LAKSHMI DEVI

LAKSHMI DEVI

Of Lakshmi Devi, Sister Nivedita writes in her The Master as I saw Him, ‘Amongst the ladies who lived more or less continuously in the household o Sarada Devi at this time, were Gopal’s Mother (Gopaler Ma), Yogin-Mother (Yogin-Ma), Rose-Mother (Golap-Ma), Sister Lucky, and a number of others. These were all widows - the first and the last child widows - and they had all been personal disciples of Sri Ramakrishna when he lived in the temple-garden at Dakshineswar. Sister Lucky or Lakshmi-Didi, as is the Indian form of her name, was indeed a niece of his, and still is comparatively a young woman. She is widely sought after as a religious teacher and director, and is most gifted and delightful companion. Sometimes she will repeat page after page of some sacred dialogue, out of one of the jatras or religious operas, or again she will make the quiet room ring with gentle merriment, as she poses the different members of the party in groups for religious tableaux. Now it is Kali and again Saraswati, another time it will be Jagaddhatri or yet again, perhaps, Krishna under his Kadmba tree, that she will arrange, with picturesque effect and scant dramatic material.’

Nivedia was personally present at one of these performances. That day Golap-Ma brought from the Tagore of Pathuriaghata many clothes and brass ornaments with which she adorned Lakshmi Devi. Thus, attired as Vrinda, she began a Kirtana dealing with the sports of Sri Krishna. Lakshmi, with her fair skin and beautiful body, appeared a real Devi, a goddess, and with her sweet voice, fine memory and inimitable mimicry she kept her women audience spellbound for more than two hours. At Nivedita’s request she then sang a few songs of Ramprasad. Last of all Nivedita became a lioness moving about the room with roars, and on her back rode Lakshmi Devi as Jagaddhatri. As a result, the audience burst into laughter. On another occasion, much earlier than this, the women of Kamarpukur gathered on the roof of the village landlord Dharmadas Laha to hear the kirtana of Lakshmi Devi. They bolted the doors from inside to avoid the intrusion of men, who again, in fun, chained the doors from outside so that at the end of kirtana the women were at a loss how to get out. At last, they saw a heap of ashes in a corner, on which they jumped down one by one and escaped. In high divine afflatus, again, Lakshmi Devi identified herself with the heroic god Balarama, and putting on a male attire she danced just like him. One of her disciples, Bipin, reports that when Lakshmi Devi lived in a cottage with her brothers at Dakshineswar, he one day saw her dance and sing heroically like Balarama, lost in her own spiritual mood and oblivious of the outsiders who flocked there to witness the ecstatic mood. In fact, she had a taste for these things and became an adept in them even from early age. She used to say later, ‘How can I help it - I am born a woman. If I were a man, I would show what kirtana really is.’ Such manifestations of divine moods, however, were generally confined within the group of her disciples and acquaintances. To the public she was bashful in her behavior and kept her emotion in check.

She was blessed with visions of gods and goddesses quite frequently. Once she saw Sri Ramakrishna standing in front of Jagannatha Puri, and she felt that the two were but one. Sometimes in her ecstatic trance she was transported to the region of Vishnu or Ramakrishna, and on other occasions she was in the presence of Shiva and Durga. At times, in a state of spiritual inebriation, she accepted the adoration of her disciples, and at other times she prophesied for them. Once while bathing in the sea at Puri she was carried away by an undercurrent; and when there was no chance of life, a cowherd boy drew her out of the sea. A little later she walked to the temple of Jagannatha to find to her surprise, that very cowherd boy standing there in the position of Balarama and smiling at her. Sri Ramakrishna asked her once at Dakshineswar, ‘Which God you like most?’ ‘Radha-Krishna,’ replied Lakshmi. The Master wrote the mantra of this divine couple on her tongue and uttered it in her ear. Lakshmi Devi got her initiation into the Vaishnava cult, though earlier she and the Holy Mother had received the Shakti mantra at Kamarpukur from a monk named Purnananda who hailed from North India. When the Mother reminded Sri Ramakrishna this, he said, ‘Let it be so, I have given the right thing to Lakshmi.’ Indeed, Lakshmi Devi was a Vaishnava in every way; and her husband’s family at Goghat also belonged to the same fold. The vaishnavas had considerable influence then at Kamarpukur. They honored Lakshmi Devi and gathered at her house to hear her kirtana. This trait in her character was so prominent that some critics were led to believe that her spiritual affiliation was with someone other than Sri Ramakrishna. Her biographer Krishna Chandra Sen Gupta answers them thus: ‘They forget that the Master was the embodiment all the gods and goddesses, and that he molded her as a Vaishnava with his own hands.’ In her spiritual talks Lakshmi Devi constantly drew upon the Master’s utterances and his name was ever on her lips. She accepted the Master as an incarnation, and though herself a

