It was not long after we, Rekha and I, moved from Calcutta to Dehra Dun that we were put to the test.
We had made the post-retirement shift in search of peace and quiet in this city in Uttarakhand, blessed by Sadhakas and Saints through the ages, including Swami Vivekananda and Ma Anandmoyee. It pleased us much to find that the Ashram of the Ramakrishna Mission was only next door to Anandamoyee Ma's on Rajpur Road, the highway from Dehra Dun to Mussorie and that it would cost but four Rupees for a visit to the Ashrams.
If I remember aright, it was the Ram Navami day. I was pottering around in the garden in the morning when I felt it would be nice if, on this holy day, a Sadhu would come and collect alms. This vague feeling took me to the gate and I was surprised pleasantly to find a sadhu walking towards me. I do not recollect whether it was I who hailed to sadhu or he appealed to me for something to eat; but I trooped back to the house and Rekha put some raw rice, dal, vegetables and a fruit or two in plastic bags; I added a two Rupee note and walked back to the gate to had over the "Sidha" to the sadhu.Apparently encouraged by the soft touch the sadhu said " could I get a cup of tea also?" and without waiting for an invitation he entered the gate and we walked to the house and into the drawing room. The sadhu sat on a sofa and I pulled up a "murra" near him and shouted to Rekha to make some tea for Babaji.
The gerua clad Babaji looked timelessly old with his thick matted hair; later on I placed him at 70 but Rekha was firm he was around 50. As we waited for the tea Babaji suddenly asked me what I lacked or wanted. As I prided myself as one "trying to go beyond the clutches of maya" I told him so at some length and also that I had retired from service and at this advanced age I had no particular need for more"things' of the world, etc.Babaji was not convinced and pressed me again that I should ask for something. Half in jest, I told him that I was indeed keen on having 'darshan' of 'Eshwar', if it was in his power to arrange it. Without batting an eyelid, the Babaji said, " Call the mother also". And Rekha came in with tea and perhaps, a plate of biscuits.Babaji asked Rekha to fetch him five grains of rice or wheat and me to bring a five paise coin. When both arrived, he asked for a hundred Rupees! Rekha went in and brought a twenty; So I went in to bring a hundred. Babaji took the One Twenty and asked if he could tear them up. I said " if you wish to" He said " No, I do not; I shall keep them". I thought: " Okay; not too high a price for a vision of God".
Babaji put the grains of rice on his palm closed and opened it a few times and handed back to Rekha five grains of wheat. " A nice sleight of hand", I thought. Babaji then put the five paise coin in his hand rubbed it between his thumb and index finger, which produced some ash on the coin and in the fingers; he placed the coin on my palm and asked whether I had any feeling of heat or cold. I said, "no". Babaji said, "wait". In a minute or so, I felt that the coin was a bit warm and in a couple of minutes more it became hot and it appeared to me as if it was smoking. I told the Babaji that the coin was now hot. He put his hand behind his head grabbed and pulled forward one strand of the Jata ( matted lock of hair) and squeezed it over my palm producing a splash of water which cooled the coin. I suspected that somehow a fast one was being pulled on me, but could not fathom how. Before I had fully recovered my balance, Babaji asked if I could bring out a blanket - it was mid summer at that time - but I located and brought out one, an old khadi rug with a few holes in it. Babaji asked if he had my permission to tear it up. Thinking he would do a trick of repairing a tear by magic I said, Go ahead. But he said, " If it all the same to you, I shall keep it" and put it on hid shoulder, stood up, opened the door and walked out. Then I remembered that I had not had the promised vision and said so. His reply was, "Who knows when - and in what form He gives darshan" and he accelerated his pace and walked out of the garden and my life! later on I discovered that he had left the gate open.
