The Compassionate Mother - Brahmachari Akshaychaitanya 044
Satwik Joglekar
7-March-2021 (Sunday)
Passages from:
THE COMPASSIONATE MOTHER SRI SRI SARADA DEVI – 044
Chapter 12
SERVICE TO THE MASTER – 04
Sometimes Sarada Devi would feel like making a garland for adorning the Master. She was an expert in stringing garlands. Occasionally she used to make a beautiful garland and send it to the shrine. Once she spent a whole day in the Nahabat stringing a garland of her choice. She then sent it to the Master saying that he should wear it. The Master came and wore the garland and began to sing, “Oh me, what more precious ornament is left [for me] to be adorned with! Today I am wearing the garland of the moon!” [Narrated by Nikunja Devi]
The room in which Sarada Devi lived in the Nahabat was very small. It was so small that in the beginning many times she used to strike her head against the doorframe while entering it. For most people it would be distressing to stay alone in that room. The room was filled with the essential household goods, including kitchen utensils and provisions. In such a [small and congested] room, she stayed for months and years together, fully engrossed in the service of the Master and her spiritual practices. Many people used to visit the Master regularly at Dakshineswar for a long period; nevertheless, none of them even had an inkling of Sarada Devi's presence there! Further, it was not that she always stayed alone in this room. Sometimes the Master’s niece Lakshmi3 (Lakshmi Devi was a partial manifestation of goddess Shitala. Her spiritual mood and attitude was similar to that of the cowherd lasses of Vrindavan. She used to occasionally sing for the Mother the songs of Chandidas and Vidyapati.) or sometimes two or three women stayed with her when the number of devotees swelled.
About her stay in the Nahabat, Swami Saradananda states: “It is surprising how she could continue to stay month after month in that small room of the Nahabat! She used to relieve herself at three o’clock in the night. Then, finishing her bath in the Ganges, she used to enter her room.4 (She used to take bath at the Bakultala ghat, which was in front of the Nahabat. One day she had almost stepped on a crocodile while going down the stairs and entering the waters of the Ganges. She had told Vibhuti Babu, “It was then three o’clock at night. In that dark, I was going down the stairs to Bakultala ghat. I saw something black and thought it was the fishermen’s pot. As soon as I went near it, it immediately entered the water. It was smelling like that of a fish. I returned to Nahabat. For a long time my heart was palpitating.”
She had said to Ashutosh Mitra, “Once when I was going for taking bath in the dark night, I was suddenly overpowered by the fear of crocodile; however, immediately thereafter I saw a beam of light spread from the Nahabat to the ghat on the Ganges. After this, everyday this light used to beam forth on its own at the time of my bathing.”
But Swami Gambhirananda says in his Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi (p. 77) that the Mother, after the crocodile incident, never went for a bath without a lantern. — Ed.) After this, she used to come out of her room only in the evening for again relieving herself. After continuing in this way for a long period, Yogin-ma arrived there. She could immediately realize that this was not conducive to Sarada Devi’s health. After she complained, some arrangement was made for her to relieve herself near the Nahabat. It was in this small room that food used to be prepared both for the devotees as well as for the Master. As the food prepared commonly for all did not suit the Master's weak stomach, there always used to be kept live fish in that room [exclusively meant for the Master’s meals]. There used to be many hanging rope-shelves in the room. In this small room two or three, or sometimes even more, persons would sleep. Once during the Master’s birthday, arrangements were made for feeding fifty or sixty persons. The entire cooking was done in this small room of the Nahabat. Even the women devotees had their meal there, When Yogin-ma went to the Master at night, he said, ‘Where will you go at this hour of the night? Moreover, where is the place for you to sleep? You can sleep in the veranda next to my room. When Yogin-ma went to Sarada Devi to convey the Master’s proposal to her, she found the Nahabat well cleaned as well as the arrangement for her sleep already made.’5 [Sri Sri Saradananda Prasanga (in Bengali)] From Swami Saradananda’s words, we get a glimpse of Sarada Devi’s amazing capability to do all her chores, whenever needed, in a swift manner.
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The Compassionate Mother Sri Sri Sarada Devi
The Oldest Biography of Sri Sarada Devi by Brahmachari Akshaya Chaitanya
Translated by Swami Tanmayananda
Revised and Edited by Swami Shuddhidananda
Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, 2009. p. 84 – 86
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