Balvikas Stories

STORY 1 : This story tells us that only seva done to the needy is the most rewarding spiritual exercise.

     Once upon a time in the temple of Visweswara in Kasi, the Pujari was offering Arati to the deity. Suddenly, a big gold plate fell from above. The Pujari was surprised and happily picked it up to have a closer look at it. There was an inscription on the plate which read as follows: "It should be given to the greatest devotee. One who does not chant the Divine Name is not qualified to get it." Then the Pujari thought to himself, "everyday, I am performing Sahasra Lingarchana and Abhishekam to the Lord. I am sanctifying my time by chanting the sacred Mantras from the four Vedas. Can there be a greater devotee than me?" When such ego and pride clouded his mind, the gold plate in his hand turned into an earthen plate. Feeling ashamed, he immediately kept it down and the earthen plate turned into gold again. From that day onwards, whoever visited the temple was asked to touch the plate to find out if he deserved to receive the gold plate. But it so happened that the plate would turn into an earthen one whenever somebody touched it. It continued for a few days. There was a devotee who always chanted the Name of God, but did not perform any other Sadhana like Japa, Thapa, Dhyana, etc. He had no desires. He had achieved Dama (sense control). One day he visited the temple. On being requested by the Pujari to touch the plate, he said, "Sir, I don't have any desires. Hence, I don't want to touch it." The Pujari requested him to touch the plate at least for his satisfaction. The devotee did not want to displease the Pujari and therefore he touched the plate. No sooner did he touch it than it started shining with added brilliance. People who were witness to this event surrounded him and started asking, "Oh noble soul! What is the method of worship you follow, what is the Sadhana you perform?" Then he replied, "I have not performed any Japa, Thapa, Yajna or Yaga. I only serve the poor. They are very dear to God."

     From then onwards, many rich people started visiting Kasi to see this devotee. Wherever there are rich people, it is but natural that the poor also gather begging for alms from the rich. This devotee was moved on seeing their pathetic condition and resolved to himself, "God loves the poor very much. That is why He has drawn so many of them to His abode. God will be pleased only when they are looked after well. That is what I love to do. I will be happy only when I am able to alleviate the suffering of these poor people and make them happy." From then on he continued to serve the poor and the needy with greater devotion and enthusiasm. This was an eye-opener for the rich who had gathered there.
 

STORY 2: MOTHER TERESA
 

     "When Mother Teresa began her work in the slums," Sister Agnes once remarked, "we often found people dying or sometimes dead. On occasion we took them to the nearest hospital, but beds were not always available. Sometimes the patients were in a pitiful condition, and we had nowhere to take them."
Mother Teresa rented two rooms for five rupees each in the Motijhil slum. One became the school room, the other her first Home for the Dying. In this space, which was eight feet square, she began looking after people the hospitals had refused. The experiment was doomed to failure. It was with difficulty that two or three patients could be crammed on to the floor, with hardly any space for Mother Teresa to minister to them. One night, inevitably, one of the sick died, and the next morning, the others fled.
 

     Undeterred, Mother Teresa went to the municipality, where she was directed to the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ahmad. She told him that the city hospitals had problems in accepting the dying. Where, then, was she to take them? "I asked only for a place," she said, "the rest, I would do myself." The officer had the foresight to recognize that this earnest, middle-aged nun was offering to perform a function that belonged essentially to the local government. Obviously it was not in the municipality's interest for the poor to continue to die on public roads. Dr. Ahmad took Mother Teresa to the city's most famous temple at Kalighat. Adjoining the temple, he showed her two halls which had been constructed several years before by a Hindu benefactor for pilgrims who wanted to stay overnight. Dr. Ahmad had received complaints that the halls were being misused, and probably thought that by offering them to Mother Teresa, he would solve two problems at once.
Dr. Ahmad certainly could not have anticipated that there would be any opposition to this move, but antagonism there was. "It was local," said Father van Exem, "not general, otherwise it surely would have been reported in the newspapers. People did not want the dying to come there actually to die."
Rumours circulated that those who died were ministered the last rites and then buried as Christians. Dr.Ahmad and a senior police officer decided to see things for themselves. As they entered Nirmal Hriday, they saw Mother Teresa hunched over a figure whose face was a large, gaping wound. So intense was her concentration that they were able to observe her for several minutes before she saw them. With the help of a tweezer, she was pulling maggots from the raw flesh. The stench of the wound was so foul that most people would have hesitated even to enter the room. They heard her say to the patient, "You say a prayer in your religion, and I will say a prayer as I know it. Together we will say this prayer and it will be something beautiful for God."
 