Rekha promptly went and reported the incident, in lurid detail, to her sister who lives next door in her own house alone and is therefore excessively security conscious. She naturally jumped to the conclusion that the sadhu was not only a fake, but also a scout for a gang of burglars and we could expect an attempt on us soon. Rekha, while not going that far, was thoroughly peeved about my foolishness, particularly the mad acts of bringing in the hundred Rupee note and the blanket. She thought that the blanket was in very good condition and being a khadi product would have been very useful in Dehra Dun winter. She also berated me for bringing the sadhu inside the house. Luckily, she had quickly noticed that the fellow was eyeing the things and realising that we were bring sent on errands so that he could get the room to himself, she had never left him alone in the room or else ...."why fret," I said, "when nothing has actually been lost". She shot back " What about the 100?" "What about the 20", I asked before moving to a safer distance. Nevertheless less, I am convinced that the sadhu was no thief or thug and what the Babaji was after really the cash and the blanket. Even a plain, honest sadhu has to eat and in this terrible cold (I am writing this in January) of Dehra Dun, he is welcome to my old and torn blanket. The magic he showed me was cheap at the price.
It was a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks as claimed by Rekha, after the incident of the "sadhu" that the episode of the Bihari couple took place. We were expecting some guests to visit us from Delhi and in the morning I was waiting patiently near the post office to collect them - incidentally, they did not turn up at all - when a most unlikely-looking young man asked me the way to the Bank. He was not the type to have any legitimate business at the Bank and therefore while explaining to him that there was no branch of the State Bank nearby and that one would have to go to the city for it, I also asked him what he wanted to do in the bank. " to change some money" he said. Thinking that he had some damaged or soiled notes, I told him it might be easier for him to go to a money changer and get the notes changed at a small discount. 'But should I not get something more?" asked he, and produced for my inspection a few silver coins of the Queen Victoria or Edward VII. I was surprised, but had to confirm that he should get much more than the face value but probably not at the Bank where, even if they accepted coins which were no longer legal tender, would do so only at the face value i.e Rupee for Rupee. I told him it would be better to contact a silversmith who would buy these for the weight of the silver. I asked him how many of these he had and to my surprise he said he still had about 400 of them. I wished him luck, but if did not get a better buyer I could take some of them at the current price of silver which I guessed would about Rs. 20 a tola. which was the weight of each coin. I explained to him that I could not leave the place just then, but if he desired he could come to my house which was nearby, next day. He departed rather reluctantly, not in the direction of the bank but towards the cantonment.
After a fruitless wait for over an hour, I came home in a peevish mood and snapped at Rekha at the slightest provocation, as if it was her fault that the guests had not arrived. A little later I held out the olive branch by asking if she would like to add a Queen Victoria silver or two for her coin collection. The story then came out and she almost accused me of sharp practices for offering Rs. 20 a coin against the real market price of Rs. 40! She also pointed out that it would cost us a fortune to buy 400 of them There the matter ended, or so I thought!
Next morning, the small boy, Munna, who lives in sister-in-law's out house came in to tell me that two persons had come to meet us. In our seclusion visitor's were few and far between and morning visitor's were just not there, excluding of course, the maid, the milkman and the woman who did the sweeping. Coming out I found my coin-toting friend, accompanied by a ghaghra clad woman. I was again struck by the extreme youth and handsome features of the man, though somewhat marred by a white patch of skin creeping out of the shirt collar. The woman was not half as pretty, and looked distinctly older than the boy who introduced her as his wife, Laadlee. He was himself a Yadav. No, they had not come about the silver but to test out something entirely different. After they came into the drawing room, Laadee sat down on the carpet and from a cloth bag, rather dirty and quite ancient, took out a mass of chains. When pulled up it looked like an ornament golden-yellow in color with seven (or more) strands hanging from a circular base of solid metal. It was large and too heavy to be made of gold and because of the size could be an ornament only for an elephant! Yadav said he wanted our help to ascertain whether the ornament was made of gold as some people had told him. on being questioned he narrated this story;
They hailed from a village in Bihar and a farming family which also tended cattle. But over the years all the ;land had been pledged to the Mahajan and in due course they had been dispossessed of the land and forced to abandon the village home. They had adopted the profession of peripatetic workmen skilled in the demolition of old or damaged structures - a risky but well paid operation. The family moved and worked as a single unit and it was while they were working at Kurukshetra that they had found a kalash (large earthen jar) embedded in a mud wall of a very old structure. Inside that jar they had found the ornament and the coins. After the work there had ended they moved to Dehra Dun side in search of similar work, but had not been able to profitably dispose off the coins or to ascertain the real value of the ornament. About the silver they had made one attempt but the silversmith cheated them by claiming that the 200 coins smelted by him had given very little silver and he had given them only Rs. 30. So, would we check up if the ornament was really made of gold and if so would we take over both the coins and the gold. They would be satisfied with 15 or 20 thousand rupees which would enable the Yadav to marry his sister off and also to reclaim ancestral land to resume their original profession of farmers and husbandmen.
