floor of Swami’s bungalow, along with the families of the manager and one of her own grandsons

The students were accommodated in the hostel halls with the teachers, who accompanied them to supervise and guide. The lectures on Indian Culture and Spirituality by distinguished elders were arranged at a temporary hall, specially erected beside the bungalow. The students went through a rigorous routine of Om chanting, pre-dawn carol singing, yogasanas, bhajans, rural service activities, etc., besides quiz and elocution sessions. Swami showered His Grace upon them, paying personal attention to their health and comfort, and addressed them on every evening of that whole month. Mother felt through it all that she was sharing in the excitement and ecstasy of a new festival, in a magnificently majestic temple of Saraswati.

On the eleventh or twelfth day of the Camp, she accosted Shirdi Ma (the octogenarian lady, who had known and worshipped the Sai Baba of Shirdi) to tell her of a momentous experience. Peddabottu (as Shirdi Ma is also known) relates the secret confided in her that day; “Peddabottu,” Eashwaramma said to me, “I want to tell you something that happened to me. But, tell no one else.” I sat closer and said, “What is it, tell me.” “Our Swami is God!” she whispered. I laughed, “Why do you laugh?” she asked. “No, no, I was not laughing at you. I am only happy you have realised it now. Well, tell me, how did you come to know?” I asked. “You know I have been having high fever for four days. Swami came to me, then.” “In a dream?” I asked. “No,” she said, “He really did come to me, when I was rolling restlessly in bed. ‘Ammayi, how do you feel?’ He asked. ‘My whole body is aching,’ I replied, looking up at Him. Then, what can I tell you? It was not He that you and I know. It was Ramachandra with Kiritam and Kodandam (Crown and Bow)! I raised my folded hands and struggled to sit up and get out of bed. But, in a few moments, He became Swami again, gave me Vibhuti prasadam, and said, ‘The fever will go,’ and went.” “You are indeed blessed. What a rare piece of luck!” I exclaimed. “No one of us has had a vision of Sai Rama as Ramachandramurty, while fully awake and alert.” (Thus ends Peddabottu’s narrative).

This divine revelation was surely the fittest prelude to the mergence of that sacred ray in the Paramjyoti, the Supreme Flame, from which it emerged. Swami, the embodiment of that Paramjyoti, Himself disclosed the events and incidents of Eashwaramma’s last day, 6th May, 1972. During one of His discourses on 6th May, the day dedicated to her memory, Swami said, “It was the day before her passing away and I suddenly asked her, in the midst of casual conversation, ‘Tell Me, is there anything else you desire?’ She said, ‘I have finished my pilgrimages to all the temples. I have seen the biggest temple of all and the God that resides there. I have no desire for anything more.’ But, I knew that a small wish still lurked in a corner of her mind – she wished to give a gift to a granddaughter on her birthday. So, I insisted that she should accept Rs.500, go to the bazaar, and buy whatever she wished. I sent her along with a companion and she returned happy with what she had bought.”

On 6th May, 1983, Swami continued the narrative, speaking in greater detail of the Day of Deliverance. “This day is Eashwaramma Day. The significance of the Day is that it is celebrated as Children’s Day, a day when little children are to be reminded of the ideal, a day when she presented the ideal. No one can escape death, but the aim of everyone should be to remind oneself, at the time of death, of the divine, or have some holy or sacred thoughts. The importance of this Day is known to many. Kasturi also spoke about it, now. There is a saying in Telugu, ‘The proof of the goodness is the way they die.’ Genuine devotion is evidenced during the last moments. I shall point out a small incident, concerning the goodness of Eashwaramma.

The Summer Classes were on at Bangalore. In the morning at 7, breakfast had to be served to the students. They went round for Nagarasankirtan and returned at 6. I gave them Darshan at its close. Then, I went for My bath. Meanwhile, Eashwaramma had finished her bath; she drank her coffee as usual, quite happily and took her seat on the inner veranda. All of a sudden, proceeding to the bathroom, she cried out, ‘Swami, Swami, Swami!’ At this, I responded, ‘Coming, coming.’ Within that period, she breathed her last. What greater sign of goodness is needed? She had no need to be served and nursed. Swami will come to the memory at that time, only for a very few. The mind will usually seek and stay on some object or the other, some jewellery or valuables. From the ground floor, she called, ‘Swami! Swami!’ I replied, ‘Coming, coming,’ and she was gone. It was like the elephant calling and the Lord proceeding to bless it – the two wires achieving connection, the release happening
instantaneously.”

“This is the authentic consummation that life must strive for. Beside her, at the time, she had her daughter Venkamma, her granddaughter Sailaja, but she called out only for Swami. Getting this yearning at the final moment is the fruit of holy purity. It is the sign of an ideal, adorable life. Such attitude must emerge of its own accord and not by means of some external force. Here is an example to learn from.”

