The Mother : Contact
THEME/S
My life is filled with Her ruthless Grace.
In those days I used to feel that the Mother was quite ruthless. Today my eyes fill up with tears. It is only one who has received this terrible Grace who can know how the Mother has saved us from innumerable disasters and continues to do so even today.
One day in the Playground, the Mother came out of Her room in order to take the salute at the March Past. Evening had almost fallen. All of us (Minnie-di, Milli-di, Gauri, Violet and I) were standing as usual next to the map of India, waiting for the Mother. The Mother arrived and looked at us gravely for a while. We stiffened with fear. “What had we done, now?” we wondered.
The Mother declared in a firm, grave voice:
“Never think, not even by mistake, that I shall leave you.”
Hearing these words from the Mother frightened us even more. The Mother continued:
“As the mother cat carries her kittens holding them by the neck and transports them from one place to another, I too will drag you by force.”
Then She stretched Her hands in such a way, as if to take us by the neck, that we recoiled a little.
“You will not be able to rid yourself of me,” She went
We went on staring at the Mother’s face with fear and “Good Lord! Why is the Mother so angry with us? We are like terrified kittens.”
We were frightened to be so close to the Mother. But I went on calling Her. We did not get to hear any stories or to laugh or even to ask any questions that day. We all sat still like well-behaved children near Her. From time to time I looked up at Her. She seemed steeped in some deep thought, beyond the known or the unknown. But when had we really known the Mother? Then that fear inside began slowly to recede.
We sat with the Mother and felt a little more relaxed. The clouds of fear thinned out. At that moment, even though the Mother looked very distant, we felt as if She was ours. The Mother seated in Her Maheshwari aspect, immobile, calm,—a formidable Vastness radiated from Her all around. Who knows what sort of a path the Mother was preparing for us? Where She was taking us? Where this path would end? What lay at the end of the path? That too was a mystery. The reason for our birth itself was a mystery. All these thoughts and worries began troubling my mind as I sat close to Her.
After father had finished his Playground activities he came home and enquired:
“Tell me, what did the Mother tell all of you so loudly? All of you sat absolutely still! What happened? You looked terrified!”
I told father in great detail what the Mother had told us. Father sat still for some time. He lifted his hands in salutation to the Mother’s picture. He had tears in his eyes.
“What has happened to him?” I wondered. Then father said:
“How lucky we human beings are! The Mother will personally take each one of Her children forward on their path. Why? Don’t you know about Ramakrishna’s example of the baby cat and the baby monkey?”
Then suddenly I remembered. The Mother says:
There are two paths of Yoga, one of tapasya (discipline), and the other of surrender. The path of tapasya is arduous. Here you rely solely upon yourself, you proceed by your own strength.... The other path, the path of surrender, is safe and sure.... In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma.
A rock had been lifted off my chest, as it were. I bowed to the
Mother a thousand times.
Let me also quote what Sri Aurobindo told Nirod-da when he brought up this baby monkey and baby cat comparison regarding the sadhaks.
Nirodbaran: Even Ramakrishna’s baby cat type of sadhak has to make a decisive movement of surrender and compel the rest of the being to obedience, which, let me tell you, Sir, is the most difficult thing on earth.
Sri Aurobindo: I never heard that the baby cat was like that—if it were, it would not be a baby cat. (It is the baby monkey that is trying to become a baby cat who does that.) But you have evidently so great a knowledge of spiritual things (surpassing mine and Ramakrishna’s) that I can only bow my head and pass humbly on to people with less knowledge. From this answer of Sri Aurobindo’s we can understand even better how the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have surrounded us with infinite Compassion and have been dragging us along the path of Truth despite our physical and vital tamas and the mind’s innumerable, hard resistances.
I offer my infinite salutations at the Lotus Feet of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. They have surrounded us with divine Compassion forever. These words of the Mother keep coming back to me:
“Never think, not even by mistake, that I shall leave you. You will not be able to rid yourself of me.”
Right from my childhood I used to get a slight fever by evenfall. This happened because of my enlarged tonsils. When I was almost fourteen my tonsils were removed. But the fever did not leave me. I however continued to do everything in that condition. After coming to the Ashram my fever increased even more. Every evening when I went to see the Mother, She would immediately ask me how I was. I could not say anything. She held me in Her affectionate arms and concentrated for some time. With the Mother’s gentle touch my body and mind would fill with peace. After taking the flower-blessings from Her I would slowly go back home. And in this way the days passed, one after the other. One day my fever was very high. When I reached the Mother in the evening I could hardly stand. The Mother asked me:
“How are you?”