A story rather difficult to believe and I said I could not possibly cart around an ornament of that size for consulting any goldsmith, nor would I be able to offer any acceptable explanation for my possession of it either to the smith or to a Law Enforcement Agency. In any case we lived in fear of burglars and would not jeopardize ourselves further by keeping in the house things of unknown value. The Yadav then, as if in anger, pulled and broke a portion out of one of the seven ( nine or eleven) strands and gave it to me saying " Perhaps you can get this tested". I was amazed by the strength in those fingers which broke up that thick strand by just one pull, but kept the broken portion. Later that day I requested Munna's father, who stayed in sister-law's outhouse, to get the piece of metal tested by a goldsmith known to him. He returned in the evening and reported that the metal was GOLD!
My mind was in a whirl. The value of the silver coins alone would be well over Rs. 15000. The ornament weighing at least 4 kilos would be worth several lakhs. And I could have these for only Rs. 20000. I also did have in the bank liquid cash of Rs. 20000. Even if the ornament proved to be a fake, I would not be out to much loss as the coins were definitely Queen Victoria or Edward VII. I examined the thing from various angles and found nothing against the exchange except the difficulty of disposing off the gold. But why dispose it off? why not keep it for the children, for the grandchildren? Then suddenly I regained sanity and rushed to the shrine room and cried before Sri Ramakrishna and blamed him for putting me such a test and told him that he himself would be at fault if he would tempt me to my doom. Early next morning when I woke up at the usual hour of 4, Rekha said, " I hope you have given up the foolish idea of getting involved in this business?" and I said, "yes". So, when the handsome Yadav came again in the morning, alone without his Laadlee, I could tell him that it was gold alright but I was sorry I could not help him any further. He just walked away and did not return.
I resumed my researches into the many miraculous acts performed by Sri Ramakrishna, his Shakti, Sri Sri Sarada Ma, and his alter ego, Swami Vivekananda. I was again at peace.
It was a couple of days after the Bhandara for our Gurudev at Kishenpur Ashram that I completed writing the first part of my paper on the miracles of Sri Ramakrishna. I was feeling happy and relaxed. That day the Colonel dropped in unexpectedly just after we had finished lunch. We knew that the Colonel's Lady was out of town and asked him whether he would have a bite at our place.
He said yes and Rekha quickly boiled some rice and with the left over dal and sabji. The Colonel had some species of lunch, ending with some ' kheur gurer payesh that had been offered to Sri Ramakrishna in the morning and left intact. After the lunch we huddled before the heater for a good gossip and the sister-in-law joined us.
Apropos of nothing, the Colonel started reminiscing about his early days in Dehra Dun. Before he had purchased the house on Rajpur Road near the Mission and before he had opted for service to the poor in the Mission Dispensary instead of the private practice. To his small Chamber in Karanpur area came all types of patients, mostly Bengali speaking. " One patient who spoke dehati hindi" , he said, " gave me quite a surprise one day, as he brought out of a dirty old cloth bag some pure silver coins of Victorian vintage as my fees. The bag was full of the coins. I was negotiating then for purchase of the house and needed all the cash that I had otherwise I would have bought out the whole lot". After a pause he continued..." would you believe it, the next day the chappie again came with a 'saat naari haar' - a seven stranded necklace of gold - and offered to sell it to me at a ridiculously low price! when I threatened him with the Law he said he had got it (and the coins) in a Kalshi ( earthenware jar) while demolishing an old structure at Kurukshetra. That was long ago at least 10 years back. I would be a rich man now if I had taken the necklace".
It was only when sister-in law enquired whether the Colonel's patient had been suffering from Leucoderma that it struck me that the two incidents were too similar to be a simple coincidence. I am still wondering as to who this Yadav and his Laadlee were who tested us in 1988 and how they are related to the Colonel's patient in 1978! Do you also think that the sadhu might not have been a fraud after all? But, the Legends say it was Krishna's son and the Lord himself who had the ailment.
