CYCLONIC MONK ... 2

When Vishwanath was ten, his mother passed away.The boy grew up amidst difficult circumstances but overcame great odds to rise to eminence in life. He became an attorney and practised law at the Calcutta High Court. His practice flourished and his fame spread all over Northern India.

A liberal at heart, Vishwanath absorbed Hindu, Islamic and Western influences to evolve into a person of rare catholicity. He earned handsomely and spent lavishly in family-maintenance, hosting feasts and in charity that knew no bounds. His philosophy was simple --- if he could provide nutritious diet, a sound education and the taste of a good standard of living, then his children would in time grow up to succeed in life without fail for the very habit of the good life would force them to work hard for its maintenance. However, the basis of it all, according to Vishwanath, was the formation of character, the springboard of all life's actions.

Bhuvaneshwari was highly pious, of regal bearing, the lone child of Nandalal Basu of the esteemed Basu family of Simla, Calcutta. She was exceptionally intelligent and a worthy life-partner of her husband. She had great dignity and amidst the difficulties that so often beset a joint-family, maintained it expertly. She was a delightful blend of tradition and modernity, perhaps, the proto-type of the ideal future Indian woman Swamiji had envisaged. Her days were spent in prayers and vigils before the conception of her prophet son. She was well-versed in reading and writing and read the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Endowed with a prodigious memory, a sure reflection on her innate purity, she could memorise passages of the epics after a single reading, a foreshadowing of her illustrious son's phenomenal memory in later years.