At the time of Eashwaramma’s death, there were more than a thousand people on the premises of Brindavan, lecture was on, and 800 youngsters were listening eagerly, while 3 cars purred at the side entrance to the bungalow. In one of them, the body of the holy mother, serene and self-satisfied, lay. Daughters and grandchildren sat close around, as they had done for years, nay, during even the previous night. In the other two cars were a few persons, whom Swami had selected and directed to break the news in the village and keep the body at the residence of the eldest son, so that the villagers could file past and offer homage to one,  who had cared for them and shared in their joys, their fears, and their tears.

Within minutes, the news spread all around and Puttaparthi became a vale of tears.  The body was covered with floral tributes, fragrant with gratitude. Devotees accompanied the bier, chanting bhajans and as the sun sank slowly beyond the western horizon, the body was reverentially laid in the grave, beside that of the ‘father’, Pedda Venkappa Raju

At Whitefield, things moved on as usual. Not a sob, nor groan, nor suppressed whisper announced the demise of the Mother, whom the Son had chosen. Swami was exactly the Swami everyone knew, Love moving around, eager to give and forgive. But, when the afternoon advanced, the vacuum in the ground floor apartments cast a dim shadow of gloom on the faces of the women there. This was noticed, explored, and explained – and the news, that the camphor flame of Eashwaramma had extinguished itself, saddened thousands and millions.

The date, May 6th, was engraved on the page of history as “Eashwaramma Day”. It is celebrated as the culmination of a week-long Festival of Children, all over the world. The Eashwaramma high school at Puttaparthi stands as a monument for the Mother’s abiding affection towards children and her desire to help them unfold their talents, skills, and divinity.

Questions

1.Why did Eashwaramma want to be at Brindavan in 1972?

2. What did Eashwaramma tell Peddabottu?

3. Why were Eashwaramma’slast moments blessed?

4. What were the two things done to remember Eashwaramma’s love for children?

SWAMI confided to Arnold Schulman, the American playwright: “Some people think it’s a beautiful thing for the Lord to be on the earth in human form, but if you were in My place, you would not feel it so beautiful,” He said, “I know your past and I know your future; so, I know why you suffer and how you can escape suffering, and when you finally will,” and “No one can come to Puttaparthi, however accidental it might seem, without My calling him. I bring here only those people, who are ready to see Me and nobody else. Nobody can find his way here.”

These and similar statements that have been heard and recorded by thousands reveal that Baba’s the unique, human embodiment of the cosmic consciousness, the totality of its power, wisdom, light, and love. When, as Swami says, no one can turn towards that Lord without the Lord’s assent and acceptance, what are we to say about the role of the Mother that He conferred on the literally illiterate, rural woman, Eashwaramma, spending her days in the routine chores laid down by epic heroines, ancient lawgivers, and contemporary conventions? Swami revealed that the boon of being presented before the world as the ‘father’ of the Avatar, a boon that one person alone can win during a Yuga, was earned by Pedda Venkappa Raju. Similarly, the crown of ‘Motherhood’ was acquired by Eashwaramma
as a reward for accumulated goodness

No one can gauge the heights one can attain, unless one is urged to rise. She was urged by destiny. She rose. She earned the esteem of all, who were drawn into her presence. The occasional gleam of surprise that shone in her eyes, the little wrinkles that played on her cheeks, the hearty laughter that spoke of her guileless goodness, the film tears that dimmed her vision when she was told of someone’s disease or deprivation – these proclaimed that Swami had chosen her as ‘mother’ not only as a reward for her past, but also in appreciation of what she was capable of in this life.

She was a laudable example of an ideal sister, wife, mother, and grandmother. As the Amma (mother) of Eshwara (God), she shone as brightly as Kaushalya, or Devaki, or Mary. Valmiki declares, “Kaushalya was glorified by that son of limitless splendour.” One can now declare that Eashwaramma was glorified by Sai of limitless splendour. Her Kirti (Fame) was on a par with that of other, epic mothers. The story of Rama as narrated by Sai Rama, the Rama of this Yuga, says that Kaushalya had a vision of her ‘son’ in two locations at the same time, the cradle and the palace shrine. She saw His cosmic Form, illumining all Creation that He has projected out of Himself. Rama is praised as, “He, who endowed Kaushalya with ever increasing Ananda.” This was a gift that Eashwaramma, too, acknowledged with gratitude at Benares, Badri, Ayodhya, Somnath, Sri Sailam, and when she placed floral offerings at the Lotus Feet

When Rama took leave of her to enter the forest as an exile, Kaushalya consoled herself with the prayer, “May the Dharma You uphold be Your armour and Your guard.” This was the very conviction that sustained the Mother, whenever Swami journeyed into what Eashwaramma pictured as the Asuric regions. Devaki, too, was the witness of countless miracles and victories by Krishna over Asura forces. She found solace and strength, as Eashwaramma, too, discovered far later in the kali age, in prayer and penitence and the recollection of the mysterious, majestic, overpowering might of her ‘son’.