RK Ganguly
We had made the post-retirement shift in search of peace and quiet in this city in Uttarakhand, blessed by Sadhakas and Saints through the ages, including Swami Vivekananda and Ma Anandmoyee. It pleased us much to find that the Ashram of the Ramakrishna Mission was only next door to Anandamoyee Ma's on Rajpur Road, the highway from Dehra Dun to Mussorie and that it would cost but four Rupees for a visit to the Ashrams.
If I remember aright, it was the Ram Navami day. I was pottering around in the garden in the morning when I felt it would be nice if, on this holy day, a Sadhu would come and collect alms. This vague feeling took me to the gate and I was surprised pleasantly to find a sadhu walking towards me. I do not recollect whether it was I who hailed to sadhu or he appealed to me for something to eat; but I trooped back to the house and Rekha put some raw rice, dal, vegetables and a fruit or two in plastic bags; I added a two Rupee note and walked back to the gate to had over the "Sidha" to the sadhu.Apparently encouraged by the soft touch the sadhu said " could I get a cup of tea also?" and without waiting for an invitation he entered the gate and we walked to the house and into the drawing room. The sadhu sat on a sofa and I pulled up a "murra" near him and shouted to Rekha to make some tea for Babaji.
The gerua clad Babaji looked timelessly old with his thick matted hair; later on I placed him at 70 but Rekha was firm he was around 50. As we waited for the tea Babaji suddenly asked me what I lacked or wanted. As I prided myself as one "trying to go beyond the clutches of maya" I told him so at some length and also that I had retired from service and at this advanced age I had no particular need for more"things' of the world, etc.Babaji was not convinced and pressed me again that I should ask for something. Half in jest, I told him that I was indeed keen on having 'darshan' of 'Eshwar', if it was in his power to arrange it. Without batting an eyelid, the Babaji said, " Call the mother also". And Rekha came in with tea and perhaps, a plate of biscuits.Babaji asked Rekha to fetch him five grains of rice or wheat and me to bring a five paise coin. When both arrived, he asked for a hundred Rupees! Rekha went in and brought a twenty; So I went in to bring a hundred. Babaji took the One Twenty and asked if he could tear them up. I said " if you wish to" He said " No, I do not; I shall keep them". I thought: " Okay; not too high a price for a vision of God".
Babaji put the grains of rice on his palm closed and opened it a few times and handed back to Rekha five grains of wheat. " A nice sleight of hand", I thought. Babaji then put the five paise coin in his hand rubbed it between his thumb and index finger, which produced some ash on the coin and in the fingers; he placed the coin on my palm and asked whether I had any feeling of heat or cold. I said, "no". Babaji said, "wait". In a minute or so, I felt that the coin was a bit warm and in a couple of minutes more it became hot and it appeared to me as if it was smoking. I told the Babaji that the coin was now hot. He put his hand behind his head grabbed and pulled forward one strand of the Jata ( matted lock of hair) and squeezed it over my palm producing a splash of water which cooled the coin. I suspected that somehow a fast one was being pulled on me, but could not fathom how. Before I had fully recovered my balance, Babaji asked if I could bring out a blanket - it was mid summer at that time - but I located and brought out one, an old khadi rug with a few holes in it. Babaji asked if he had my permission to tear it up. Thinking he would do a trick of repairing a tear by magic I said, Go ahead. But he said, " If it all the same to you, I shall keep it" and put it on hid shoulder, stood up, opened the door and walked out. Then I remembered that I had not had the promised vision and said so. His reply was, "Who knows when - and in what form He gives darshan" and he accelerated his pace and walked out of the garden and my life! later on I discovered that he had left the gate open.
