The Wonderful Mother That I Have

Mrs. Geeta Mohan Ram comes from a family that has been associated with Swami for the last four generations. Her great grandfather, Mr. Seshagiri Rao, came to Swami in 1943 and was the temple priest of Prasanthi Nilayam for many years. Her father, Dr. Padmanabh is a familiar figure in Swami’s ashram in Bangalore. Having come to Swami at a tender age, her life is full of exciting and illuminating experiences. Below are excerpts of a talk she delivered at a Sai Retreat on May 13, 2006, in Atlanta, USA.

My pranams (salutations) at the Lotus Feet of our ever-present Swami and Sairam to all of you on this wonderful day—a holy day of Buddha Poornima, with Mother’s Day coming up tomorrow.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do my namasmarana [taking the Lord’s name] and place my respects at Sai—my Mother, who has been a part of my life since the day I have come into this world. To speak of Swami is a huge responsibility. [For] many subjects you can prepare, read books, and have references, but when we speak of Swami people look at us very differently. They wonder and say, “They have had the association of this Divine being—how has their life changed?”

So when you speak of Swami, your life changes. When you enter a Sai Center and sit for bhajans [holy songs], study circles, your life changes—it should change, otherwise we would be very poor representatives of this wonderful Mother that we have!

My multi-faceted beloved Swami

For me Swami has been many things. I have seen many facets of Swami and I still discover more as the years go by. He has been my Mother—a very loving Mother—corrected me like all Mothers do with their daughters. He has been a strict Father pointing out my poor marks in several exams. He has been a strict teacher and has not forgiven me if I have made the same mistake twice—even after having been corrected.

But He has also been a very good friend! These are all things that a Mother has to be with her children—you have to be a loving mother when your child is very young; you have to be a strict parent to inculcate discipline and devotion; you have to be a teacher by example—I am sure many parents will agree with me. And you have to be a friend with your child, too. Swami has been those many things to me.

When the Lord becomes your guest…

My earliest memories—and very sweet ones—of Swami are of when I was a child and He used to come and stay with us in Bangalore in my parents’ house. When Swami is with you; you know that everybody is very focused. When we have a guest in our house, the housewife is focused on the room, the bedroom, and the food—as she wants to make the stay a pleasant one for the guest.

But imagine having Swami staying with you! You will have this wondrous feeling of when is He going to walk into the kitchen, and I remember my mother would constantly be cleaning the kitchen never knowing when Swami would walk into the kitchen!

I remember my father, who never lifted the newspaper to put it away, would be constantly putting away the newspaper so that Swami wouldn’t find it on the sofa in our living room! I remember my brother cleaning his room exceptionally when Swami was around because he never knew when He would come in. And I remember hiding my story books behind Sathya Sai Speaks so Swami wouldn’t know what I was reading!

This is my experience that whenever Swami would come, suddenly the look of all the bookshelves would change. I think as a child I read Enid Blyton; as a teenager I probably read Barbara Cartland and Mills and Boons—whatever the current craze was in school—but they would all go behind, and in front of them there would be a second row of Sri Sathya Sai Speaks, in the hope that Swami would think that I was reading them!

You can’t trick the Lord!

The thread that ran through my life is that whatever I did, Swami knew everything. He is Omnipresent and you could never really trick Him—even though for a while He pretended and played along.

I remember once when He came into our room. He would actually eat in my room because we had separate food for Swami, and then the other devotees who came with Him were fed. He would walk into the room a little bit ahead of time while my parents and aunts were setting up the table. And then He would stand in front of the bookshelf and look at all the books.

So your heart is pounding, and you hope that He would just look at the books in the front. Then He would look at the books and say, “Oh! Prema Vahini!” Then He would look and say, “Oh, is this the new one that has come out at the Sathya Sai bookstore now?” And He would very sweetly remove two books and say, “Oh! Barbara Cartland! Is that what you read?” and put the Sathya Sai Speaks back right where it was!

The ecstasy and agony of experiencing ‘that omnipresence’!

So the thread of Omnipresence ran through my life. Sometimes as a child I would wish that ‘that Omnipresence’ was not reminding me all the time that He was with me because I wanted to be like any other child and read what I wanted to read and do what I wanted to do!

