"I resolved on My birth. I decided who should be My mother."
On December 31, 1970, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba announced thus in answer to a question from the Editor of 'Nava Kaal', the Bombay Daily. We were present at a special session of the Academy of Vedic Scholars founded and guided by Bhagawan. "Any questions?" He asked after the discourses with which He graciously blessed us. "From when have you shown these signs of Divine Power?", the Editor ventured to ask. Prompt came the reply, "From my very birth. Why... from long before. I was at Shirdi as Sai Baba before I incarnated in the Raju family at Puttaparthi.. and I was Krishna before that!"
The Editor was struck speechless. So were the others in the Hall - Sri P.K.Sawant, Minister for Home Affairs in the Government of Maharashtra (the meeting was held at his official residence in Bombay), Sri Bharde, Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Sri V.S.Page, Chairman of the Maharashtra Legislative Council and others.
"That is to say..." the Editor stuttered. "That is to say," Baba interrupted him, "I resolved on My birth. I decided who should be My mother. Mere humans can only choose the one who is to be the husband or wife. But, the Mother was chosen by the son in the Rama and Krishna incarnations and then too, as now, the task for which the birth was decided upon was the same the conferring of Prema on all and, through the fostering of Prema, the cultivation of Righteous Living among Mankind."
The Mother Sai Baba decided upon was Easwaramma, a poor, middle-aged, tender-hearted, pious, illiterate, rural housewife. She had mothered seven children, three of whom had survived into teenage and beyond. This book is a humble tribute to the historic role that Easwaramma was invested with and the steadfast courage with which she enacted the role and encountered the challenge.
The Bhagavata Purana and the Ramayana give us glimpses of the onslaughts of grief and joy, hope and despair, anxiety and assurance that the mothers Yashoda and Kausalya had to bear when Krishna and Rama revealed their Cosmic Magnificence and, even as boys, chastised man, monster and the Gods. Easwaramma, like every other Hindu housewife, was conversant with the Telugu ballads, legends, folksongs and tales that have gathered around Krishna and Rama. Nevertheless, it took years of intimate observation and hundreds of inexplicable incidents and intimations to convince her that this child she had fondled, this boy she had doted on, had come to prove the Bhagavatam and the Ramayana as true and as valid now as they were then.
When we review the life of the Mother of the Avatar, we find ourselves progressing through curiosity, expectation, compassion and wonder and landing in appreciation, admiration and adoration. Easwaramma was allotted the well-nigh impossible task of expanding her awareness beyond the ring of hills, beyond the barricade of tradition and taboo and the wall of custom and caste. Burdened with the prestigious and pardonable pride of the most precious motherhood a woman could aspire for, she could not in spite of consistent effort jettison the homage she attracted from all the continents.
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