The Crumpled Letter

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There are many incidents that reveal Swami's compassion. Let me narrate one that I remember. One day Swami was giving darshan to the devotees in Prashanthi Nilayam. As he walked amidst them, I saw a small girl, scarcely five years old, trying to give a letter to Swami. “Did this small girl write the letter ? Perhaps her mother would have written it.

I thought. Even as this thought flashed across my mind, I saw Swami taking the letter, crumpling it and throwing it down as if it was waste paper. This strange act of His made me wonder, may be Swami meant that the letter was a waste paper. Did this mean that their prayers were answered? He is compassionate. He might have answered. Even if He did not, there must be some meaning to it. This small girl was suffering from heart ailment.

The doctors in Madras and Hyderabad confirmed the presence of a hole in her heart. When they came to super specialty hospital at Prashanthi Nilayam, the same result awaited them. The doctors confirmed the hole in her heart. The date for the operation was fixed. The girl"s mother wrote a letter to Swami about the operation, and asked the girl to hand it over to Swami.

This was the scene witnessed by people in the darshan queue . The mother saw Swami crumpling the letter, and took it as a rejection. Mother"s heart bled for her child assuming that there was no hope. The day of the operation dawned. The girl was wheeled into the operation theater. When the final tests were done the same doctors could not believe themselves!

They found that there was no trace of any hole in the heart. The child was perfectly healthy. They went home glad and grateful to Swami. What a way to indicate His benediction. Only Swami knows the purpose of what He does. However, once in a while He does let us peep behind the curtain of His mysterious ways. He always wants to instill joy in us. Perhaps He wants us to understand Him. But then He also says that we should not try to understand Him but only experience Him. Probably, He gives us these glimpses so that we will know the inscrutable nature of his deeds, and the futility of our efforts to comprehend them.