Letters from Shanti Ashram, India

48. Creatures in the Rain & the Life of Prince & Death of Satsang Friend

Creatures in the Rain & the Life of Prince & Death of Satsang Friend

September 5 – 12, 1999

Shanti Ashram

Dear Parents,

Divya conveys her namaskars. Hope you are all well there, in your freezing regions. Here all is fine.

It seems that Susan Caffery had sent me another discourse cassette to be translated, but it never arrived to me. So she stopped sending discourses altogether. SH found this all out and since they still want me to translate, they have started to send cassettes again, this time safely only by registered post. I have translated and sent you the Guru Purnima and Onam discourses, since you showed some interest in my translations before.

Personally, to tell the truth, I feel it is a waste to concentrate on which words are missing and how styles are changed from various discourses. The gist of what Swami is saying is the important thing and we need only to try to put that into action, not to waste time like scholars, picking and pecking different words. Anyway, I am keeping my own opinions to myself and am obediently translating as per devoted requests.

You mentioned that I am going on rocky astrological times, like Gabe, but not so intense. For a week or so my health hadn’t been so good. I was been struck down with weakness and fever. However, I'm feeling better now.

One night when I was arranging the puja vessels to be scrubbed, I saw a flame of fire behind me, rising high! I looked to see that the end of my sari was on fire! It had caught on an open oil lamp. No one was around. I instantly removed the end part and bashed it on the ground. Thanks to Swami the Protector, the fire immediately went out, although a portion of the sari was all burnt up.

Seeing those inauspicious events happening to me lately, I remembered about Venkamma, and her belief in the evil eye. So I asked Vinamra to remove evil eye from me. She just waved a piece of straw from a broomstick around half a time (not the extended ritual I was used to in Puttaparthi). Nothing seemed improved, and the very next day Vinamra became bedridden with back pain for three days!

The rainy season brings out various creatures. One day I was in my room when the late Prince and Vijay started barking crazily. I looked out to see, only five feet away from my cottage, a creature that looked exactly like a big, black, fat baby alligator! It was swishing its tail, and about 2½ feet long, a very fat baby!

I just looked on in amazement while the dogs barked away, it stayed in one place, then moved several feet away, then paused again then suddenly ran behind the computer room cottage. I raced along with the dogs but it was lost to sight. Maybe climbed a tree or escaped into the grass.

Later when I told David he said, “Yum! I know about them (he said some Telugu name). Sometimes we manage to catch them - they make such a delicious dish!”

Another time, I went to my bathroom after evening satsang to see a big, huge crab-like creature in my toilet, struggling to get out! It was black with big claws, but the other half was in the water and couldn’t be seen. What to do? I finally decided that if it came from the drains, it could go back there without dying, so I poured a bucket of water and it was swished down the drain. After two days, again in the night I saw it, struggling to get out of the toilet! This time I thought I could save it and put it outside. I put in a broom, then a long stick, hoping it would cling to it so I could place it outside. But it didn’t clutch the stick so after some time I again poured a bucket of water and sent it to where it had come from, i.e., the septic tank. I never saw it since.

A few nights ago I lay down to sleep and noticed something was crawling on my face. I swished it off with my hand, as flying insects are very common.