I just stood before Her speechless. Then all of a sudden, the Mother took hold of my neck in Her tight grip and started shaking me. In pain I began crying loudly.
“Mother, let go of me, let go of me. It’s very painful.” But the Mother continued shaking me.
“Dis, ‘Je me porte bien.’ ” (Say, ‘I am well.’)
I was flabbergasted. My body was burning with fever. How could I say I was well? No word came out of my mouth. The Mother’s grip tightened.
“Dis, ‘Je me porte bien.’ ” I kept crying out of pain.
“Tais-toi. Tais-toi.” (Quiet, be quiet.) “Sri Aurobindo is in the other room.”
On hearing Sri Aurobindo’s name my crying increased even more.
The Mother did not stop shaking me by the neck. She kept saying:
“Dis, ‘Je me porte bien.’ ” and She continued to shake me at the same time.
Just to be free from the Mother’s vice-like grip I repeated, still crying:
“Je me porte bien. Je me porte bien.” (I am well. I am well.)
The Mother had managed to get me to say ‘Je me porte bien’ and She was now happy and responded with
“Très bien. Très bien.” (Very good, very good.)
I returned home crying. At night a deep drowsy sleep came over me. That day this childhood fever that had not left me for a single day suddenly disappeared out of fear of the Mother!
And in this way the Mother protected Her children from so many ordeals and continues to do so even today. But at that moment I felt how ruthless the Mother was!
*
From the beginning of 1950 I suffered quite a lot. I had several big multiple-mouthed boils one after the other under my armpits. Physically those years were indeed testing times for me. When I first went and told the Mother about it, She asked me to go and see Dr. Satyavrata. I was unhappy. The Mother said:
“You know, Satyavrata is not just a good doctor. He believes that the doctor can prescribe medicines to the patient, he can diagnose a disease but what makes the patient healthy is the compassion of some invisible Power. He has experienced this again and again in his life.”
I just stood there silently. Satyavrata was Chitra’s elder brother and a friend of our elder brother. In fact, he was very close to him. It was difficult for me to accept someone of my age as a doctor. There is a saying “The village sadhu does not get alms.” The Mother did not tell me anything more. I had somehow decided that it was only the Mother who could get me out of this hardship. I went on from day to day relying entirely on the Mother’s Compassion. At night I could not sleep. I would keep walking to pass the time. Sometimes I stretched myself in an easy chair and keeping a pillow on either side tried to put my arms gently on them to get some relief. My body was boiling with fever. And days went by in this way. My left arm was all swollen and red. I was in real misery. And the Mother would ask me daily:
One day I lost my patience and told the Mother: “Mother, you only have to wish and you can help me come
out of this suffering.”
And I showed Her my left arm and how pus was oozing out of it.
“You see how even the nerve has got affected. Why don’t you cure me, Mother?”
And I started weeping out of pain. The Mother held me by the shoulders and looked at me with Her gentle eyes.
“You will understand when you become conscious that through this pain from the boil I am saving you from so many other dangers.”
The Mother’s Love was evident in each word She uttered. I felt extremely ashamed. Holding onto Her Feet I said in a choked voice:
“Mother, forgive me. I could not bear this pain, that’s why
I said these things. Please forgive me, Mother.”
The Mother held me in Her arms and remained in a meditative state for a long time. I’m sure you have guessed that after this I came out of this miserable condition.
The year had hardly ended and I was once again in the grip of boils. This time it was the right arm. It was an unusually big boil with multiple mouths again and it was painful. Every evening the Mother asked me with great concern: “How are you?”
She would hold me by the shoulders and concentrate for a while. But the boil just refused to burst. And my body heated up with the rising temperature.
One day the Mother told me:
“Your body looks like Pavitra’s. There is no receptivity at all. You are like a Transformation tree which has no solid base, whose roots are not deep enough.”
At another time She said:
“You were born without any vitality.”