     When Mother Teresa saw the officials, she offered to show them her work. The police officer, his eyes filled with tears, said, "There is no need, Mother." Turning to the crowd outside he said, "Yes, I will send this woman away, but only after you have persuaded your mothers and sisters to come here to do the work that she is doing. This woman is a saint."
Despite this intervention, there continued to be simmering discontent. The idea of a place for the dying, so close to a venerated Hindu shrine, upset the temple priests. Furthermore, the Brahmin priests were shocked that the precincts of the Kali temple had been handed over to a Christian missionary. They petitioned the municipal authorities several times to discontinue the arrangement. These petitions remained unattended. Then one day, a strange incident occurred that brought opposition to an end. A young temple priest, not quite thirty, began to vomit blood. He was diagnosed to be in an advanced stage of tuberculosis, and no hospital was prepared to admit such a hopeless case as it would mean depriving a curable patient of a bed. Sick in body and heart, the priest was finally brought to Nirmal Hriday. Mother Teresa gave him a special corner to himself, where she nursed him. He was angry and felt humiliated, but with each passing day, he slowly began to accept his situation. By the time he died, rage had given way to tranquility. Meanwhile, the temple priests, who had been unable, or unwilling, to help their brother, observed the care that he received. Nor did they fail to notice that when he died, far from being given a Christian burial, Mother Teresa sent his body to be cremated by Hindu rites.
There are many religious and social organisations of all sizes and denominations in and around Calcutta, that provide succour to the poor and ailing. Yet none actually take in those restitutes who can find neither home nor hospital to die in. For the Hindu mind, unshakeable in its belief in the transmigration of souls, the ailing body is beside the point. It is merely to be cast off to free the soul to continue its cycle of birth, death and rebirth in its pursuit of salvation. Mother Teresa and her Missionary Sisters, however, feel that it is important to touch these broken bodies and unattended souls with their compassion. Yet one would entirely miss the point if one failed to grasp that, for them, each occupant of the stretcher beds in Nirmal Hriday is the sick, abandoned or dying Christ. Without this unshakeable conviction, they would be as unable to do this work as anyone else. It is this that is fundamental to the philosophy of the Missionaries of Charity, not the conversion of souls nor giving the bodies a Christian burial, which, unless especially indicated or requested, would be considered by Mother Teresa to be a sacrilege.
 

      Soon after the incident of the priest, local antagonism diminished. The people of Calcutta also began to recognize three things. The first was that the Sisters were fulfilling a need. Some of the people who were brought there were beggars from outside the temple, or local rickshaw pullers, amongst whom tuberculosis was rampant. When they were admitted, they not only received medical attention, but also love from total strangers. Secondly, the last rites were performed according to the deceased's faith. Where patients were brought in unconscious. and therefore unable to disclose their faith, a simple method was followed. Muslim males could be identified by their being circumcised, and the local Anjuman contacted to collect their bodies. In other cases, an identification mark or a tattoo sometimes helped to reveal their faith. When there was no indication, the body was and continues to be sent for cremation by Hindu rites. The third factor that people grew to acknowledge, was that the Sisters were obviously as poor as anyone else in the city. Of course, they were better fed and cleanly clothed, but in their self-avowed poverty, they were at one with those who came through these doors.