When Truth is Stranger than Fiction (September 1986) - PSR Ramaswami

[Guest guest]

In her own gentle manner she said, "I just finished cooking rice for the

children. Pray, serve yourself for this once", and lapsed into what I know

now in retrospect to have been prayer to Baba.

 

You see, there were four younger children, two of them twins hardly six

months old. But my mind and heart had become dry, no thought or feeling for

any one, not even Baba!

 

So I betook myself to the kitchen to eat! I sat with a Thali' before me and

mechanically served myself some rice. Before I could bring myself to eat,

while sitting and staring at the rice vacantly, I became schizophrenic, as

it were, one part of me questioning the other, "Look, what are you trying to

do? There lies your first born son dead and you are going to gorge your

self." This shocked me into realising how perfectly horrid of me it was. I

turned to look in the direction of the bed in the front-room which was in

line with the kitchen. It was then that my eyes behold the wonderful, form

of Baba. Was it a mere vision, a figment of my imagination? I shouted to my

wife with head still bent, "Kamu, look out and see who has come". Reacting

to the frantic urgency in my voice, she looked up and glanced at the gate.

 

At once, as if touched by a live wire, she sprang up; and as if that was the

consummation she was devoutly praying for she exclaimed, "Amma Naayana! Baba

Vachcheru!" (Oh! at long last Baba has come!)

 

Actually, neither of us had seen the Satcharita portrait of Baba by then.

Our puja portrait showed Him sitting cross-legged. However, in His

Inscrutable Wisdom, He had led us into buying at a 'mela' a few months

earlier a wood-cut portraying Him in five different poses including this

one. Thus we were able to recognise Him at once.

 

Now I felt sure it was indeed HE. I was back in my senses. My heart was

full of gratitude to Him for coming in the nick of time, and saving the

situation. Else, in my forsaken condition, with no thought of Him or for Him

I might have polluted the food before me. In this new found happiness, I

reverentially took the thali up to Him and put the rice in the lifted

"Biksha-paatra", He received it with His beatific face and went away. No

word was spoken. Indeed there was no need for any. My heart was too full for

it, too. There was 'peace that passeth understanding'.

As I stepped into the house, my son opened his eyes and said, "Father, I am

thirsty. Give me some water." This occured in March 1944, twenty six years

after Baba's Mahasamadhi.

 

The humanly impossible had come to pass!

Dr. P.S.R. Swami

Hyderabad-500 457.

 

 

The experiences of Devotees as published in Shri Sai Leela Magazine, can be

read at www.saileelas.org/magazines/SAILEELA/exp.htm