Reminiscences of Annamalai Swami

       

            Bhagavan's Attendants

Bhagavan's attendants were always selected and recruited by Chinnaswami. To the best of my knowledge Bhagavan never asked anyone to be his attendant, nor did he ever try to get rid of any of the attendants who were given to him. People occasionally volunteered to do the job but their services were never accepted. It became an ashram tradition that Bhagavan's attendants should always be young unmarried men. 

Once, when a woman who was a qualified nurse from North India volunteered to be an attendant, Bhagavan replied by saying, 'Ask the people in the hall'.

Krishnaswami, the chief attendant, and some of the other people in the hall objected. 'No! No! We cannot have ladies doing service to Bhagavan. It is not proper.'

Bhagavan turned to the woman and said, 'These people all think like this. What can I do?'

Bhagavan was a stern taskmaster who always insisted that the jobs in the ashram be done properly and punctually. As a result, the attendants, who worked under his constant supervision, frequently found themselves on the receiving end of Bhagavan's critical comments. Bhagavan rarely got angry with anyone, but when he did, it was usually because of some lapse by one of his attendants.

In Krishnaswami's early days at the ashram Bhagavan once got very angry with him because he refused to chase the monkeys out of the hall. The local monkeys, knowing that many people came to the hall with offerings of fruit, used to sit nearby and try to steal the fruit from unsuspecting visitors. 

Often Bhagavan got angry with his attendants when the monkeys made successful raids in the hall. Bhagavan then reported the matter to Chinnaswami, who promptly gave Krishnaswami a strong lecture on the necessity of discharging his duties properly. 

After that, Krishnaswami became a zealous monkey chaser. He kept a catapult in the hall and chased the monkeys at the slightest provocation.

There was another attendant called Rangaswami who also went through a period of inattentiveness. After he had been doing service in the hall for some time he stopped paying attention to his duties and started to meditate instead. He didn't even care about the monkeys. When visitors placed their fruit offerings near Bhagavan the monkeys were able to steal them without any fear of being molested because Rangaswami, the man who was supposed to be guarding the fruit, would be sitting on the floor with his eyes closed.

Bhagavan tolerated this behaviour for a few days but he eventually rebuked him by saying, 'If you want to meditate like this, go somewhere else. If you want to live here you must do service like everyone else. Meditation is contained in your service to the Guru.'

Rangaswami realised his mistake and went back to discharging his duties again.

On another occasion Bhagavan got very angry with him for telling a lie. While Rangaswami was tuning the radio in the hall he turned one of the knobs in such a way that the radio stopped functioning. 

Instead of owning up to Bhagavan that he had broken it, he told him, 'It seems that someone has broken the radio'.

Later that day Rangaswami secretly confessed to me (Annamalai Swami) that he had broken the radio and lied to Bhagavan about it. I had a strong feeling that Bhagavan ought to be told the truth so I went to hall and told Bhagavan what Rangaswami had said to me.

Bhagavan reacted by exclaiming angrily, 'He is telling lies even to me! I should not even look at his face!' Bhagavan carried out his threat by ignoring the unfortunate Rangaswami for the rest of the day.

Bhagavan discouraged devotees from feeding the monkeys near the hall because he didn't want them to get into the habit of waiting there for food. Although Bhagavan sometimes laughed when monkeys managed to steal a banana or a mango, he also got angry with his attendants when the monkeys made successful raids in the hall.

Bhagavan would also sometimes get angry if his attendants were very careless. Vaikunta Vas, one of the later attendants, once aroused Bhagavan's wrath by accidentally burning his leg. 

It was about 9 p.m. and Vaikunta Vas was a little sleepy as a result of eating too much food at the evening meal. He absent-mindedly applied a hot water bottle to Bhagavan's legs withouti bothering to check the temperature. The water in the bottle was much too hot. 

Bhagavan winced with pain, got angry with him, and ordered him out of the hall. Vaikunta Vas was so mortified by his mistake that he left the ashram immediately and went back to his village near Pondicherry.

Bhagavan's strictness, and his insistence on absolute obedience, were only manifested towards those who worked in the ashram fulltime. If visitors committed mistakes he would rarely take them to task. There was a doctor from Madrasi called Srinivasa Rao who once got permission to massage Bhagavan's feet and legs. 

Usually, only attendants were allowed to do this job, but on certain occasions some of the older devotees were also permitted to do it. Bhagavan told this doctor, 'Rub from the knees down to the ankle, not the other way round, but the doctor ignored his instructions.

Thinking that his medical knowledge was superior to Bhagavan's, the docter insisted on massaging in the opposite direction. Bhagavan made no complaint but after a few minutes he told the doctor, 'Enough!'

After the doctor had left the hall Bhagavan remarked, 'Because he is a doctor, he doesn't want to listen to my advice. What I was telling is that his method of massaging, was not correct.'

Bhagavan allowed this man to continue with the massage because he was an outsider. If one of his attendants had tried to behave like this, in a way that was so contrary to his wishes, he would have been rewarded with an immediate rebuke from Bhagavan.

Bhagavan would also occasionally get angry with other ashram workers if they deliberately disobeyed him. There was an office worker called Mauni Srinivasa Rao who once incurred Bhagavan's displeasure by trying to override his instructions. 

On of Mauni Srinivasa Rao's jobs was to draft replies to all the spiritual queries which came to the ashram by post. These first drafts would be shown to Bhagavan, who would then scrutinise them and make all necessary corrections. 

On one occasion Mauni Srinivasa Rao refused to accept that Bhagavan's corrections were definitive. He corrected Bhagavan's alterations and sent the letter back to the hall. Bhagavan went through the letter for the second time, deleting all the corrections which had been added by Mauni Srinivasa Rao. 

When the letter went back to the office, Mauni Srinivasa Rao again altered some of Bhagavan's corrections. He brought the new draft to the hall and tried to get Bhagavan to read it, but Bhagavan refused even to look at it. Instead he told Mauni Srinivasa Rao very angrily that You do whatever you like!

Source:

Living by the Words of the Master 

By David Godman