When the Mother spoke to me about the Transformation tree I suddenly remembered the tree standing in the middle of the Ashram. When I came here in 1944 for good I witnessed a powerful cyclone. In Feni there used to be frequent storms. Chittagong suffers from the fury of cyclones and storms almost every year. But I had never seen a cyclone right on the coast like this one. Huge mountain-like tidal waves came crashing onto the road. The pier shook under its impact. The whole town was devastated. There was a huge Transformation tree in the Ashram, where the cactus garden is today. Under the force of the stormy winds this tree had got uprooted. That’s why when the Mother said that I had ‘no solid base’ I thought of this Transformation tree.
To come back to the real story, then.
I heard what the Mother said but did not reply. I could not deny that my body was indeed going through all kinds of miseries.
One evening when I went to see the Mother, all of a sudden She took on such a fierce form that I was terrified. She declared:
“Listen, you must leave this place tomorrow itself. I shall get your ticket to pack you off tomorrow. Go now and get ready.”
As soon as I heard that I had to leave this place I was mortified. Where could I go? How could I live without the Mother? I hugged Her and started weeping uncon-trollably.
“I won’t go, Mother. I won’t go, Mother.”
“You must leave. And you must leave tomorrow. Now run along and prepare your bags.”
I burst into sobs again. Crying all the way I went back home and lay in bed like one in a drowse. Towards the later part of the night that drowsiness disappeared. When I opened my eyes I saw Bibha and Maya sitting next to me and looking at me.
“What’s wrong with me? Why are you both looking so worried?”
They replied that on hearing me cry they had rushed here. “We saw you lying in a drowse and repeating ‘I won’t go, Mother. I won’t go, Mother.’ ” The whole bed was covered with blood and pus. Both Bibha and Maya prepared warm compresses all through the night. Somehow I had not realised anything at all. My body was extremely weak. They fed me tea and bread and dressed me. The Mother used to come down every morning at ten and give flower-blessings. I went and joined the line too. Just when I was near Bula-da’s room the Mother spotted me from far. I entered the Meditation Hall. I kept telling myself:
“My body is not receptive. Then how did my boil burst?” Very proudly I stepped forward toward the Mother. But
the Mother did not even look at me. She just put some flower-blessings in my hand and bid me farewell. After a lot of thought I understood that the Mother had taken on Her Mahakali form in order to root out this sluggishness from my nature, this inability to receive the Mother’s Force. It had been possible for this fire of aspiration to rise in my body to rid itself of all these overwhelming obstacles and difficulties only due to the swift and victorious help of Her Force. In an instant the grip of that negative energy that had been torturing me so much for the last two or three years loosened.
From time to time I remember this harsh terrible face of the Mother.
How terrified I was that day! I did not understand then how the Mother’s infinite Compassion and Grace had dissipated all the obstacles in a flash. How true it is then,
My body and being overflowed with gratitude for this deliverance from unbearable pain and I bowed at the Mother’s Feet. Now I understand why the Mother puts on this terrible form of Rudra. It would be untrue to say that I was not scared but now I feel Her profound Compassion behind it.
Days went by. And then suddenly once again unbearable pain returned! This time to my head. After some time it was discovered that a huge boil had formed right in the centre of my head. I decided not to tell the Mother anything about it and simply bear the pain. The Mother could however understand that something was wrong. I could not bend down after receiving the flower-blessings and would directly come away.
One day the Mother suddenly held my head very hard. I
cried out aloud in pain.
The Mother exclaimed:
“Encore! Non, non!” (Not again! No, no!)
She roared so loudly that all those who were working upstairs came rushing down to see who the Mother was scolding in that way. I was however confident for I knew the danger had been averted. I woke up from my sleep very early. There was no more pain in the head. I felt my head and there wasn’t the slightest hint of a boil there!
And so in this way my life went from year to year, from one ordeal to the next. The boil came back again. This time it came up at such a spot that I found it difficult to walk or even sit. After hesitating for a long time I was forced to tell the Mother about the problem. The Mother blew up once again:
“Je dis: Non, Non!” (I say: No, No!)
And once again on seeing this Rudra form I was confident that I was cured of my boil. In the evening when She came to the Playground to take the salute at the March Past in front of the map of India, She once again said very loudly:
“Non, Non!”
Everyone turned towards me in surprise. They all wondered why Priti was getting such a scolding from the Mother.
After finishing Her classes the Mother returned to the Ashram. I too went back home. I felt terribly sleepy. After a long time I just slumped happily into the arms of sleep. I woke up early in the morning. There was neither pain nor any fever in the body. The boil had vanished!
