21-May-2012 (Monday)
Reminiscences of The Holy Mother!!!

THE HOLY MOTHER : OUR ETERNAL HAVEN - 18
SISTER NIVEDITA

But in feeling Holy Mother is perfect. You know that photograph (Mother’s first photograph) meant the first time she had ever looked straight at a grown-up man outside her own family, or been seen by one.9 (See note no. 5, p. 125 – Nivedita played an active role in having Mother photographed for the first time. All arrangements for the most widely known photograph of Mother were made by Nivedita and Mrs. Ole Bull. Mother’s first three photographs were taken at Mother’s residence, 10/2 Bosepara Lane in November 1898. After much coaxing and cajoling on the part of Mrs. Bull and Nivedita, Mother was persuaded to sit before the English photographer Harrington. Nivedita arranged Mother’s sari. The reasons for Mother’s reluctance to be photographed were her excessive shyness and her acute anxiety and dejection due to Swami Yogananda’s grave illness. In the first photo her eyes were downcast. The picture was taken when Mother was firmly refusing to look at camera. In this picture the toes of her right foot were covered. In the second photo the toes were partly visible for which the credit goes to Mrs. Bull. It was at her pleading that Mother agreed to have the second photo (the most widely known and universally worshipped one at the present) taken. The third photograph was of Mother and Nivedita together.) Yet what self-consciousness was there? Not a grain! (LSN, To Mrs. Eric Hammond, 9/3/1899, Vol. 1, 1982, p. 76)

Mother said (to me) that Sri Ramakrishna told her that Swami was even as I have loved to think of him, a direct incarnation of the National God, and He Himself of Kali. (LSN, to Josephine MacLeod, 16/3/1899, Vol. 1, 1982, p. 87)

(REMINISCENCES OF Sri Sarada Devi by Monastics, Devotees, and others -
Compiled and Edited in Bengali by SWAMI PURNATMANANDA - Translated by MALOTI SEN GUPTA : P 114-115)

Location: Bangalore, India