August 18, 2015 Tuesday: Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi)
18-August-2015 (Tuesday)
Mother As I Saw Her – Swami Saradeshananda
The Mother as a Paramahamsa:
The Mother’s Anna-Prasad and Prabodh Babu – 1
It was indeed difficult to get the Mother’s Anna-prasad or the remains of the rice after her meal. Still sometimes it happened that some fortunate ones were the happy recipients of it in an unexpected manner. I shall try to describe one such incident here. Prabodh of Shyam-bazar was a great favourite of the Mother. he was the founder and Headmaster of the Badanganj Jigh school. He was a respected and well-known figure of that locality. Sarat Maharaj (Swami Saradananda) entrusted this devotee with a work. He was asked to negotiate with the local land-lords, the Laha Babus, for the purchase of a piece of land known as Gosain’s place, which lay adjoining the Master’s place of birth at Kamarpukur. The Swami’s idea was to establish a temple and an Ashram there. For this work Prabodh Babu had to go to Kamarpukur now and then. Knowing that the Mother was interested in this work, Prabodh Babu would meet the Mother at Jayrambati and let her know, from time to time, how far the negotiations had proceeded. On this day, after more or less settling the price and other terms for the purchase of the land with the Laha Babus, he decided to visit the Mother and let her know about it on his return journey home. He got delayed on the way and found that he would not be able to reach the Mother’s place at Jayrambati before noon. Not desiring to make a nuisance of himself by arriving at an untimely hour, he made up his mind to simply meet the Mother, apprise her of the success of the negotiations, and then go home and have his food. When he reached the Mother’s place, he found that the boys, after their noonday meal, were sitting and talking among themselves in the dormitory and that the Mother was having her food with the ladies inside the house. So he quietly entered the dormitory chewing a roll of betel, closed the door and told them, “Please do not worry about my food. I shall have it when I reach home. I have simply come here to inform the Mother about the success of the negotiations with the Lahas. So I shall wait here till the Mother finished her food. Please do not tell her about me now. She may then leave her mean unfinished and get busy feeding me. Knowing that it would get late, I had a very heavy breakfast. Don’t you see me chewing the betel leaf?”
[Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi) – Swami Saradeshananda. Translated by Prof. J. N. Dey. Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore Madras-600004: p 186 – 187]