But as I grew older, I remember what a wonderful sense of security it gave me—because wherever I went, I knew that Swami was with me! It was very easy for me to say, “No” when my other friends said “Yes” to things—because I knew that when I went back on the weekend, Swami would be asking me where I went last Wednesday or Thursday!

I remember once when I was in college, and I met an old friend from my school while I was walking to the bus-stop. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and were very happy—it was just an unexpected meeting. We both were standing in front of a sugar cane stall. So, we were talking and decided to buy a glass of sugar cane juice. We drank it while we chatted there for quite a while and then we went home.

The following weekend we were in Brindavan. In the early days with no sevadal there, we were the sevadals, we were also the bhajan singers, the cleaners—we were everything. All of us had jobs to do, and when I went to Brindavan my job was to clean the altar inside where Swami did bhajans on some evenings.

There were pictures of Shirdi Baba and Swami in different poses—and I used to clean that altar. Swami was walking around the building and He came up to me and looked at what I was doing, and then He said, “What time did you go home last week from college?”

I couldn’t quite remember. I said, “Swami, after college I went home in the evening.” But He said, “What time did you go home last week on Wednesday?” I still couldn’t remember! He said, “You went home late because you missed the bus!”

Then I remembered and I said, “Yes Swami, I missed the bus.” He said, “Why did you miss the bus?” I said, “I met a friend of mine and we were talking.”

He said, “Three mistakes. Missing the bus because you were talking to the friend on the street; second mistake—not telling your mother that you would be late or why you came late; third mistake of drinking on the street out of a dirty glass that the fellow gave! Three mistakes in one day!”

So this is the Omnipresent Swami, and sometimes I would say to myself, “Swami, please! Why don’t you go and get on somebody else’s case instead of me all the time!”

But He was the loving Mother—He reminded me that there were certain ways that one behaves and if you don’t follow the norms of the society at that time, you are bound to have problems with it.

“Life is a game—play it!”

In those childhood sweet days there were times when He would be in the house and we children would be banished to our rooms because the [elders] didn’t want us to make any noise! They would say, “Swami is talking in the living room, so stay in the room, read a book, or do something. But don’t appear here and make noise!”

I remember my cousin and me—we were almost the same age—were constantly banished to the room to do something with ourselves. Those were not the days of TVs, Xboxes, or Play-stations. We would go to the room and play Snakes and Ladders or Ludo. On one occasion, Swami knocked on the door, walked in, and saw us playing snakes and ladders.

He came in and said, “Oh! You both are playing over here while I have to go and talk to those devotees, that’s not fair! You guys are having fun here! Can I please play with you?” We said, “No!” because we had already experienced playing with Swami and we didn’t want Him to play with us! We said, “No!” He said, “Why not?” We said, “Because every time You roll the dice, You always get the number You want! So, we don’t want You to play with us!” He said, “No! No! I will play like you people!”

So, He sat down and rolled the dice and we rolled the dice, and the game was progressing quite nicely—sometimes He went up the ladder and came down the snake, too! We thought this was pretty good. But by the time one of us had gotten all the way to 98 or 99 where the snake is waiting to bring you down, Swami rolls His dice and within three moves He reaches 100 and says, “Useless people, you don’t know how to play!” He used to say, “What is this? A game isn’t it? You shouldn’t cry when you lose a game!”

You know Swami doesn’t do anything without a reason! And I never forgot the lesson He taught us with that snakes and ladder game. He said, “Life is like a game! As long you have Swami as the dice of God in your hands, it will move you along—sometimes you go up the ladder, sometimes you come down the snake—it’s okay! But as long as you have the dice with you, you can keep playing and you can keep moving forward. That’s the important thing you have to remember. What is the use of playing this game, reaching 100, and starting again from number 1 day after day!”

He was a friend and He played, He joked, and He looked at the books that we were reading—He was a wonderful Mother in many different ways!

Swami—the ‘micro-manager’

When He got me engaged to my husband—the wedding was still a month away—and my parents and aunts had to go to Puttaparthi for the global akhanda bhajan [24-hour devotional singing]. As Swami was going to conduct the wedding in Puttaparthi, He had asked us to bring all the details of the wedding. He wanted to see the saris, the invitations, the guest-list, the menu. He wanted to see and check everything!