worshipper of Radha-Krishna she followed the Master’s liberalism in initiating some of her disciples with the mantras of other deities. She had a little more than a hundred disciples who all were devoted to Sri Ramakrishna. And yet it is true that she could not accept Swami Vivekananda’s idea of service in its entirely. This highly gifted soul was born in the Chatterji family of Kamarpukur. She was the daughter of Rameshwar. Elder brother of Sri Ramakrihna, and her full name was Lakshmimani. Being thus related to the Master, she was a didi, elder sister, to all his disciples and even today she is referred to as Lakshmi Didi. She was born on the 1 Phalgun 1270 (Bengali Era) or February 1864, on the day of the worship of Saraswati. From childhood she felt joy in worshipping the family deities. She had a little education at the village school, and while at Dakshineswar she learnt something more with the help of a boy named Sharat Bhandari who taught her up to the second primer according to the direction of Sri Ramakrishna. Her father died when Lakshmi was a mere child. He settled her marriage at Goghat before his passing away. She was accordingly wedded there at the age of eleven years. When the news reached Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar he said, ‘She will be widowed.’ At this, Hriday, his nephew, protested, but he said, ‘How could I help it when the Mother made me say so? Lakshmi is a partial embodiment of Sitala, who is an ireful goddess … She will be widowed as a matter of course.’ Earlier too, he had said once at Kamarpukur, ‘It will be nice if Laksmi becomes a widow; for then she will be able to serve the family deities.’ Dhanakrishna Ghatak, her husband, came to Kamarpukur about two months after the marriage, and from there he went out in search of employment, as nobody could trace him since then, his obsequies were performed after twelve years of waiting, and Lakshmi Devi became a widow. So, she never lived in her husband’s family, but continued to be in her father’s house forever.

Lakshmi Devi had to spend her early days in abject poverty, which is too well-known to be dealt with here. Up to 1885 she very often lived at Dakshineswar. Later she lived at Cossipore when the Master was ailing there. When the Holy Mother went to Vrindavan after the Master’s passing away, Lakshmi Devi accompanied her. During the other pilgrimages of the Holy Mother, Lakshmi Devi was often found in her company, though she generally lived in her brother’s family either at Dakshineswar or Kamarpukur. Dakshineswar became her permanent place of residence after the death of her brother Ramlal’s wife. In his cottage she lived for ten years, and here began her spiritual ministration. Her disciples wanted to make her life comfortable and hence built a two-storied brick house. In the new building she lived for ten years before she left Dakshineswar or live at Puri the disciples built another house for her. Lakshmi Devi had her spiritual training at Dakshineswar under the fostering care of Sri Ramakrishna. When he passed by the Nahabat, her place of residence, in the small hours of the morning, while on his way the tamarisk grove, he called Lakshmi Devi to get up and sit for meditation and japa. If there was no response from inside, he poured in water through the door, in fun to make her get up helter-skelter for fear of the bed becoming wet. Thereby early rising became an instinct with her. He also gave her direct instruction. And through a hole in the screen of plaited bamboo slips, around the Nahabat, she watched and heard the kirtana that would be going on in the Master’s room. She learnt the songs of Vidyapti and Chandidas. At Cossipore Sri Ramakrishna once set her along with Mahendranath Gupta’s wife to beg for food. The Master once told her, ‘If you cannot think on the god and goddesses, you can think on me - that will be enough.’ Lakshmi Devi knew the Master as her spiritual teacher. She believed him to be non-different from her chosen deity. Sri Ramakrishna, too, had a very high opinion about her spiritual stature. Goddess Sitala once told him in a dream that she, who resided

