Epistles (second series)
Mother
CXXXIV*
1897.
{original in Bengali}
Dear Mother,
Please be not anxious because I could not write to you and could not go to Belgaon. I was suffering very much from illness and it was impossible for me to go then. Now thanks to my travels in Himalayas, I have greatly regained my health. I shall soon resume work. In two weeks I am going to the Punjab, and just after delivering a lecture or two at Lahore and Amritsar, I shall start via Karachi for Gujarat, Cutch, etc. I shall surely see you at Karachi.
This Kashmir is a veritable heaven on earth. Nowhere else in the world is such a country as this. Mountains and rivers, trees and plants, men and women, beasts and birds -- all vie with one another for excellence. I feel a pang at heart not to have visited it so long. Please write to me in detail how you are doing, mentally and physically, and accept my special blessings. I am constantly having your welfare at heart, know this for certain.
Yours sincerely,
Vivekananda.
CXXXIX*
Lahore,
15th November 1897 .
{original in Bengali}
Dear Mother 66
It is a matter of deep regret that in spite of my earnest wishes, I do not find it feasible to go to Karachi this time and see you. First, because Captain and Mrs. Sevier, who have come from England and are travelling with me for the last nine months nearly, are very anxious to buy some land at Dehra Dun and start an orphanage there. It is their special request that I should go and open the work. This makes it unavoidable to go to Dehra Dun.
Secondly, owing to my kidney troubles I cannot count upon a long life. Even now it is one of my desires to start a Math in Calcutta, towards which as yet I could do nothing. Moreover, the people of my country have withheld the little help that they used to give to our Math of late. They have got a notion that I have brought plenty of money from England! Over and above, that, it is impossible to celebrate Shri Ramakrishna's festival this year, for the properties of Rasmani's garden would not let me go there, as I am returned from the West! Hence my first duty lies in seeing the new friends we have in Rajputana and trying my best to have a centre in Calcutta. For these reasons I have been very sorry to postpone my tour to Sindh at present. I shall try my best to go there via Rajputana and Kathiawar. Please do not be sorry. Never for a day do I forget you all. But duty must be done first. It will ease me of my anxiety when a Math is established in Calcutta. Then I can hope that the work for which I struggled all my life through all sorts of privation and suffering will not die out after I cease to live in this body. I start for Dehra Dun this very day. After a week's stay there, to Rajputana, thence to Kathiawar, and so on.
With blessings,
Yours sincerely,
VIVEKANANDA.
CXL*
(To the same)
Dehra Dun,
24th November, 1897.
{original in Bengali}
Dear Mother,
I have duly received your letter and that of dear Haripada. Of course you have ample reason to feel sorry for, but you see, I couldn't help it. And what took me here also become a fiasco; neither could I go to Sindh. It is the Lord's will. Now I have an idea of proceeding to Calcutta through Rajputana, Kathiawar, and Sindh. But some difficulty may crop up on the way. If all goes well, I am certainly coming to Sindh. You must have undergone a lot of difficulty in coming to Hyderabad by arranging for leave etc. Any least trouble undergone, is bound to produce its excellent results. Friday next I shall leave this place, and have a mind to go via Saharanpur to Rajputana direct. I am doing well now, and trust you too are in health and peace of mind. ...
With best love and blessings to yourself and Haripada,
Yours sincerely,
VIVEKANANDA.
CLXIII
6 Place Des Etats Unis, Paris,
3rd Sept., 1900.
Dear Mother, 70
We had a congress of cranks here in this house.
The representatives came from various countries, from India in the south, to Scotland in the north, with England and America buttressing the sides.
We were having great difficulty in electing the President, for though Dr. James (Professor William James) was there, he was more mindful of the blisters raised on him by Mrs. Melton (probably a magnetic healer) than solution of world problems.
I proposed Joe (Josephine MacLeod), but she refused on the ground of non-arrival of her new gown -- and went to a corner to watch the scene, from a coign of vantage.
Mrs. (Ole) Bull was ready, but Margot (Sister Nivedita) objected to this meeting being reduced to a comparative philosophy class.
When we were thus in a fix-up sprung a short, square, almost round figure from the corner, and without any ceremony declared that all difficulties will be solved, not only electing a president but of life itself, if wed all took to worshipping the Sun God and Moon God. He delivered his speech in five minutes; but it took his disciple who was present, fully three quarters of an hour to translate. In the meanwhile, the master began to draw the rugs in your parlour up in a heap, with the intention, as he said, of giving us an ocular demonstration of the power of "Fire God", then and there.
At this juncture Joe interposed and insisted that she did not want a fire sacrifice in her parlour; whereupon the Indian saint looked daggers at Joe, entirely disgusted at the behaviour of one he confidently believed to be a perfect convert to fire worship. Then Dr. James snatched a minute from nursing his blisters and declared that he would have something very interesting to speak upon Fire God and his brethren, if he were not entirely occupied with the evolution of Meltonian blisters. Moreover his great Master, Herbert Spencer, not having investigated the subject before him, he would stick to golden silence.
"Chutney is the thing" said a voice near the door. We all looked back and saw Margot. "It is Chutney." she said, "Chutney and Kali, that will remove all difficulties of life, and make it easy for us to swallow all evils, and relish what is good." But she stopped all of a sudden and vehemently asserted that she was not going to speak any further, as she has been obstructed by a certain male animal in the audience in her speech. She was sure one man in the audience had his head turned towards the window and was not paying the attention proper to a lady, and though as to herself she believed in the equality of the sexes, yet she wanted to know the reason of that disgusting man's want of due respect for women. Then one and all declared that they had been giving her the most undivided attention, and all above the equal right, her due, but to no purpose. Margot would have nothing to do with that horrible crowd and sat down.
Then Mr. Bull of Boston took the floor and began to explain how all the difficulties of the world were from not understanding the true relation between the sexes. She said, "The only panacea was a right understanding the proper persons, and then to find liberty in love and freedom in liberty and motherhood, brotherhood, fatherhood, Godhood, love in freedom and freedom in love, in the right holding up of the true ideal in sex."
To this the Scotch delegate vehemently objected and said that as the hunter chased the goat herd, the goat herd the shepherd, the shepherd the peasant, and the peasant drove the fisher into the sea, now we wanted to fish out of the deep the fisher and let him fall upon the peasant, the peasant upon the shepherd, and so on; and the web of life will be completed and we will be all happy. He was not allowed to continue his driving business long. In a second everyone was on his feet, and we could only hear a confusion of voices -- "Sun God and Moon God", "Chutney and Kali," "Freedom holding up right understanding, sex, motherhood", "Never, the fisherman must go back to the shore", etc. Whereupon Joe declared that she was yearning to be the hunter for the time and chase them all out of the house if they did not stop their nonsense.
Then was peace and calm restored, and I hasten to write you about it.
Yours affly.,
VIVEKANANDA.
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