Like most women born, bred, and wed in the villages of India, Eashwaramma had to adapt herself to the populous joint family, of which she became a member. The family was crowded together, in a small house. She had to speak modestly, carefully, politely. Serenity and silence, reverence and regularity were inbuilt in such a social structure. After the demise of her mother-in-law, Eashwaramma held the decisive vote in every domestic problem, helped by Swami’s counsel granted to women devotees similarly placed, or confronted by the same calamitous situations. On rare occasions, she placed her dilemma directly before Swami and got His advice on how she was to act.

Her lively sense of humour, developed over the years, was an ever present shock absorber in the crises of life. It was not long, before she discovered that Swami was only widening her horizon and deepening her faith with His pleasant ridicule and tickling tease. He frightened her by depicting the horrors of African forests and fascinated her, too, at the same time, by announcing that gold was as cheap there as dates. This taught her that Swami could defuse all terror and that the greed for gold was a feminine failing she should fast overcome. Thus did she imbibe the lessons Swami took pains to teach and shone forth in simplicity and humility.

Peddabottu, who knew her well, was warm in her admiration. “She had no trace of envy and she never relished scandal. Her speech was sweet with affection and compassion. Her complexion of gold-brown, the eyes collyrium bordered, the magnum dot of kumkum shimmering on her broad brow, they all reminded us of the popular image of Sri, the Goddess Lakshmi.” Bhaktas prostrated, whenever they chanced to meet her and sought to earn her maternal blessings. Her wide eyes gleamed and her toothless mouth was half-open, as she sported a smile of recognition, or satisfaction, or appreciation. They spoke to her in various languages and received her reply in the one language she had on such occasions, the language of the heart.

The Mother spoke sweetly at all times. Her speech reflected patience and forbearance. It was crystal clear, for it was ever free from pretence. It had no sharp edges to hurt the hearer; it was, to use another expression, blunt. During the time Swami was still at the village mandir, there were many women apparently ‘possessed’ by spirits, who were brought to His presence by their distraught parents. The unfortunates screamed, sulked, moaned, and ran helter-skelter. Their condition had been worsened at home, because the quacks, who had treated them, had only one recourse, the rod. Eashwaramma was often the first person to remedy the malfunctioning of the curative inputs in the structure, by trying the soothing balm of sympathy on the victims. A few minutes with her was an effective tranquiliser. She
mothered them with love and quietened their explosive emotions. Throughout her life, she offered this balm in lavish abundance to the afflicted. And so, whenever people called her Mother, it was with quivering lips and tears glistening in their eyes. Swami often left by car for Bangalore, in the early hours, when devotees were engaged in ‘OM’ recitation. The Mother used to plead with Him not to plunge them in sorrow.

She sought out the sick, abed in their homes and persuaded them to accompany her to the Sathya Sai hospital, on the hill behind the Nilayam. She talked courage, all the way from the village to the hill-top. Her vaak (speech) vibrated with hope. She stood beside them, her warm and winsome hand on their shoulder, as the doctor needled or knifed. And soon, the entire population of the village accepted the doctors as holy healers and pleasant sevaks, commissioned by Bhagawan to keep them healthy and happy.

The years went by and life, in fact, sped too fast for Eashwaramma, as Swami filled each day with extravagance of surprise. The impossible, the incredible, the unpredictable – these were her daily bread. She could, however, digest them and survive the pace, because her memory preserved for her a private treasure house, a smriti, of myths and legends of the past, of the lives of saints and sages, and tales of war and peace. Smriti was a constant and convincing companion for her. The tales concerning Brahmamgaru and his astoundingly accurate prophecies, Panduranga Vittal and His amazing acts of grace, the stories of cures that happen at Kadiri, where the God Narasimha is installed – these served her as touchstones to recognize the authenticity of the Avatar that was now before her. She discovered parallels and coincidences, approximations and similarities and her faith grew, as she constantly thought over the disturbing, but happy happenings all around her. The faith she gained, through this process, helped many others to strengthen theirs, too and became, for her, an instrument for firm-minded and decisive action

Mother had a rich spring of native wisdom (medha), with which she quenched the thirst of the desolate and the deprived. She not only knew the simple folk remedies for physical illnesses, but also many ‘psychotherapeutic strategies’ (to use an aristocratic word) that could demolish depression and fear from the minds of women, who came to her. They confided much to her that they would not tell their own mothers. Her sympathy in listening unlocked the recesses of their hearts, wherein their agony was interned. She tolerated the long narrations, never evincing hurry or boredom, resentment or disgust, and the teardrop that shone in her eyes was enough to drown their distress.

