Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, by Suri Nagamma

The spray from the sprinkling fell on Bhagavan and he
rubbed his body, saying, “See, they are consecrating
(abishekam) me!”
That incident seemed to have reminded him of
something that had happened in the past, for with smiles all
over his face and with appropriate gestures, he told us the
following story:
“After I came to this place, Tiruvannamalai, I had no
bath for four months. One day, when I was in the compound
of the Arunachala Temple, the wife of a devotee by name
Ponnuswami, came unexpectedly, pulled me along, made
me sit, cleaned my head with soap-nut powder and gave me
a bath. She had been coming to the temple every now and
then; so I had thought that she had come as usual, but that
day, she had come there prepared! That was my first bath.”
“Were you bathing regularly everyday afterwards?” I
asked.

“No, there was no question of a bath; who was to make
me bathe? Who was the one to bathe? After that, a year or so
passed in the same way. I had been in Gurumurtham for
some time, you see, and as not many people came there
every day, no one bothered me. Even so, a lady, by name
Minakshi, who used now and then to bring food to give me,
one day brought a large pot and began to boil water. I
thought it was for some use for herself, but, taking from a
basket some oil, soap-nut, etc., she said, ‘Swami, please come’.

I did not move. But would she keep quiet! She pulled me by
the arm, made me sit, smeared the oil all over my body and
bathed me. The hair on the head which had got matted for
want of care, was now spread out and hung down like the
mane of a lion. That was my second bath. After that,
Palaniswami came and everything was adjusted into routine
of daily baths.”
“This incident is not found in your biography,” I said.

“No, that is so,” said Bhagavan, “it was never written
then. Shaving was also like that. The shave I had on the day I
came here has been recorded; the second was after a year and
a half. The hair had got matted and woven like a basket. Small
stones and dust had settled down in it and the head used to
feel heavy. I had also long nails, and a frightful appearance.

So people pressed me to have a shave, and I yielded. When
my head was shaven clean, I began to wonder whether I
had a head or not, it felt so light. I shook my head this way
and that to assure myself that it was there. That showed the
amount of burden I had been carrying on my head.”
“During those one and a half years, did nobody try to
get your head shaved?” asked a devotee.

“Yes, indeed they did try,” said Bhagavan. “When I was
in the Subramanya Temple, one Nilakanta Iyer, the
grandfather of a lawyer of the same name now practising,
used to come there frequently. One day he came prepared
for the purpose. Thinking that he had come as usual, I kept
my eyes closed. Without saying a word to me, he stood some
way off opposite me. I heard a ‘tip, tup’ behind me, so opened
my eyes. I saw a barber sharpening his razor. I left the spot
immediately without saying a word. Poor man, he realized
that I was not willing to be shaved and so had gone off.

Ponnuswami’s wife alone would not leave me unless and until
I took a bath. When she dragged me, pulling me by the arm,
what was I to do?”
“Perhaps she felt you were like a child,” I said.

“Yes,” said Bhagavan, “and another thing happened
when I was living under the madukha tree. A twenty-year
old dancing girl, by name Rathnamma, saw me one day
while going to and from the temple to dance. She grew
devoted to me and got disgusted with her profession, and
told her mother that she would not eat unless she could
give food to the Swami. So both of them brought me food.

But I was then in deep meditation and opened neither my
eyes nor my mouth, even when they shouted. But they
somehow woke me up by asking a passer-by to pull me by
the hand; they then gave me food and left. When
Rathnamma insisted that she must daily feed the Swami
before she ate, her mother said, ‘You are young and so is
Swami, and he does not wake until somebody touches and
pulls him. We can’t do that; what can we do?’ Rathnamma
then asked a first cousin of hers for assistance, and with his
help used to give me food daily. After some time, however,
relatives of the boy felt this work to be undignified and so
stopped sending him. She, however, would not give up her
resolve to feed me; so at last the old mother herself came
regularly, and being elderly and thinking that therefore
there was no harm in it, used to wake me up by shaking me
and then gave me food. Shortly afterwards, the old mother
passed away, and I too shifted from there to a distant place.

Rathnamma could no longer then go the long distance to
feed me, and so gave up her attempts. Since she could not
live unless she earned by her profession, Rathnamma
confined herself to one man only. What does it matter to
what community she belonged, she was pure. She had great
non-attachment and great devotion. She had never liked
her profession and did not want her daughter to follow it,
so married her off.”
The story finished, Bhagavan was once more silent.