Rekha promptly went and reported the incident, in lurid detail, to her sister who lives next door in her own house alone and is therefore excessively security conscious. She naturally jumped to the conclusion that the sadhu was not only a fake, but also a scout for a gang of burglars and we could expect an attempt on us soon. Rekha, while not going that far, was thoroughly peeved about my foolishness, particularly the mad acts of bringing in the hundred Rupee note and the blanket. She thought that the blanket was in very good condition and being a khadi product would have been very useful in Dehra Dun winter. She also berated me for bringing the sadhu inside the house. Luckily, she had quickly noticed that the fellow was eyeing the things and realising that we were bring sent on errands so that he could get the room to himself, she had never left him alone in the room or else ...."why fret," I said, "when nothing has actually been lost". She shot back " What about the 100?" "What about the 20", I asked before moving to a safer distance. Nevertheless less, I am convinced that the sadhu was no thief or thug and what the Babaji was after really the cash and the blanket. Even a plain, honest sadhu has to eat and in this terrible cold (I am writing this in January) of Dehra Dun, he is welcome to my old and torn blanket. The magic he showed me was cheap at the price.
It was a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks as claimed by Rekha, after the incident of the "sadhu" that the episode of the Bihari couple took place. We were expecting some guests to visit us from Delhi and in the morning I was waiting patiently near the post office to collect them - incidentally, they did not turn up at all - when a most unlikely-looking young man asked me the way to the Bank. He was not the type to have any legitimate business at the Bank and therefore while explaining to him that there was no branch of the State Bank nearby and that one would have to go to the city for it, I also asked him what he wanted to do in the bank. " to change some money" he said. Thinking that he had some damaged or soiled notes, I told him it might be easier for him to go to a money changer and get the notes changed at a small discount. 'But should I not get something more?" asked he, and produced for my inspection a few silver coins of the Queen Victoria or Edward VII. I was surprised, but had to confirm that he should get much more than the face value but probably not at the Bank where, even if they accepted coins which were no longer legal tender, would do so only at the face value i.e Rupee for Rupee. I told him it would be better to contact a silversmith who would buy these for the weight of the silver. I asked him how many of these he had and to my surprise he said he still had about 400 of them. I wished him luck, but if did not get a better buyer I could take some of them at the current price of silver which I guessed would about Rs. 20 a tola. which was the weight of each coin. I explained to him that I could not leave the place just then, but if he desired he could come to my house which was nearby, next day. He departed rather reluctantly, not in the direction of the bank but towards the cantonment.
After a fruitless wait for over an hour, I came home in a peevish mood and snapped at Rekha at the slightest provocation, as if it was her fault that the guests had not arrived. A little later I held out the olive branch by asking if she would like to add a Queen Victoria silver or two for her coin collection. The story then came out and she almost accused me of sharp practices for offering Rs. 20 a coin against the real market price of Rs. 40! She also pointed out that it would cost us a fortune to buy 400 of them There the matter ended, or so I thought!
Next morning, the small boy, Munna, who lives in sister-in-law's out house came in to tell me that two persons had come to meet us. In our seclusion visitor's were few and far between and morning visitor's were just not there, excluding of course, the maid, the milkman and the woman who did the sweeping. Coming out I found my coin-toting friend, accompanied by a ghaghra clad woman. I was again struck by the extreme youth and handsome features of the man, though somewhat marred by a white patch of skin creeping out of the shirt collar. The woman was not half as pretty, and looked distinctly older than the boy who introduced her as his wife, Laadlee. He was himself a Yadav. No, they had not come about the silver but to test out something entirely different. After they came into the drawing room, Laadee sat down on the carpet and from a cloth bag, rather dirty and quite ancient, took out a mass of chains. When pulled up it looked like an ornament golden-yellow in color with seven (or more) strands hanging from a circular base of solid metal. It was large and too heavy to be made of gold and because of the size could be an ornament only for an elephant! Yadav said he wanted our help to ascertain whether the ornament was made of gold as some people had told him. on being questioned he narrated this story;
They hailed from a village in Bihar and a farming family which also tended cattle. But over the years all the ;land had been pledged to the Mahajan and in due course they had been dispossessed of the land and forced to abandon the village home. They had adopted the profession of peripatetic workmen skilled in the demolition of old or damaged structures - a risky but well paid operation. The family moved and worked as a single unit and it was while they were working at Kurukshetra that they had found a kalash (large earthen jar) embedded in a mud wall of a very old structure. Inside that jar they had found the ornament and the coins. After the work there had ended they moved to Dehra Dun side in search of similar work, but had not been able to profitably dispose off the coins or to ascertain the real value of the ornament. About the silver they had made one attempt but the silversmith cheated them by claiming that the 200 coins smelted by him had given very little silver and he had given them only Rs. 30. So, would we check up if the ornament was really made of gold and if so would we take over both the coins and the gold. They would be satisfied with 15 or 20 thousand rupees which would enable the Yadav to marry his sister off and also to reclaim ancestral land to resume their original profession of farmers and husbandmen.
