Post by cnupne on Jul 29, 2012 7:37:28 GMT 5.5
Reminiscence of Bhagawan Ramana
Rajalakshmi was the granddaughter of Venu Ammal, the younger sister of Echammal who had served food to Bhagavan for about forty years. The following is based on her video interview and an article contributed by her son, with whom she lives at Chennai. She says:
On the death of my mother, my grandmother was completely devastated, unable to bear the loss of her only daughter. She walked all the way from Tiruvannamalai town to then distant Ramanasramam at 11 p.m. on a dark, lonely night. She cried uncontrollably and fell at Bhagavan’s feet. Chinnaswami, Bhagavan’s younger brother, objected to her falling at the feet of Bhagavan for a worldly reason. To this Bhagavan countered by asking Chinnaswami if he would have objected to his sister Alamelu doing the same thing in a similar circumstance. Bhagavan shared her grief in his inimitable way and consoled her.
I first saw Bhagavan in 1923 when I was three years old. My grandmother, who was serving at the Ashram, took me along with her every morning, returning home in the evening. Once, I was playing a ‘cooking’ game by offering small pieces of stones as cooked rice to Bhagavan and asking him to eat them. Bhagavan readily put those stones into his mouth and pretended to eat them. When my grandmother objected, Bhagavan replied that the child was happily offering him the stones as food and he did not want to disappoint her.
On another occasion, when seated next to Bhagavan in the dining hall, I asked my grandmother to serve me more of a particular preparation. She declined. When she was about to serve more of the same preparation to Bhagavan, he refused to have it on the grounds that what was applicable to the child was also applicable to him.
Bhagavan taught me Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit, starting from the alphabets. He also taught me arithmetic. The first Sanskrit sloka he taught me was from Upadesa Saram. Eventually I learnt all the thirty slokas and recited them before Bhagavan, who was very pleased. Bhagavan presented to me a copy of the book Ramana Vijayam by Suddhananda Bharati after writing my name on it. The book includes the story of Bhagavan’s stay at Pathala Lingam.
Being curious, I visited the place in the Arunachaleswara Temple, but I could not go inside due to bats flying around and the stinking smell coming from inside. I told Bhagavan about my experience and asked how he could stay inside a place like that for such a long time. His reply was that he was not aware of his stay there and that he came to know of it from others. This shows he was completely oblivious of time and space while inside Patala Lingam.
In my school, children used to play kolattam . I did not have the sticks to play. My grandmother was not willing to spend one and a half paisa for the sticks. When I told Bhagavan of my problem, he asked his attendant Madhava Swami, to get two wooden sticks, out of which he made two beautiful kolattam sticks and presented them to me. Somebody told me not to address Bhagavan as ‘Thatha’ [grandfather]. Bhagavan replied that as I was at the Ashram since childhood, there was nothing wrong in calling him ‘Thatha’.
In the early months of 1950, when Bhagavan was very ill, I was at Lucknow. My grandmother, who was working at the Ashram, asked his permission to visit me and then go to Kasi. Bhagavan told her that when she took a dip in the Ganges at Kasi, she could perform the ceremony on his behalf too. After a few days with me she went to Kasi and while taking a dip in the evening, thinking of Ramana, somebody told her to look up. She saw a large star trailing its light across the sky. And this happened at the exact time of Bhagavan’s mahanirvana.
Source: Mountain Path