Minu sprained her leg very badly and could not walk. She somehow limped her way up to the Mother with great difficulty.
“Why are you limping like that?” the Mother asked. “I can’t even stand, Mother.”
The Mother looked at her gravely and said: “Walk straight.”
Minu was scared to death. She hesitated a little.
“Walk, I said!” the Mother instructed her firmly again. There was such a power in Her voice that Minu truly be-
gan walking with great effort. And within a few days she could walk and move about absolutely normally.
There was a girl who would get fever almost regularly. One day when she went up to see the Mother her body was burning hot. The Mother began scolding the girl. She was scolding her so loudly that I could hear everything standing at the back of the line. And I was laughing within me. How many times I had faced the same roar myself! The girl came down weeping while the Mother kept looking at her from behind. I had hardly got into Her room when She said:
“Just see how I drove her fever away with my scolding and she feels I do not love her!”
I had got used to being scolded by the Mother and so I just smiled weakly. After making my pranam I rushed to that girl’s house. She was lying in bed and wailing away tearfully.
I told her:
“You know, it was to drive away your fever that the Mother shouted like that. And you came away thinking that She doesn’t love you!”
After getting that scolding this girl never had a fever again. How many are the ways in which the Mother’s compassion can work!
Our tennis games were in full swing. One of the girls would often get stomach pain just during the game. Sometimes she could not play. Sometimes the game had to be stopped because of this.
One day this girl went to the Mother. She was supposed to play tennis that day. But she was in the throes of a terrible stomach pain. The moment she told the Mother that she would not be able to play tennis because of the stomach pain, the Mother raised Her voice again. She got such a scolding from the Mother that she went home crying. Her friends tried to make her understand that if the Mother had told her to play, she should certainly make the effort to go. Her stomach pain would get all right. The most astonishing thing was that her stomach pain did disappear and she never had this pain again! And she could play tennis regularly again.
Our mother (Bibhavati) would often trip and fall. She kept slipping on all kinds of surfaces. Her knees were so badly battered that she would be unable to walk for several days. We children had got used to seeing her fall like this from childhood. And even after coming to the Ashram this tendency did not leave her. Her knee pain would make her helpless. Amrita-da would often tell the Mother about this. In the beginning the Mother used to listen very seriously and hand some flower-blessings to Amrita-da for her. Once, after mother had stumbled yet again and Amrita-da reported this to the Mother, She shouted:
“Why does Bibhavati keep falling?”
She was very angry. From that day the falls stopped. In a flash such an age-long tendency disappeared! When the Mother uses Her own Force all difficulties and obstacles vanish in an instant. That is when we can see Her Mahakali form. For speedy results the Mother often took on this terrible form.
Our father was a professor at the Feni College. It was on Sri Aurobindo’s instructions that he had accepted this job in a small town like Feni. He was not at all bothered about his salary. The youth of that time in Bengal were focussed on one thing alone: to follow Sri Aurobindo’s ideal and guidance in life. On the Mother’s instructions he left his worldly pursuits and came away to the Ashram with his wife and children for good. But even such a man as he had not got over his habit of taking snuff.
Father had not been able to go to the Mother’s room for pranam for a few days. He was unable to come out of a terrible bout of hiccups for days on end. We too were a little worried about this. One evening when I went to the Mother, She enquired:
“Why has your father not come to me for a few days?” I told the Mother about his bout of hiccups.
The Mother remained silent for a while. Then She said: “Bring your father to me right now.”
I rushed home and told father about the Mother’s instructions. Father came with me to the Ashram. His hiccups did not stop. As soon as father entered Her room She scolded him loudly.
“You are addicted to snuff, aren’t you?”
Father was surprised and nodded meekly. The Mother got very angry and started rebuking him strongly. Like one guilty he stood there with bowed head while I was enjoying this scene of father being scolded. So the grown-ups too got scolded by the Mother!
The Mother ordered in a most firm tone:
“Go home at once and throw away all the boxes of snuff you have!”
Father took the flower-blessings from the Mother and went down. His hiccups had stopped just listening to the Mother’s scolding. From his first-floor verandah father started throwing his valuable snuff-boxes onto the street one by one. His face was worth watching then. Everything was possible with the Mother’s instructions. The Mother had freed father from such a long-standing addiction in a second!
We just stood there and watched father. He never took snuff ever again. He followed the Mother’s instructions to the letter right till the very end. Where did father get this strength? Whose ruthless Grace had delivered father from the grip of such an addiction?