A story rather difficult to believe and I said I could not possibly cart around an ornament of that size for consulting any goldsmith, nor would I be able to offer any acceptable explanation for my possession of it either to the smith or to a Law Enforcement Agency. In any case we lived in fear of burglars and would not jeopardize ourselves further by keeping in the house things of unknown value. The Yadav then, as if in anger, pulled and broke a portion out of one of the seven ( nine or eleven) strands and gave it to me saying " Perhaps you can get this tested". I was amazed by the strength in those fingers which broke up that thick strand by just one pull, but kept the broken portion. Later that day I requested Munna's father, who stayed in sister-law's outhouse, to get the piece of metal tested by a goldsmith known to him. He returned in the evening and reported that the metal was GOLD!
My mind was in a whirl. The value of the silver coins alone would be well over Rs. 15000. The ornament weighing at least 4 kilos would be worth several lakhs. And I could have these for only Rs. 20000. I also did have in the bank liquid cash of Rs. 20000. Even if the ornament proved to be a fake, I would not be out to much loss as the coins were definitely Queen Victoria or Edward VII. I examined the thing from various angles and found nothing against the exchange except the difficulty of disposing off the gold. But why dispose it off? why not keep it for the children, for the grandchildren? Then suddenly I regained sanity and rushed to the shrine room and cried before Sri Ramakrishna and blamed him for putting me such a test and told him that he himself would be at fault if he would tempt me to my doom. Early next morning when I woke up at the usual hour of 4, Rekha said, " I hope you have given up the foolish idea of getting involved in this business?" and I said, "yes". So, when the handsome Yadav came again in the morning, alone without his Laadlee, I could tell him that it was gold alright but I was sorry I could not help him any further. He just walked away and did not return.
I resumed my researches into the many miraculous acts performed by Sri Ramakrishna, his Shakti, Sri Sri Sarada Ma, and his alter ego, Swami Vivekananda. I was again at peace.
It was a couple of days after the Bhandara for our Gurudev at Kishenpur Ashram that I completed writing the first part of my paper on the miracles of Sri Ramakrishna. I was feeling happy and relaxed. That day the Colonel dropped in unexpectedly just after we had finished lunch. We knew that the Colonel's Lady was out of town and asked him whether he would have a bite at our place.
He said yes and Rekha quickly boiled some rice and with the left over dal and sabji. The Colonel had some species of lunch, ending with some ' kheur gurer payesh that had been offered to Sri Ramakrishna in the morning and left intact. After the lunch we huddled before the heater for a good gossip and the sister-in-law joined us.
Apropos of nothing, the Colonel started reminiscing about his early days in Dehra Dun. Before he had purchased the house on Rajpur Road near the Mission and before he had opted for service to the poor in the Mission Dispensary instead of the private practice. To his small Chamber in Karanpur area came all types of patients, mostly Bengali speaking. " One patient who spoke dehati hindi" , he said, " gave me quite a surprise one day, as he brought out of a dirty old cloth bag some pure silver coins of Victorian vintage as my fees. The bag was full of the coins. I was negotiating then for purchase of the house and needed all the cash that I had otherwise I would have bought out the whole lot". After a pause he continued..." would you believe it, the next day the chappie again came with a 'saat naari haar' - a seven stranded necklace of gold - and offered to sell it to me at a ridiculously low price! when I threatened him with the Law he said he had got it (and the coins) in a Kalshi ( earthenware jar) while demolishing an old structure at Kurukshetra. That was long ago at least 10 years back. I would be a rich man now if I had taken the necklace".
It was only when sister-in law enquired whether the Colonel's patient had been suffering from Leucoderma that it struck me that the two incidents were too similar to be a simple coincidence. I am still wondering as to who this Yadav and his Laadlee were who tested us in 1988 and how they are related to the Colonel's patient in 1978! Do you also think that the sadhu might not have been a fraud after all? But, the Legends say it was Krishna's son and the Lord himself who had the ailment.
RK Ganguly
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