It is all His Grace

I was returning from a bank meeting in Madras on February 7, 1965, by the Bombay Mail [train], having reserved a berth in the first class up to Tadpatri [a city in Andhra Pradesh, India], where I proposed to alight. I boarded the compartment at 10 p.m. at the Central Station, and when the train started I prepared my bed and went to the lavatory [washroom], just before going to sleep. The compartment had a corridor into which the rooms opened and it had just one entrance door, which took one into the corridor itself. That door was open. When I emerged from the lavatory, the train had passed Basin Bridge, where it did not halt. Somehow it so happened that, instead of going through the corridor to my room, I went toward the open door and fell from the running train!

I felt as if someone suddenly pulled me toward him. That was all. I was not aware of anything that happened later. I only felt that I was seated the very next moment, on a soft place. I wondered why I was there, and whether it was all a dream.

Actually, I had fallen off the Bombay Mail. The train had sped along. It was pitch dark all round. The station was about two furlongs away. It was a double track line and trains were steaming up and down. If I had landed a few inches this side or that, I would have been crushed to death; or, I might easily have fallen under the bridge if the accident had happened a minute earlier.

I had suffered no injury. I felt it was a miracle of God that even my eyeglasses were unbroken, my wristwatch was ticking as usual, and the purse in my pocket was still there. I must have sat in that position for about twenty minutes, when I was overcome by confusion as to where I was, why I was there, whither I have to go from there etc. So, I just called out loudly into the dark night. But, who was there to answer me? A light engine neared me and passed over the rails without heeding me.

Perhaps Sathya Sai, the Savior of the distressed, heard me; within a few minutes, the Station Master of Basin Bridge and a Police Constable came to where I was. From the ticket I had, they recognized me as a passenger from the Bombay Mail and they took me to the General Hospital, Madras [Chennai]. Meanwhile, my bank manager hurried to my bedside on receiving a call about my accident. The doctors examined me and declared that no damage had been done. They were surprised that a man who had fallen from a running train had suffered no injury at all and they attributed it to nothing less than a divine miracle. The manager sent telegrams to my sons and to my house at Anantapur.

Meanwhile, at the same time when everyone at my house at Anantapur was asleep, brilliant effulgence engulfed the entire house. My wife awoke and wondered whether it was a real experience or just a dream. She concluded it must be the glory and the grace of Sai; she lay down and went back to sleep, chanting the name of Sathya Sai Baba.

Since 1944, when Sathya Sai Baba first visited my house, such miraculous incidents have happened off and on so, my wife had no doubt in her mind that it was a sign given by Baba Himself. It was a natural and an automatic inference for her.

In the morning when a telegram came bearing the news, one of my sons started for Madras while my wife left for Puttaparthi with my grandson to see Baba! As soon as Baba saw her, He said, “Instead of going to Madras, you have come here, is it so? There is nothing the matter with your husband, do not worry. I have seen to that. Do you know what would have happened to him if I were not there?” He then told her in great detail all that had happened to me. He also declared that the light that engulfed the Anantapur house the previous night was His way of intimating them of His protecting presence.

My son took me from Madras to Kurnool, to my other son who is a doctor; I stayed with him for a week. I had informed the railway authorities that my luggage was in the first class compartment and later I claimed it from the Madras station.

My family and I firmly believe that it was Sri Sathya Sai Baba who miraculously saved me from this calamity. Whatever others may believe or not believe, we are His devotees forever.

~Thotapalli Chidambariah, Anantapur
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, January 1966