At every instant,
You have blessed my life with Your hands.
How can I rekindle those moments back to living reality again?
One day as I got up from the chair after lunch I had an unbearably excruciating pain in the stomach. I felt as if everything was coming out of the stomach. I fell to the floor crying out loudly. There was nobody at home. Just then Manoj returned from the Dining Room after lunch. He came running as soon he heard me crying. I told Manoj:
“Please inform the Mother immediately that I have this terrible pain in my stomach. I can’t bear it.”
Manoj ran to the Mother and told Her about it. After hearing everything She gave Manoj many juin (jasmine) flowers in a handkerchief and said:
“Ask Priti to keep these flowers on her stomach and to try to lie peacefully. All the pain will go away.”
Manoj rushed back home and handed me the flowers and repeated what the Mother had told him. I lay down at once in bed and placed the flowers on my stomach. No sooner had I done so that I fell into a deep sleep. I felt incredibly peaceful. The pain had just vanished! In the evening the Mother came to the Playground. I was waiting for Her. After coming out of Her room She headed straight for the interview room. She did not seem to have noticed me. I called out from behind “Mother”. She stood still on hearing me. I overtook Her and asked:
“Mother, what was wrong with me?”
She did not even raise Her eyes and continued to walk. “Why do you need to know that?”
I was nonplussed.
Gauri and I used to go to the Mother in the evening together. After taking the flower-blessings we would come back home chatting all the way. One evening I don’t know what happened but just as I reached Minu’s house all of a sudden, as I was talking, I fell almost unconscious on Gauri’s shoulder. Poor Gauri somehow dragged me home.
“Go and lie down a little,” she told me, “while I go and inform the Mother that you are unwell.”
I lay there drowsily. In the meantime, my mother, Bibhavati, learning about my condition came to my side. She sat next to me looking worried. Then Gauri returned. She had brought flowers from the Mother.
“The Mother has asked you to place these flowers on your chest and lie quietly.”
Both Gauri and my mother closed the door and went away. The following day I had hardly reached the Mother than She started scolding me badly.
“What do you think? When you come to me I do some work on all of you. But you lose it all on your way back home! You cannot stop chatting even for a second! Sit quietly for a while and then go back home. You know, the connection had almost broken. The psychic being had not yet got back and you just left! You cannot imagine the danger you have gone through!”
Gauri was just behind me and she could hear everything. After that day both of us would sit quietly for some time in the Meditation Hall after receiving the flower-blessings from the Mother. Only then would we go back home. And so I came face to face with death on several occasions. Thanks to the Mother’s limitless compassion each time I came back alive.
Once I had a severe cold. So much so that I could not even stand in the Playground. The Mother noticed it and threw one glance at me. I was terrified.
After the March Past She looked at Millie-di and said: “Take Priti to your house. Make her drink a glass of luke-
warm water with some lemon and honey.”
And She went inside. I went with Millie-di to her house. As we were talking she prepared the glass of lukewarm water with honey and lemon.
“Priti, sit down in the chair and drink this water slowly. This is the Mother’s medicine.”
And truly after drinking that I started feeling much better. Now I always tell people to drink this whenever somebody complains of a cold.
I suffer a lot from constipation. The discomfort has continued even with exercises. In the morning as soon as I saw the Mother She went in and got a short stick. She placed the stick on her back and started walking with long strides. She walked like this a number of times to show me. Then She gave me the stick and I walked a number of times as She had shown me.
“Every morning when you get up, walk like this a few times.”
Then She went inside and got a large glass. Showing me the glass She said:
“Drink seven such glasses of water immediately on waking up.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. How will I ever be able to drink so much water? But after drinking it I truly felt great relief.
Another girl was suffering terribly from piles. The Mother told the girl:
“Every day sit for a while in a bucket of cold water. The swelling and the pain, both will diminish within a few days.”
The girl did as instructed and magically within a few days she got totally cured of her piles!
How can I rekindle those moments to living reality again?