Swami is a micro-manager! There is no other word for it. He will check everything 25 times. He even wanted the paper sketch of the rangoli (colored powder art on the floor) that was going from Swami’s building to the wedding hall!

So, armed with all these things, we arrived at a very crowded Puttaparthi where the bhajans were going on. As the sevadal knew of the upcoming wedding, we were allowed to take everything that we had to show Swami.

Just before going for darshan [seeing a holy person], I had worn a very simple synthetic sari because everybody in Puttaparthi would ask questions like ‘who is the boy?’ etc. I didn’t know anything about the boy as Swami had fixed the wedding. So, I had no answers to their questions. I didn’t want to be the center of attention. As we left our room, my aunt (an elderly person) said: “You know, you are the bride; you are getting married in a couple of weeks. You shouldn’t be wearing such a simple sari. You should wear a silk sari, something festive!” I said, “Well, the wedding is a month away. I am not going to start looking like a bride for the next 35 days. I am certainly not going to wear it because all those ladies at darshan keep looking at me!”

Sure enough, after Swami had gone inside the bhajan hall and attended the global bhajan, He came out and called us in for an interview. We went in loaded with everything, and as soon as we entered, He first looked at the draft of the invitation and approved it. He looked at the guest list, added a few names and deleted a few. He looked at the menu and said, “Oh! This is not good, that is not good!” And chose different things.

After all this discussion, He said, “Why didn’t you bring the bride? Why isn’t the girl here?” And I am sitting right there in front of Him! We all look at each other and I am thinking, “Okay. Why isn’t He recognizing the bride who is sitting right in front of Him! He has known me since I was born, He should know me!”

We all think He should know us, are we really undeserving! Why should He know us? That’s the question to ask ourselves. He knows us; but why should He? Do we do anything at all that deserves His attention? I leave that question to think about!

He said, “Where is she?” My aunt said, “She is sitting right here!” He looked at me and said, “This one?” You know, He can really bring your ego down! She said, “Yes Swami! Why are you asking that?”

“Be conscious of all that you do!”

Then He looked at me and said, “Didn’t your aunty tell you to wear a different sari this morning? Two mistakes!” He is always pointing out mistakes! And He loves to number them to clarify them in your head.

“Two mistakes! One: you didn’t listen to an elder when she told you something. Big mistake! Second: bigger mistake! Because all the people here know that you are getting married; Swami is getting you married; Swami has fixed the wedding; Swami has found the boy and the family! And you are sitting there looking like you are not interested in getting married! Everybody is thinking that maybe the girl doesn’t want to get married and Swami is forcing her.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to get married and her parents are forcing her because he is a Sai devotee. Maybe the girl wants to marry somebody else! By your one gesture and the way you behave, you can create many ripples. So always be conscious of what you do. If you are getting married, behave according to the time and place. Be happy if you are happy! If you don’t want, tell me now and it’s off! But if you’re happy and you want to get married then behave accordingly, appropriate to the time and place! Don’t draw attention to yourself by being out of place. Merge with it!”

What a lesson He taught me as a mother! Whatever we do, it doesn’t just reflect on us, it reflects on our parents, it reflects on our families, and it also reflects on Swami. He said, “Be conscious in your life whatever you do! How you stand, how you sit, what you say”, because it first reflects on Him!

That’s why I said that the minute we say we are Sai devotees our every action and speech is judged by everybody. If you are just a regular person, nobody will bother with what you do. But if you start attending a Sai center, they will say, “Oh! you know what? Every Sunday they go and sit for two hours and sing some Sai bhajan, but they are worse than us!” That will be the remark if your behavior is not up to date. That was the Mother Sai teaching me how one has to dress for a particular place or occasion.

Once I said, “Swami! I have been speaking the same thing in every retreat for one and a half years! Why don’t you make me speak something else?” He said, “No! They need to hear it. You have to talk about it. When they are ready to change, I will give you a different story.”

And then, very sadly He made this gesture: “Look at Me! Fifty years I am saying the same thing! Does anybody hear? If they hear, do they listen? And if they listen, do they practice? You are complaining of one year of speaking the same thing!”

What a statement! We must bend our heads in shame.

