Memories of First Darshan

A Personification of Compassion

Q: What was your earliest recollection of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo? What were you told about the Mother in early childhood and when did you realise she was someone special, not like everyone else?

When we used to go for the balcony darshans when I was still very small I would say, "Big Mama is coming, Big Mama is coming." I was brought up essentially with no religion. I was very close to nature and animals. When I thought of God I saw Sri Aurobindo's image. Also, I did not think of the Mother as a human being. It wasn't planned out for me that she would appear as a Goddess, but that's how it was in actuality. The Mother told my mother that I was a very old soul. When we would go up to see Mother on Darshan days she was like a mother to all of us. She taught us children so much. We would sit down before her and she would pat us on the head. We would go to the Mother and have lunch with her. The queues were long waiting to see Sri Aurobindo. We would see him four times a year. I saw him up to the age of thirteen at which time he left his body in 1950. He was for me the personification of Compassion. There was always so much light around him. I always saw this light around him and a loving, compassionate smile on his face.

- Gauri Pinto

(The Golden Path – Interviews with Disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville by Anie Nunnally, published by East West Cultural Center, California, 2004, p. 51)