Tapati and I used to go to work at the press in the morning. One day we noticed that Rajsena, Sujata, Sumitra, Suprabha, Chitra, Shivarani-di and several other pressworkers were rearranging the press equipment neatly. And with what enthusiasm! The Mother had told Chitra that She would come to see the press in the evening. Chitra was running around doing all kinds of work. Then the Mother arrived in the evening. We all stood up. The Mother did not look at anyone. She went into every room, stood next to every machine and asked all sorts of questions! We stayed a little behind the Mother. A chair was arranged for the Mother to sit in one of the rooms. The Mother entered this room, looked around and then sat down. Next to the Mother’s chair a tray with toffees was placed. Everyone went one after the other to receive a toffee from Her. We too joined the line. Chitra was now near the Mother and I noticed that her face was a little sad. I wondered what was wrong. Then the Mother went back to the Ashram. In the evening when I went to the Mother, She asked me in a slightly worried tone:
“Do you know what has happened to Chitra? When she came to me to receive a toffee I noticed that she was a little sad.”
“Mother, you had told Chitra that you were coming to the press in the evening. She spent the whole day very enthusiastically arranging everything in the press neatly. She really worked a lot. We all worked very hard. But you did not look at us even once. Poor Chitra, she is the youngest of the lot. Probably she felt a little bad about it.”
While listening to me the Mother went into trance. Then after some time She gave me some flower-blessings and I came down. Nothing escaped the Mother, not even a little girl’s sad face from among the hundreds coming to Her.
In this way, so many small, apparently insignificant weaknesses of our nature would be revealed in the presence of the Mother. And She always helped us to overcome our human weaknesses. How many things She has taught us, really!
Let me recount to you an amusing incident about Chitra. We had just begun working in the press. We had to work from morning until half past eleven. Chitra would feel very hungry and when she felt hungry her stomach would start hurting. But it was not possible to get anything to eat at ten. Her work place was quite far. When the Mother came to know about this She started giving her a chocolate packet everyday. It was a well-known French chocolate.
There was another girl who was very weak. The Mother was very concerned about her. Every morning She would Herself prepare a glass of glucose and go and give it to her. And slowly the girl became healthy. This faith of the little ones in the Mother was such that it started working even in the atoms of the body.
“Mother, look, I seem to have a new skin problem on my neck,” a girl told the Mother. The Mother rubbed that spot with Her finger very hard for some time. It was quite a sight to see the Mother doing this. And the skin problem just vanished!
A boy fell from the vaulting box and hurt his spine very badly. The Mother was present in the Playground when this happened. She rushed to the boy and sat next to him. She pressed the spot like Mahishamardini. The whole Playground stood still in a hush. We were all calling the Mother. Everyday after Her game of tennis the Mother would go to see this boy in his house. She would sit there and talk to him. In a few months the boy became all right. I had never imagined that this unfortunate boy would be able to walk straight after such a serious injury.
Chitra Jauhar is Lata and Tara’s sister. Let me recount an interesting incident about her. The Mother used to distribute toffees to the little ones in the Meditation Hall upstairs at noon every day. We all waited, leaning against the wall.
“Bonjour, mes enfants,” (Good morning, my children,) the
Mother would greet us all on entering.
We would all respond together:
“Bonjour, Douce Mère.” (Good morning, Sweet Mother.) There was so much noise and movement that the Mother
would often remark:
“It’s like being in a huge cage of birds! Chirping away all the time!”
But Her face wore an indulgent smile. She would take a toffee from the tray and give one to each one. One day just then Chitra had an awful bout of hiccups. The Mother turned to her for a moment. Then when She came to Chitra to give her a toffee, all of a sudden She gave a big thump on Chitra’s back very earnestly. Then She continued distributing toffees to the other children. We were simply shaken! What was the matter? Why did She thump Chitra’s back so hard? In that single thump Chitra’s hiccups stopped! And we all burst out laughing.
Once during this toffee distribution Arunkant (Usha and Urmila’s brother) who was just four or five fell asleep. His body was covered with boils. And there was a poultice on each boil. In fact, we used to call him “Poultice Babaji”. He was a roly-poly kind of boy. The Mother would personally examine Arunkant’s condition every day. That day She told Lallubhai:
“Please take Arunkant home.”
Lallubhai was just not able to lift Arunkant. He observed in Bengali:
“Eta ekta besh bhari jinish aachhey!” (This is some heavy stuff!)
On hearing Lallubhai speak Bengali we all burst out laughing. The Mother wanted to know why we were laughing. After we explained the reason, the Mother herself started laughing. What an uproarious scene that was! Sri Aurobindo’s room was just across. I wonder what He must have thought about us youngsters laughing like that!
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