“I am always with you, behind you, beside you…”

I was speaking at a retreat in Texas, and I had to speak in the afternoon. I went in the morning to hear Brother Jagadeeshan speak, and I love his talks; he is such a wonderful narrator. Even though they had offered me a seat, from childhood I had learnt to sit on the floor in front of Swami, so I sat on the floor.

After the talk I had gone back to my room, but I did not change, and I went in the same sari for my afternoon talk. Swami’s picture was on the wall and I was standing at the podium that was way forward as the stage was very big. I went and stood and started talking—that was it! This was in September and I went to India in June. In July Swami called me for an interview. He asked me, “Where have you been speaking?” I said, “Swami, I spoke in Texas.” He said, “Yes, I know you spoke in Texas and Jagadeeshan spoke too, is it not?”

Then suddenly out of the blue He asked me, “Don’t you pack your clothes properly when you go on your trips?”That was completely unexpected—it had nothing to do with my talks! I said, “No Swami! I pack my clothes well.” I started racking my brains if I wore something that was not appropriate? I always wear a sari. My mind was churning, “Why did He ask me?” because Swami does not ask very specific questions without a reason. Such an unexpected question! He asked me again. I said, “I don’t know, Swami, have I done something wrong?” That’s the best way, ask Him a question back.

He said, “You know, in Texas you wore that blue cotton sari. All day you sat on the floor, and then when it was your turn you went and stood there [to talk], your cotton sari was all crumpled and was a little high in the back. I am the one who has to see your ankles because I am behind you! When you go and speak somewhere, and especially if you have to sit for a long time, you should wear a proper silk sari, they don’t get so crumpled.” Can you imagine? What a lovely motherly advice!

But remember, in every Discourse He says, ‘Don’t worry! All of you go back to your homes safely!” He says, “I am with you, behind you, beside you and all the time, all the way, wherever you go!” We forget that He is behind us, that He can see your ankle, we forget that He is beside us and can hear us; we forget that He is in front of us and He sees the path we are taking—we forget all these things. A simple example of a sari tells you that He is there with you all the time.

“Sai, my mother, who notices everything!”

I was in the summer course once and out of the blue they asked me to summarize the day’s activities. They had chosen me and a boy to read the summary of what had happened in that day’s lecture. It was a wonderful opportunity to be in front of Swami. The draft had been checked and rechecked by 25 adults to make sure that the right things were written before it came to me. Swami was sitting on a chair and we were behind the screen. The boy came and read his part. And as I came to Swami to take my padanamaskar, He said something to me that I didn’t quite catch.

Swami very sweetly dropped His handkerchief deliberately on the floor! So, I bent to pick it up and as I got closer to Him to give Him the handkerchief, He said, “You must pull down your sari from the back with your heels!” Can you imagine that? Obviously, my sari was a little folded in the back and before I turned around to face the audience and come to the stage, He was making sure that I was neatly dressed. He said it all with a smile, Kaalu kinda pettukoni cheera eedchuko (in Telugu), meaning, ‘put down your foot and drag the sari down’.

Everybody thought He was giving me some beautiful blessing with a sweet smile. But He was pulling me up on my bad sari-wearing techniques!

Sai my Mother who notices everything! Sai my Mother who has taught me everything! Sai my Mother who has shown me most love!

All I can say is that we are all born at a wonderful time where we have a wonderful Mother in the form of Sai pouring His love on all of us, and it is for us to absorb it and to understand it. If we don’t, then we miss out on a good chance.  I am sure each one of you feels His Love in your own way….

He has been a part of my life in wonderful miraculous ways, but the little things are far more meaningful because I see His love in these much more than in the big things.

You see His love for humanity as He has built the wonderful Super Specialty Hospital where thousands of people with no money are treated totally free of cost. We have the University, we have the Music College, and the water project.

He reminds us many times that, “Lying is not just telling a falsehood! Keeping something from your mother is also a lie. She may not know, but I know!”

Problems are blessings

He constantly teaches us that if you have decided to take this path of spirituality, then there is no shade of grey! It is either black or white. And if you want Him, it has to be white.

You can’t find loopholes in your behavior and say, “Well this might work for today!” There are no loopholes. He is going to pull you up if you make a mistake either physically or in some other way by bringing some big problem along to remind you and correct you. He says, “Problems are there to remind you that you are forgetting Me!”

