FOR ONCE UPON A RAINY AFTERNOON

FOR ONCE UPON A RAINY AFTERNOON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBYUzYfAUI8

What an extraordinary lecture delivered by Swami Shuddhidananda ! After such a long time I have come across one such that reminds me now of Swami Vandananandaji's lecture that I had heard, I think, in 1985 at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture.

I happened to meet Swami Shuddhidananda one rainy afternoon as I was going with my sister by her car to the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan where my mother had been admitted in 2016. It was pouring heavily and two monks we found along the road, struggling with their umbrellas to ward off the rain. We stopped our car, rolled down the shutters and requested the Swamis to get into the car but they smilingly kept refusing for they were bound like us for the Seva Pratishthan and said that they would make it unto their destination anyhow since we were all within several hundred yards of the hospital. But my sister's repeated urging made the Swamis relent and they got in. Soon we were within the hospital premises but I had by then made my acquaintance well enough with Swami Suddhidananda and later made him a telephone call as well.

This much and no more shall I divulge for the rest are classified content that need not be disclosed as they are related to my offering a certain service to the related branch centre which never could materialise owing to the medical condition of my mother. My mother recovered that time and returned home from the Seva Pratishthan and we also returned that day with the great joy of having served two children of Thakur-Ma in very strange circumstance.

Written by Sugata Bose