a cottage for me near the place where now Ramlal stays. At night, a high tide in the Ganga carried away one of the logs. Hriday scolded me saying, "You are ill-starred!", and so on. The Captain, unmindful of the loss, sent another log.
I stayed in that cottage for some days. During the monsoon, once the Master came to this cottage. It rained so heavily that he was unable to return to his room that night. He finished his meal there and laid himself down for the night. He said to me jokingly, "This is as though I have come home, like any other priest of the Kali Temple going home at night!"
An aged woman from Banaras at last persuaded me to come to the room in the Nahabat. The Master was suffering then from a severe attack of dysentery. I began attending on him. I searched in vain for this woman when I visited Banaras.
1 The next time my mother, Lakshmi, myself and some others, went to Dakshineswar. I made a votive offering of my hair and nails at Tarakeswar for recovery from my last ailment. As (my brother) Prasanna was with us, we first went to his rented house in Calcutta. It was perhaps in the month of March (Year 1881). Next day we all went to Dakshineswar. No sooner were we there than Hriday, for reasons best known to him, began saying, "Why have they come? What have they got to do here?" He was discourteous to them. My mother kept silent. Hriday hailed from the village Sihar, and my mother too was born and brought up there. So he utterly ignored my mother. She said, "Come, let us go back home. With whom shall I leave my daughter here?" For fear of Hriday, the Master kept mum all through. We all left that very day. Ramlal called a boat for crossing the river.
At the time of departure, 'I mentally prayed to the Mother Kali, "Mother, I shall come here again only if You deign to bring me back." Hriday had to leave the Kali Temple for worshipping
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1 Yogin-Ma once told me that due to shyness, the Mother had always remained veiled before the Master. It was this woman from Banaras who took the Mother one night to the Master's room, and in his presence removed her veil The Master in an ecstatic mood went on discoursing on divine topics, which kept them spellbound. None of them was even aware that the whole night had elapsed and it was dawn when he stopped!