Swami always loves to quote that famous prayer of Mother Kunti [from Mahabharata]. After the whole war is over, Lord Krishna says, “Now that everything is over and your sons are kings, what do you want? Ask and I shall give.” She replies, “Always give me troubles, because when I have troubles You come to me!”

Swami says, “When you have troubles, you come to Me, troubles remind you of Me.” He reminds us that He is there; and He also reminds us that He is a good friend. I don’t want to make Him so serious that you have to wonder: “Oh my God! I can’t step out of this building without worrying.” He can be fun, too!

His awesome sense of humor!

I remember once Laalgudi Jayaraman, a famous violinist, was coming to Puttaparthi to play the violin in front of Swami in Prashanti Nilayam. My father used to always go from Bangalore to Puttaparthi on the weekends. Being a doctor, he made sure that he came back on Sunday night so that Monday morning he could attend to his patients.

Swami in those days would say, “Stay one more day!” And my father would say, “No Swami! I have given appointments and my patients will come so I have to go.” “Stay one more day, Padmanabh!” “No Swami, I have to go!” This was a constant conversation between Swami and my father in my childhood.

One particular weekend when we were in Puttaparthi, Swami said to my mother in the darshan line, “Today in the evening Laalgudi Jayaraman is going to come, why don’t you all stay for the concert and go tomorrow morning?” My mother replied, “Swami, you know my husband, he is not going to let us stay! He will say he has to go to see his patients.” Swami said, ‘No, He will stay!” She said, ‘No Swami, he won’t stay.”

Sure enough, after the morning darshan my father said, “We are packing up, let’s leave!” And in those days, we used to leave during the daylight hours because the roads were bad. In fact, Swami used to say, “Before it gets dark you have to cross those 22 miles from Puttaparthi.” So, my father said, “Pack up!” We said, “Please, can we stay?” He said, “No! Pack up!”

My father got ready to put away things in the car—for those of you who have been to Puttaparthi, you know the Ganesha statue is where we used to park our cars in those days. My mother and I brought out all the bedding and we were rolling it out on the sands under the eucalyptus tree.

While rolling the thing, my mother and I were wishing that for once daddy would agree and stay! Because we were very fond of the very famous Carnatic Music violinist, we wanted to hear him play live!

This was around 12-12:30 PM, when Swami had retired to His room! Suddenly, we heard somebody calling us making the sound, “Shh! Shh!” We look around and when we looked up He was there standing in His balcony with His bedroom door open and gesturing to us to not make a noise! Because all the devotees would come running if they knew that Swami was standing in the balcony!

He gestured, “Don’t pack!” We said, “But Swami we have to go now!” He said, “No! Don’t pack!” And He showed us with gestures that the car tire had a puncture. Flat tire! We can’t go! The 22 miles ride from Puttaparthi to Penukonda was on the worst road. If anybody had a flat tire, Swami had a rule that it had to be fixed before one could leave. Without an extra tire if you had another flat tire on the way, then you would be totally stuck. There was nothing between Puttaparthi and Penukonda and you were stuck with the angry villagers who didn’t like devotees coming to Puttaparthi.

So, we understood. We happily put away our bedding inside. My father came and asked, “Why are you people sitting?” We said, “Yes, we are getting ready.” He took another bunch of things to the car and came back and said, “You knew that the tire is flat, and we can’t leave.” We said, “Yes”. He said, “We can’t go now so I am going to take a lorry and go to Penukonda and get the tire fixed, you people be ready. If I can get it fixed, we will go today, otherwise we will go tomorrow.”

My father went to Penukonda and, sure enough, He could not come back in time for us to leave. So, while my poor father was getting the tire fixed, we were happily listening to Lalgudi Jayaraman’s music!

After the music was over, Swami got up from His chair and asked, “Where is Padmanabhan? Has he gone to Penukonda?” We said, “Yes, Swami! He has gone to Penukonda.” He said, “He will come back at ten o’clock, you go to bed! Wasn’t the music good?” Then He smacked my cheek and said: “See! You wanted to listen to the music, so I sent your father to Penukonda!”

He would play along with us! We couldn’t help but love Him so much, even when He scolded us. We enjoyed the scolding though we knew that we couldn’t make the same mistake twice—like I said earlier.

Our Swami—He is there for all of us.

Sai Ram!

source: Heart2Heart, Radiosai