Mother was firmly anchored in the wisdom she had garnered through the years, even as she grew toughened by many a storm that blew. Death snatched away four of her children, while they were still lisping and toddling infants. Her daughters were widowed in the prime of life. A grandson was born deaf and grew up dumb. A granddaughter was the victim of smallpox. These were the challenges she confronted in the domestic sphere. But, Swami’s actions stirred her to the very depths, while His words filled her understanding with courage and clarity. She learnt to grow serene during storm and calm and impressed everyone with her dhriti, her steadfastness in her overpowering attachment to Swami and to all those, who adored Him. She had no appetite for novelty, diversity, or distraction. She was, in her later years, firm in the fullness of her heart

I remember the occasions, when I drew her resentment and even rebuke upon myself. These were the times, when, in certain situations, I could not tell her all that was happening, or the whole story as I knew it, in answer to her anxiety-ridden queries, for fear of causing panic. There were also instances, when I could not oblige her over someone, who had appealed to her to be given admission to a prestigious function. It would have been highly indiscreet to have done so. But, when, on all such occasions, I explained the reasons that prompted me to act in this way, she realised that her anger was unreasonable and laughed away her original reaction. She bore no ill will towards anyone, relishing and nourishing it, but always used the very first opportunity to meet the person in question and discover the nature of the urges behind his words and actions. She was seldom too indolent or despondent to neglect this inquiry and if she found that the reasons conformed to Swami’s directions and dictates, she would return happy with all her resentment gone.

Mother encouraged devotees to come to the presence again and again, for she was aware that the sublimation of conduct, character, and attitude needs long and close contact with the Avatar. She confided to them her own story; of fear giving place to wonder, wonder turning to awe, awe moulding itself as acceptance, acceptance expressing itself in adoration, and adoration yielding delight! “You have to practise patience. It is a long, long time from the tiny bud to the juicy fruit,” she would say, quoting Swami’s homilies to pacify the desperate and the depressed. Her counsel showered comfort, for she herself was the embodiment of the Kshama (fortitude) she prescribed.

Fortitude brought equanimity and equanimity shed love even on those, who did not know how and when to return it. “It was a spiritual sadhana to love one’s enemies, to confront hatred with affection,” Swami said, for all are cells in the cosmic Body of God. “When your tongue is bitten by your teeth, do you knock the culprit out with a hammer?” He would ask. I have heard Mother repeat this query to appease the anger of many a woman, who felt insulted or ignored. Kshama means also the quality of mercy, which manifests itself as the urge to forgive and forget. Mother had only a thin film of memory for incidents that pricked her self-respect. It disappeared, when even a scarcely noticeable whiff of wisdom blew over her infinitesimal ire.

The Avatar has taken upon Himself the task of redeeming mankind from the ruin, towards which it is rushing. His call for Samskara (sublimation) involves not only the cleansing process, the uprooting of hatred, hostility, fanaticism, frenzy, and prejudice, but also the process of nourishing the positive qualities of tolerance, brotherhood, sympathy, charity, and clarity. Eashwaramma, like millions of her sisters, was pestered by folly, fear, and fumbling, whenever worldly desires accumulated and clamoured and clashed in conflict.
Swami led her into the realm of happiness, goodness, and wisdom. He raised her, whom He had chosen as the mother, to the status of His foremost pupil, as she progressed from perplexity to pre-eminent faith in the divinity, that deludes us as diversity and also, helps us cast off that delusion, for this is but a game It enjoys playing.

The lives of men and women in the villages were delivered from disease and despair by the props of rite, sacrament, and ceremony, mantram, yantram, and tantram, priest, performer, and soothsayer. Swami explained the kernel, the core enclosed in these forms and formulae and enlightened the Mother and others on their doctrinal significance, their basic purpose, their diagnostic and clinical validity. He lightened the burden of anxiety and ignorance, brightened dark corners, and drove out dread from their minds

These and many other lessons were showered upon the mother for years, by the mSupreme teacher, through the glance that warns, the smile that encourages, the exclamation that alerts, the interrogation that interrupts, the metaphor that reveals meaning, the story that implants a message and she was shaped into a genuine saint, who could see every event, emotion, thought, and thing as a gem set doorway, through which she could cognise the ONE. No wonder the Lord responded positively and with pleasure, “I am coming!” when Mother yearned with her last breath for the mergence and from all of her, called out, “Swami! Swami!” The wave, which had reared up and rolled in answer to the Oceanic Will, was invited by the same Will back into Itself.

Questions

1.What were the 2 locations in which Kaushalya had a vision of Rama at the same time?

2. According to Peddabottu, which Goddess did Eashwaramma resemble?