Nicola Barker - The Cauliflower

Everything quiet.”

Shhhhhh back there! We’re meditating , you dullards!

1863, approximately. Mathur Nath Biswas offers Sri Ramakrishna something to eat:

Mathur ( proffering a fruit ): “Will you have some mango?”

Sri Ramakrishna ( shaking his head ): “No, thank you. This … [ indicates self] has eaten.”

Mathur ( frowning, suspicious ): “What do you mean? Why are you talking that way?”

Sri Ramakrishna ( surprised ): “Does not the stump of ego block the path to God’s kingdom? To enter the kingdom one must first leapfrog over that stump.”

Mathur ( smirking ): “So now you refuse to use the word ‘I’ because it is an expression of ego ?”

Sri Ramakrishna ( nodding ): “The great pandit, Gaudi, speaks in this style. I have been told that this is how all true renunciants express themselves.”

Mathur ( with a dismissive swipe of his hand ): “ Argh , let Gaudi speak however he chooses! It’s simply an affectation — an expression of his ego tism. But you have no ego . There is no need for you talk as these people do.”

Sri Ramakrishna thinks for a moment, frowning slightly, then his gentle but perplexed brown eyes turn and settle, thoughtfully, upon the lovely, ripe fruit. Ah, but how the sweet-toothed Master adores a mango!

For the main meal:

“Eat a little rice,

Perhaps a little spinach—

Chant God’s name all day.”

And as a quick digestif:

“Bite on a chili—

By accident or design,

Your tongue will still burn.”

16th April 1886, the Cossipore garden house, Calcutta

or

The perplexing tale of Pagli*

(* in Bengali, pagli means “madwoman”)

“Please remember God,

But if you cannot do that—

Then just think of me.”

—Sri Ramakrishna

Ravaged by the final stages of throat cancer, barely able to eat, walk, or speak, Sri Ramakrishna is staying in a large upstairs room at a beautiful garden house rented by devotee Surendra Nath Mitra in the leafy suburb of Cossipore. The Master’s small band of exhausted and heartbroken disciples are nursing him around the clock and are eager to ease his evident — but unspoken — discomfort in any way possible. It is mid-April and very hot. Surendra has purchased some blinds for the windows to keep out the worst of the scalding light. But now it is nighttime (if still airless) and the full moon shines with an almost supernatural brightness.

In the garden, a woman suffering from acute mental illness (the disciples call her Pagli) is crying and entreating whosoever may listen to be granted access to the bedside of the dying guru . Pagli has chosen to worship Sri Ramakrishna (“the guru is God, God is the guru ”) in the spiritual attitude of the lover, and so she torments him, at every opportunity, with her passionate, crazy, and utterly inappropriate displays of affection.

The disciples are sick of Pagli. She is prone to breaking into the house and forcing her way into Sri Ramakrishna’s room to demonstrate her deranged love for him. She tortures him from her post in the garden with her hysterical screaming and her perpetual commotion. Recently, overtired and exasperated, a couple of the disciples went so far as to beat her up. But still she returns, battered and bruised. Still she chides and wheedles and yells.

The guru (who will not be called Guru ) is quiet and uncomplaining. He receives visitors, even though speaking often causes his throat to hemorrhage. He has been banned from talking — he talks only of God — but he whispers hoarsely, nonetheless. When he is no longer able to talk he signs with an emaciated arm and fingers.

The Master(who will not be called Master)’s doctor (a spiritual skeptic) has forbidden him from entering into spiritual trances. During Sri Ramakrishna’s trances, blood and energy automatically mass at his throat (might this be the reason for his cancer? Or perhaps his lifelong attachment to the hubble-bubble, or to chewing betel nut, a known carcinogen?). Of course, Sri Ramakrishna has no control over his spiritual moods. If he is inspired by thoughts of God, if he hears religious singing, if he talks of the Mother, if he smells a particular flower used in worship or a whiff of incense or of camphor, he will enter a state of ecstasy. He cannot help it.

His faith is killing him.

The disciples know that the Master has great supernatural powers (although he rarely uses them — he disapproves of them. God should be sought through love and devotion, he holds, not magic — magic confuses and inflates the ego .… Although remember the woman who was instantly cured — by just a brief touch — of her insurmountable grief over the death of her daughter? Remember how a mere word or a smile has inspired states of terrifying spiritual ecstasy in numerous individuals that can last hours, days, even weeks?) and so they entreat him to cure himself, please .

Sri Ramakrishna is plainly horrified by these requests. His illness is part of the Mother’s lila , he says. It is her sport. It is her divine play. It is her will. He recently had a vision in which the Divine Mother showed him his own emaciated corpse, and his bare back was covered in weeping burns and blisters. Horrified, he asked her why it was so. She then showed him how spiritual seekers touched him for good luck, and how their sins singed and sapped his physical self.

Poor Pagli. She has fixated on the guru in much the same way that the guru fixated on the Divine Mother at the onset of his own strange spiritual journey. She too can find no rest or peace without palpable demonstrations of love from her chosen ideal.

In the past she has angrily accused the bemused Master of “pushing her away, mentally.” She is implacable. She is frustrated. She is demented. She is a pest. Sri Ramakrishna has patiently explained to her that he sees all women as manifestations of the Divine Mother, that he is incapable of engaging with any woman except in that attitude. But Pagli refuses — or is unable — to understand.

Sri Ramakrishna is slowly dying, in incredible pain and scalding heat, but he cannot find a moment’s peace from this, his most ardent and passionate disciple.

On that long, hot night of 16th April 1886, Girish — with his artist’s soul — pleads Pagli’s case before her many detractors. Did he not pester and insult the guru himself, for years, he demands, before he finally relented and saw the light? And now that he has finally seen it, how is it possible for him to resent the warped emotional whirlwind of Pagli for enthusiastically embracing that exact same impulse?

The other disciples aren’t receptive to Girish’s kindly analysis (they could happily kill her for the trouble she’s caused), but Girish still persists. He walks over to the window and peers out. There Pagli stands, in the garden, bathed in silver moonlight, her dark hair awry, her arms covered in bruises. She is calling the guru ’s name as if her heart would break. “Pagli is truly blessed,” he murmurs, turning toward the emaciated guru , his soulful eyes filling with tears, “to love you this much. If she calls your name with such faith and devotion, surely no real harm may befall her?”

The tormented guru will not speak. He just closes his eyes and smiles.

And now — oh dear — it’s the bill!

“If you have money

Then give it in charity—

If not, simply chant.”

“Hiss at the wicked,

Frighten them just a little,