Once in Haridwar the Kumbha Mela was in full swing. My worthy guru bhai, Swami Chidananda, had gone to attend the fair. When he went to a nearby jungle to attend to nature’s call, he saw a man lying under a tree, groaning in agony. His body was decaying from leprosy, with flies hovering above the sores all over his body. Swami Chidananda was greatly moved by this sight. He came running to the ashram and said to me, “Satyam, I’ve seen someone in a horrible condition. We have to bring him to the ashram as soon as possible. Get a big gunny sack and come with me right away.” His impatient hurrying didn’t give me any chance to ask questions. I followed him and together we brought back the would-be recipient of our ministrations to the ashram.
We learnt that earlier he had been totally healthy. After taking a dip in the river during the Kumbha Mela, the disease had manifested in him all of a sudden. Our combined intellects were unable to correlate the bath in the river and the onset of this all-consuming disease. But a bigger question was staring us in the face. How to arrange for his care and cure? We made some rough calculations regarding the expenditure. The estimated figure reached four thousand rupees! Where would we get so much money from?
Just then we heard the khat-khat sound of wooden sandals and lo! suddenly the figure of Swami Sivananda was before us. He took one good look at us and then said smilingly, “All right, all right. Carry on with your seva.” And so saying, he moved on. Whatever we had done till now had been done without informing him. We now realized that it was impossible to do anything without his knowledge. We went to him and placed our problem before him. During the course of our conversation, he casually placed a sum of four thousand rupees before us.
As if he had been ready with the money! Now our sadhana of seva started. Swami Chidananda and myself divided up the duties amongst ourselves. But the ‘divine deity’ never spoke anything but abuse. A little delay in any task would result in a shower of the choicest abuse, “I was lying in peace under the bael tree until you rascals brought me to the ashram. What was the need to bring me here?”
One day, Swami Chidananda was cleaning the patient’s body and applying medicine. He applied a little extra pressure accidentally. Immediately the ‘divine deity’ hurled vulgar abuse at Swami Chidananda and spat in his face. Swami Chidananda humbly sought forgiveness for his inadvertent mistake, “I’m extremely sorry. Please forgive me, this won’t happen again.” Yet the patient was furious, “You rascal, why do you touch me if you have neither courtesy nor care?”
One day as I was shaving his beard, my untrained hand slipped a bit and a little cut appeared on his face. He immediately slapped me hard across the face and let loose a volley of invective. I became extremely annoyed and went straight to Swami Chidananda. “Please take care of your divine deity yourself. I am not doing any more of this seva.”
Nonetheless we continued to serve him. A person in his condition wouldn’t have recovered even with years of regular and proper treatment, but he got well in only two months and then one day disappeared without a trace. But before leaving he said, “Everyone in this ashram is a crook. Only Sivananda is a true sadhu, and the other one is Chidananda. And Satyananda a little bit. I’ve seen the true colours of everyone else.” What surprised everyone was that he didn’t take anything with him. We never saw a trace of him again. God only knows who he was!
Sometimes I think Swami Sivananda himself was the director of this entire drama. His sudden appearance on the first day together with his remark, ‘All right, carry on with your seva’ and then handing out a sum of four thousand rupees for an unknown stranger supports this theory. In any case, by that time Swami Sivananda had reached such spiritual heights that the barriers of space and time were meaningless for him. Even the most surreptitious secrets of total strangers were like an open book for him. As far as the money is concerned, perhaps besides the satisfaction of serving a needy person, there was the desire to test his disciples as well.