The Sadguru

The Sadguru

Om Sri Sai Ram

” When truth is stranger than fiction’

The Upanishads

“Behold, it came to pass that the dumb spoke and the dead come back to life”

– The Bible

BABA APPEARING AS BLACK DOG TO BESTOW POWER OF SPEECH TO BOY BORN DUMB

As if to prove paradoxically that the law of compensation works itself out to perfection in nature, the handsomest of my children, a boy, and the most cheerful withal, was born dumb. This was confirmed when he failed to gain the power of speech as he grew up to complete his fifth year. His heroic efforts to make himself understood through gestures and unintelligible blabber only lent poignancy to the situation, Yet, he was the least perturbed. It was an object lesson in philosophic reconciliation. Being feminine in my attitude to life and, thus though endowed with the characteristics resilience to bear “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, I could not help giving way to tears every time I saw him. It was the optimism of my wife, Kamala, derived from her unflickering faith in Baba’s never failing Grace, that helped me sustain myself. She was never tired of iterating and reiterating the incredible miracles worked by Baba in our life: how He had helped me in a hopeless condition to regain health:

how His Vdhi’ (Vipudhi), the sacred ash, from the perennial fire (dhuni) at Shirdi first kindled by His Yogic power, and used as a panacea for all bodily and mental ills, had enabled her without any medical help to deliver her twin child in a matter of seconds, though the seasoned midwife had averred it would not be for another six hours; how He had re-incarnated Himself and came as Bikshapati to revive our dead first-born son, aged ten years; how He had enabled me to obtain employment in the Central Government though I was past 42 years, and retain it in the face of difficulties inherent as well as created by jealous elements; how He was continuing to fulfil Himself according to His Charters granted for all time to His children, by saving us from want and imminent dangers time and again, and so on, and so forth.

All this was, no doubt, true. But I was a doubting Thomas, besides being a vertiable woman at heart, wanting and in need of constant and renewed proof of the Solicitude of my Lord and Master at every stage.

Thus, I felt that in this boy’s case something had gone wrong somewhere. Else, why this tantalization in His fulfilling the first half of the Upanishadic Axiom when He had so readily rushed in answer to my challenge to fulfil, the other half? If the dead could be made to come back to life, then what could stand in the way of the dumb being made to talk? Of course, I was aware of the Biblical Dictum that the sins of the fathers are visited on their children. Thus, it may be that some past bad ‘karma’ of mine had descended as the curse of dumbness on this innocent boy. Even so, how many a time has He not rescued His devotees by transmuting their accrued sufferings resulting from ‘runanubandha’ into lightly borne ones, or, not un often, taken them upon Himself and sublimated them? I could not forget the fact that spiritually I am wedded to Him, my Lord and Master, and have taken refuge in Him. In the words of Robert Southey,

“In Him I take delight in weal,

And seek relief in woe;

And whenever I understand and feel

How much to Him I owe,

My cheeks are often bedewed

With tears of thoughtful gratitude!”

(with apologies to Robert Southey for changing ‘them’ into Him)

In the spiritual sense, there is no alternative to being prepared, to be passive, naked and unashamed! The beauty is the LOVED ONE does not let it come to pass. Is this not the lesson to be learnt from the wonderful manner in which He saved Draupadi’s threatened nakedness? “Even as obedience to an earthly ruler makes life under it easier, mute and humble submission to the Divine will makes life on earth easier”.

However, all this wisdom was yet a long way off. For the time being, I could not free myself from a nagging doubt that the boy might for ever be condemned to a silent existence. But my wife had no qualms at all about his being able to speak in God’s own good time. With a woman’s instinct, she knew this in her heart. I now realise that I was like a forward child crying ‘mother, mother’ while being in her lap all the time! I was yet to be familiarised to Baba’s wonderful’ ‘Sutradhaari’ ways; yet to learn to be content to remain wherever and in whatever capacity or circumstances He chooses to place me; yet to appreciate that what is, is the best; that, in His infinite Wisdom as the Great mathematician, He sees to it that the sum total of a person’s happiness and misery is always ‘K’ (a constant) whether a saint of a sinner; a nawab or a fakir; man, woman or child; yea, any living creature for that matter!

Now, to hark back to the scene to see how Baba in inscrutable Wisdom designed to convert the gloom of despair into the bloom of hope-fulfilled. As my son was entering his sixth year, we were shifting to a different house, now he had become like the favourite lamb of the shepherd perched on his shoulder. Holding him by my left and with Baba’s portrait in my right, as I was setting my

foot on the first step, Baba alone knows from where, a black. dog appeared, and, coming close, licked him. It occurred to my mind later that a black dog has been instrumental in one of Baba’s Leelas. In my eagerness and anxiety to pacify hjm lost sight of the fact that he had spoken! The others were somewhat behind me. Presently, when all of us were in, as is our custom on entering a house for residence for the first time, we offered freshly boiled milk with sugar to Baba and worshipped Him.

As soon as we had partaken the ‘Prasaadam’, wonder of wonders! The boy began to speak, the words tumbling out of his mouth, vying with one another WORDS! Oh, how they came; brothers and sisters, nephew and nieces, uncles and aunts, even distant cousins, in truth the whole tribe of them came, thus constituting in the course of an hour the full vocabulary of a normal five year old boy, flabbergasting all of us, making us astonished and delighted by turns! Then, all at once, I felt the full impact of Baba’s incredible ‘Leela’. It was too great for words. I could only “Let my blood speak in my veins”.

Glory be to Shri Shirdi Sai Baba – Grace be to all