Narendranath showed marked resemblance in character traits to his grandfather who had renounced worldly life, and took an early fancy for mendicant monks that chanced to come his way as he grew from infancy to boyhood. He would give them by way of alms whatever he could lay his hands on, his own cloth or other belongings of the family, and had to be kept confined in a small room when such monks appeared at their doorstep, to prevent such indiscriminate disposal of necessary articles. But it was of no avail as the boy would still have his way, throwing things out of the window of his room of captivity. The monks would always bless the boy, barely out of infancy but manifesting a heart that naturally felt for the poor and the dispossessed and exhibited an utter sense of detachment to things material and a courage of conviction to carry out his intended programme despite the odds being stacked heavily against him. It was a foreshadowing of future events that would give the modern world a new direction and align it to the evolutionary flow of the spiritual man through the incrustation of matter. In later years the Swami Vivekananda would himself stand at many a door, a penniless beggar begging for alms, as he traversed the length and breadth of his motherland as a mendicant monk in his epic voyage of discovery of the soul of India. Did he meet any of the monks of his childhood chance acquaintance then? Who knows? Would the child remember? Would they who had blessed the babe, recognise him, now grown into the mighty messiah of man, the messenger of Ramakrishna coursing through the concourse of men in pursuit of the God that eluded him even as He gave him glimpses within the frail form of man? Who will tell?
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