Tuesday 16 July 2024

Reminiscences of Sister Nivedita - 2

The Jhelum was flowing rippling below the keel of the boat. A cool, fresh morning breeze stirred the water into little wavelets flecked with fleeting foam. Over away in the distance towered Takht Suleman with the pillar on the top. On the bank were poplars and chinars and apple and pear trees laden with fruit. And so, half observant and half oblivious of the glorious nature outside, we fell into animated conversation. Sister Nivedita had a musical voice and spoke with the earnestness of an enthusiast. She wanted information on a hundred subjects. Swami Viveknanda pointed his finger towards me and smiled, " Yes, yes, peck his brains. He will give you all the information you want. " When leaving, one of the elderly ladies asked me to come and have tea with them the following afternoon.

After they had gone Swami Viveknanda told me a great deal about Sister Nivedita—her great accomplish­ments and range of knowledge, her passionate devotion to India . Then he told a little story. They had just returned from Amarnath, the famous shrine among the snows. Vivekananda had walked with the other pil­grims. As a young ascetic he had tramped over the greater part of India . Sister Nivedita had a dandy. When they had proceeded only a few stages she noticed an old woman among the pilgrims and saw that she was walking painfully and laboriously with the help of a stick. Nivedita promptly got out of her dandy, put the old woman in it and walked all the way out and back from the shrine. When I asked her afterwards about it she said she had two blankets, slept on the ground and had never felt better in her life.

But I never saw her in Srinagar again. I received a letter which necessitated my immediate return to Lahore and I left the next morning asking Swami Vive-kananda to make my excuses at the tea party.

A few days later I met her at Lahore . She was staying with the other two ladies at Nedou's hotel and we met almost every day. Sometimes we would keep on talking till late at night, one of the other ladies quietly sitting by and listening to the bewildering range of our conversation. There was hardly a thing relating to India tnat we did not discuss. She frequently praised the judicial balance of the cultured Indian mind and the passionlessness ot its outlook. Everything about her was sincere, frank and pure while her unaffected modesty was as charming as it was admirable. And I saw that she was a woman with an extraordinary intellect, of extensive and accurate reading. She was intensely impulsive, but eveiy impulse was generous and her earnestness ol purpose was consuming.

She wanted me to show her the city. Would she like to drive through the city ? No, she preferred to walk. A little slumming, I suggested, and she smilingly assented. So ope fine morning we entered the city by the Lohari Gate and tramped for over two hours, pass­ing through every street and lane in the city. She was greatly interested in everything she saw—the children who started at her open-mouthed, the women veiled and unveiled, the men who lounged at street corners, the Brahminy bulls lapping the rock salt exposed for their use on the market stalls, the crowded houses. She took in everything and asked questions about every­thing. On coming out of the city we took a carriage and I drove her to the hotel.

To be continue..
Source : http://www.vivekananda.net
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कथा : विवेकानन्द केन्द्र { Katha : Vivekananda Kendra }
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मुक्तसंग्ङोऽनहंवादी धृत्युत्साहसमन्वित:।
सिद्ध‌‌यसिद्धयोर्निर्विकार: कर्ता सात्त्विक उच्यते ॥१८.२६॥

Freed from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with courage and enthusiasm and unperturbed by success or failure, the worker is known as a pure (Sattvika) one. Four outstanding and essential qualities of a worker. - Bhagwad Gita : XVIII-26

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