Kamala Amma shares her experiences with Gurudev

Transcript of the interview

Kamala Amma: Once we were on our way to Haridwar-Rishikesh – my family in the sense my uncle, aunt, and my mother and… we were four or five of us. And at that time he was staying in that 16 park area, one Mr. Shroff yeah… Mr. Shroff’s house. And there we had gone to meet him and he was talking for awhile. That time he was mentioning about how he…. uh… that about friendship and the family friendship and the son of theirs who was his classmate or something, I don’t know how he was associated. And he was very young – couple with a child and he was very ill, and sort of terminally ill.

So he wanted to go to Rishikesh to meet Sivananda, because after his jail term and suffering and his cousin who was in the forestry department, where he had gone for convalescence and there he happened to read Sivananda’s My magazine. Divine Life Society was bringing out My magazine and that he happened to be reading to spend his time and he found… see, he was very doubtful about all that is being talked about in the Hindu religion, practices, beliefs and everything. And so when he was going through those magazines he got some of his answers for doubts, doubts for some of his answers to be more precise.

Then he became a little curious, I must meet this man Sivananda and also see what these people are doing in the garb of sanyasis over there. So he wanted to go there and when he was stopping at this Shroff’s house he was sick, very sick – this Swamiji told me, told us rather… our family. Then he… at that time this friend of his said don’t be too long, come back soon, so he had gone and spent some time with meeting Sivananda and all that. And also he looked at all the so called sanyasis there and had come back, and when he came back within the next day or so this very friend of his died on his lap.

Swamini Kaivalyananda: On Gurudev’s lap?

Kamala Amma: Yes, that’s what he told us. That sort of gave a sort of a transformation so to say no. So then after that was over he went back to Sivananda, he wanted to go meet, and spend some time – more time, try to understand and all that.