Passages from Sri Sarada Devi and Her Divine Play! 06 March-2021 - 325
Satwik Joglekar
06-March-2022
Sri Sarada Devi and Her Divine Play! 325
Passages from “Sri Sarada Devi and Her Divine Play”: p 324 -325
By Swami Chetanananda
Vedanta Society of St Louis
CHAPTER 20
Holy Mother in the Midst of Her Family – 13
A Compassionate and Forgiving Sister – 04
Kalikumar was very shrewd and took every opportunity to extract money from his sister. Once he took money from Holy Mother and built a big parlour on his property. He allowed Holy Mother to perform the annual Jagaddhatri worship in the parlour and also allowed her out-of-town devotees to stay there when they visited.15 [15 Swami Saradeshananda, Sri Sri Mayer Smritikatha, Udbodhan Office: Calcutta, 1982, p. 53]
Holy Mother was extremely careful about Kalikumar, as he was very touchy. The caste system was followed rigidly in her village. According to that system, a brahmin does not eat food cooked by a nonbrahmin. An elderly brahmin lady cooked for the Mother’s household, but sometimes Brahmacharis Barada and Hari (later Swami Haripremananda) helped her in the kitchen, even though they were not brahmins. Holy Mother was apprehensive lest Kalikumar stir up trouble with relatives and villagers because nonbrahmins worked in her kitchen. She tactfully invited Kalikumar to have dinner with her from time to time, so that he would not raise his voice against her household. However, one day her brother Barada raised this issue and solved it with this remark: “Sister, these brahmacharins are your disciples and pure souls. If they cook rice, that is also pure. It is repugnant to eat in a hotel or a restaurant in Calcutta, and that food does not give me any satisfaction either.16* (* The cooks of chefs in Calcutta hotels and restaurants are not all brahmins, so the issue of the caste system does not arise there) [16 Swami Gambhirananda, Srima Sarada Devi, Udbodhan Office: Calcutta, 2008, p. 243] Prasanna and Barada were very liberal and never opposed their sister’s wishes.
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