Memories of First Darshan

Like a Dream

I saw the Mother for the first time when I was 13 years old, in 1959. I came from the Delhi branch of the Ashram. The day was the 1st of December, and the Mother was distributing Prosperity to all the Ashramites in the room above the Reception hall, which is the one you see just as you enter the Ashram. When I went to her, she smiled and gave me a small soap cake as prasad. To the rest of the students she gave a delicate pink rose flower to each.

The first memory and impression that I have of the Mother is something very ethereal because she was fully clad in a spotless white sari. Light in various hues through the tinted glass panes of the upper part of the large middle door — especially violet — were reflecting on her white sari and somehow it seemed like a dream to me. It did not feel as though I really met and saw the Mother whom we had been worshipping at home for so long!

We all came out and down to the courtyard, did pranam to the Samadhi and started walking towards the playground. [. . .] As we came out, my friends were curious to know what the Mother had given me. When I said that it was soap, first they got quite upset as they all got a rose each. As one can expect, kids did not have much value for the rose initially. After a while one of them said, "You know the Mother is God, is she not? She knows very well that you do not bathe properly daily. So she gave you a piece of soap. We do not need it."

- Deepshikha Reddy

(Darshan – Remembering Sweet Mother and Sri Aurobindo, published by Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville, 2006, p. 57)