in the water-pot, the symbol of Sitala in the Kamarpukur shrine, was the same as the being that dwelt in Laksmi, and that to feed the latter meant feeding Sitala herself. According, he worshipped Laksmi twice at Cossipore, and to Girish Chandra Ghosh he said one day, ‘Do offer sweets someday to Laksmi, for that will be as good as offering them to Sitala. Lakshmi is a partial embodiment of Sitala.’ Once the Master had a desire to present a necklace and bracelets to Lakshmi; but it remained unfulfilled. Others, however, had these made for her subsequently. But such was her spirit of renunciation that she did not wear these for long, she presented them to others. Owing to this dislike for the world, she once declared that should the Master incarnate again, she would not accompany him even at the pain of being chopped to pieces like tobacco leaves. But the Master declared that they were like a mass of floating interlinked weeds, so that if one pulled by one end, the whole mass moved as a matter of course. After the Master’s passing away, she went out on pilgrimages quite a number of times. Once she went to Vrindavan and resided there with a young disciple and a woman named Rukmini of Kamarpukur. Unfortunately, the young man died. Before the funeral fire was extinguished, Rukmini returned to their quarters leaving Laksmi Devi behind, under the plea of cleaning the household. She then broke open the boxes and made away with all the cash. Lakshmi Devi was now stranded and had to maintain herself by begging from door to door for about seven days till somebody came from Kamarpukur to take her home. Soon Rukmini fell ill. In her deathbed she confessed her guilt to Laksmi Devi, pleading at the same time that she could not return the money as she had already given it to her brothers. Lakshmi Devi forgave her and blessed her heartily for a better life hereafter. She also visited Puri, Gaya, Varanasi, and Gangasagar. She had a particular fascination for puri. The house that the devotees built for her there was called ‘Lakshmi Niketana’, the house of Lakshmi. She

went there in February 1924 and breathed her last there on the 24 February 1926. In addition to the traits of character already moted, she had certain others, which easily distinguished her. Her devotion to the Ganges was very remarkable. At Dakshineswar she wanted her shrine to be built high enough to command a direct view of the river. Till her disciples could collect enough money for such a structure, she preferred to live in her old hut. She had an earnest desire to leave her body on the bank of the Ganges; and during the last illness she wanted to return from Puri, but it was not to be. Her whole life was an unbroken chain of spiritual discipline. At Puri she left her bed at three o’clock in the morning, and sat in japa for a considerably long period. Then she had a light breakfast after which she bathed at about nine or ten o’clock and sat for japa. She had her japa again in the afternoon, and a couple of hours were spent for this purpose at night. The devotees held a kirtana at night. Last of all she chanted a chapter from the Bhagavata and then retired for a night. When talking about Radha and Krishna she became so absorbed that she lost all idea of time. Once she went on talking from four in the morning till nine at night without any break, till the disciples had to stop her. About Vrindavan she used to say, ‘I belong to that place’, or ‘I am a cowherd lass.’ Though a soft-natured Vaishnava, she would sometimes defend her belief heroically. Once an influential man wanted to sacrifice a goat before Sitala, the tutelary deity of the Chatterjis of Kamarpukur. Lakshmi Devi resisted the move so stoutly that the gentleman had to beat a retreat. Though her spiritual insight she became so liberal that once she had no compunction in accepting prasada, consecrated food, from the nonbrahmin descendants of Jayadeva Goswami at his native village of Kenduvila. For the Vaishnava monks one had the highest regard, and to them she made gifts to her utmost capacity even at her own personal

discomfort. And yet any false step of a monk enraged her, and she would not stop till the matter was rectified.