Reminiscences of Sister Nivedita - 2
Katha Vivekananda Kendra
After they had gone Swami Viveknanda told me a great deal about Sister Nivedita—her great accomplishments and range of knowledge, her passionate devotion to India . Then he told a little story. They had just returned from Amarnath, the famous shrine among the snows. Vivekananda had walked with the other pilgrims. As a young ascetic he had tramped over the greater part of India . Sister Nivedita had a dandy. When they had proceeded only a few stages she noticed an old woman among the pilgrims and saw that she was walking painfully and laboriously with the help of a stick. Nivedita promptly got out of her dandy, put the old woman in it and walked all the way out and back from the shrine. When I asked her afterwards about it she said she had two blankets, slept on the ground and had never felt better in her life.
But I never saw her in Srinagar again. I received a letter which necessitated my immediate return to Lahore and I left the next morning asking Swami Vive-kananda to make my excuses at the tea party.
A few days later I met her at Lahore . She was staying with the other
two ladies at Nedou's hotel and we met almost every day. Sometimes we
would keep on talking till late at night, one of the other ladies
quietly sitting by and listening to the bewildering range of our
conversation. There was hardly a thing relating to India tnat we did not
discuss. She frequently praised the judicial balance of the cultured
Indian mind and the passionlessness ot its outlook. Everything about her
was sincere, frank and pure while her unaffected modesty was as
charming as it was admirable. And I saw that she was a woman with an
extraordinary intellect, of extensive and accurate reading. She was
intensely impulsive, but eveiy impulse was generous and her earnestness
ol purpose was consuming.
She wanted me to show her the city. Would she like to drive through the city ? No, she preferred to walk. A little slumming, I suggested, and she smilingly assented. So ope fine morning we entered the city by the Lohari Gate and tramped for over two hours, passing through every street and lane in the city. She was greatly interested in everything she saw—the children who started at her open-mouthed, the women veiled and unveiled, the men who lounged at street corners, the Brahminy bulls lapping the rock salt exposed for their use on the market stalls, the crowded houses. She took in everything and asked questions about everything. On coming out of the city we took a carriage and I drove her to the hotel.
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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्धयसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥
Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26