Champaklal Speaks

Mother’s Moving to the Top Floor

On the morning of the 9th December, 1953, after meditation, Mother informed Dyuman that she would go up to her new room on the second floor from that night. Thereafter she spent the nights there. And now and then she would spend some time there during the daytime also.

From March 20, 1962, after going back to this room from the Balcony darshan, she did not come down at all.¹

The entrance to this room is through two doors, an outer wire- net door, and inner wooden one. On the first day, when I went in with her. Mother instructed me that both these doors should not remain open at the same time. While entering, the net-door had first to be closed and then only the inner one opened. She herself was so particular about this that while entering, she would open the first door just to the extent necessary and ask me to follow her immediately before closing it.

On the first day, I said: “Mother, you go in. I shall follow afterwards.” But she said: “No, you come.”

By observation and experience I learnt that she wanted to open the door as few times as possible. If there were things to be taken inside, they were all to be first collected in the tiny hallway between the two doors and only then would she go inside her room. Now this was all right if there were only two persons. But when there were three? And that too when Mother was one of them! Again, as you know, the outer door opens to the outside but the inner opens into the hallway. You can imagine the awkwardness when there were three persons together, as it used to happen on the first of the month, when Mother, Vasudha and I would find ourselves in the hallway at the same time! Of course, like all things with her, this arrangement also got changed in the course of time. You have seen how, after some years, both doors had to be kept open at the same time to allow the long line of devotees to go in for Pranam and come out with the least waste of time.

Another interesting feature. In the beginning Mother was particular that no flowers were kept in this room. Bur slowly this rule had to be relaxed and the result was that all sorts of insects—flies, mosquitoes, ants, spiders, cockroaches—came into the room along with the flowers. Most people do not know that when they put flowers in her hands or left them in her lap, ants and other insects used to climb on her hands and then crawl about on her body. But she would never protest.

What has the Mother not done for us?