Memories of First Darshan

Mother as at Forty

An interesting visitor is brought to me — Malcolm D'Cruz.

He relates how he and a friend of his arrived here on 21st to meet a girl friend who had told them that she would be in Pondy that day. He did not know anything about the Ashram. While searching for the girl, they saw a crowd waiting and a number of foreigners in that assembly. Thinking that their friend might be found there, they joined the crowd and asked someone what it was all about. "We are waiting for Mother's Darshan," was the reply. "Who is the Mother? What is Darshan?" were his queries. He learnt that Mother was 95 and would be coming on the balcony.

After the function, he exclaimed that the whole thing was a hoax. On being asked why, he replied that there was no 95-year-old lady there, the lady who came was just about 40, graceful and beautiful! The people who had talked to him took him inside the compound and showed him the recent photos of Mother. He was adamant that the lady who came on the balcony was not that person at all!

He was quite exercised about it. The common American friend who spoke to me of him brought him to me to convince him!

I explained to him the nature of the yogic action going on in Mother's body and told him that what he had seen was her subtle-physical form. He said he started feeling better after our talk and was getting convinced.

27.2.1972

Spoke to Mother re. Malcolm D'Cruz. She was pleased, laughed and asked me to show him the photo taken in 1950 by Cartier Bresson. She confirmed that he had seen her subtle-physical form.

He said he had seen her looking still younger and pointed to the picture taken in Japan — somewhere before 1920 — in which she is holding a flower in her hand. "For the first time in my life," he told me, "I understand what is beauty, what is grace."

- M. P. Pandit

(Mother and I by M. P. Pandit, published by Dipti Publications, 1984, pp. 210–11)