MEETING WITH MAHASHAKTI

Curious Clues

Curious Clues

I was thinking of the sweet-natured old lady and wondering whether to have any contact with her or not. She was as pious looking as a beautiful deity. I pondered what I should do when she would approach me and offer prasad.
My sister was busy. I asked my  nephews about her.They praised her and said she was very  much loving and kind. There was no cause of any complaint against her.I asked my sister about the old lady.She was a bit puzzled and said,"Why are you asking about her?"
I gave her information about what Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had told me.My brother-in-law who was listening to me laughed at the mention of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

My sister said,"People rumour that she was involved in witchcraft. She sacrificed her husband and three sons to evil spirits to acquire magical powers to attract and hypnotise people.She was pretty and charming in her youth.She had learnt black magic from her husband's elder brother by whom she has a son.But now I believe those charges  about her are genuine..."

"Why do you so believe?"I asked.

My second sister was also at Balasore. She was with us.She said,"Gada,what Ramakrishna told you is correct and meaningful."

"Do you believe in all that I am telling you?" I asked her with puzzlement.

"Yes,that is natural.What the holy Mother had told us is happening before our eyes." my second sister said.She had become a widow a few years back.

My brother-in-law asked in a disapproving voice:"What had the holy Mother told you? May I know?"My elder sister also wanted to hear again what she had heard about me many times.She was married and lived away from us with her husband.But my second sister who was ten or eleven was an witness to what had happened the day the madwoman had visited my house in my village.

My second sister talked:"It was a hot summer day around 10 in the morning. A woman in a pink sari and barefoot was walking through the village street. A large number of small children were following her. She was shouting angry sentences at some invisible beings.Gada was five  years old.She came to our house and said to mother in an imperious manner,"Where is Dharanidhara?My mother told her in an irritated voice:'No Dharanidhara lives here....Leave this place immediately.Madwoman ...!' She hissed at mother and said:'My Dharanidhara was born in the month of Chaitra on the eighth lunar day and it was Wednesday. Night..2:36.' Mother instantly calmed down.The woman was glaring into mother's face savagely.Mother begged pardon and talked to her in the gentlest possible tones. Gada(me) arrived home that moment.The woman took him into her lap and clutching him to her chest cried and sobbed incessantly.When his leg touched her,mother told him not to do so and the madwoman was enraged and said:'My child's leg won't touch me? How strange!' Then she grabbed his leg and struck her chest many times with it. She was crying all the while. At last she told mother that she had cooked fish and had made green gram rice cakes and commanded mother to serve her the same. Now mother was an obedient child. As she was eating mother was worried about her caste.Was she a Brahmin or not? She stared at her and said,'I am going to clean the utensils.You needn't bother about my caste.' She finished the food and headed towards the pond behind our house to wash the   utensils.After that she took Gada into our living room and bolted the room from inside. Mother was desperate.She was scared about what the woman might do to her son."

I remember clearly I sucked milk from her to my heart's content. Let me tell you that I took my mother's milk till I was ten years old and even when my younger brother had been born.I would push him away to have my share of mother's milk.

After I had sucked milk from her,she produced a chalk stone and drew a rectangle on the floor. She also drew innumerable small squares inside it.Giving the chalk stone in my hand she told me to put the same in those squares one by one.After a long time,we came out of the room. Mother was vastly relieved seeing me unhurt and safe.Mother was very eager to take me back but she didn't seem willing to comply with her wish.

My second sister was with us.The woman took some sindor  from her forehead and dabbed it on my sister's forehead.Mother asked for some but she sternly refused it. Father was seriously ill at that time.The woman knew about father's approaching death.

"Ma the doctor says the baby in my womb is dead and is going to be stillborn.." mother said to her.

"You will give birth to a handsome son...The doctor doesn't know it," came the answer.

We had mortgaged a plot of land to a cunning woman in the village. When mother enquired about it,she said it couldn't be retrieved. When mother asked her if my father would get well,she kept quiet. All the time I was astride her waist.

She stood me on the ground and plucked a basil branch from the earthen vase in which it was in front of our house. She also produced a blue fountain pen and told me to choose one of them. I snatched the basil branch from her hand. She was enraged and took the branch back from my hand and threw it away,"Will you become Krishna and down my name?Take this pen...!"I kept that pen for a long time and ultimately lost it.

After that carrying me on her waist she headed towards the village cremation field.At the same time she was talking:"When my child becomes grown,I will come. The Lord will also come." When we reached the edge of the field she said to mother,"Take my child. Now a number of spirits will run after me..." Before entering the cremation ground taking a narrow path,she said to me,"Those wicked priests broke the stone pot you had bought me. Now I am taking prasad from that broken pot."

We came back home. My mother was sure I was going to excel in my studies. But I turned out to be the dullest of the students in class till Class 7.Every time I would be promoted to a higher class out of consideration only.Not a single word of what the teacher taught in a class went into my mind.I used to fail in every subject except drawing.I always scored 49 out of 50 in drawing.Since I was a source of embarrassment for my family,the village women and my mother would often say that the madwoman's predictions had gone wrong. But later it was proved,of course after a long time, that they were absolutely wrong.