A story of greed

[Guest guest]

Sai Baba then went near and thus addressed the creatures.

 

Sai Baba: Hallo! Veerabhadrappa! Even now, you have no pity for your enemy

Basappa though he has now taken birth as a frog, just as you have turned

into a serpent? Shame! Shame upon your hatred! Get rid of hatred and rest in

peace!

These words acted like magic. The snake let go its prey, dived into the

river and was lost to sight. The frog hopped away and hid in some tree.

 

Wayfarer: What a wonder! I cannot see why the snake dropped its prey at your

words. Which of these creatures is Veerabhadrappa? And which Basappa? Give

me their full history, please.

 

Sai Baba resumed his seat, shared a few puffs with his visitor at his pipe

and spoke: Some 6 or 7 miles off my place, there

was a village sanctified by a temple of Maheshwara. That temple was getting

dilapidated. So the villagers began to collect funds for its renovation. The

treasurer appointed was a rich miser. He spent but little of the collections

on the renovation which consequently made very poor progress; and he

swallowed much of the public funds. Seeing the work thus hampered, God

appeared in a dream and told the wife of the treasurer: " If you spend any

money in renovating this temple, Maheshwara will give it to you back a

hundredfold " . On waking, the wife communicated the dream to her husband. But

he sniffed " expenditure " as the drift of her dream and this Shylock would

launch into no such venture. He replied that this was no business

proposition. Was he not the man in charge of funds? If God meant business,

would He not have come to him? And how far was he from her?

 

Another night, God again came to the wife in her dream and said: " Do not

bother yourself about your husband and his money. Give, if you like, out of

your own. " The wife then told her Lord that she was going to endow the

temple with the value of her own jewels. They were worth Rs. 1000. Then this

treasurer, not content with the amounts already embezzled by him, wanted to

do Maheshwara, even in this transaction. He told the wife that he would take

the jewels himself and give them to God i.e. the temple, his vast stretch of

land as its endowment; and the simple woman agreed. But the land was not

his. It was the property of one Dubaki, a poor widow, who was just then too

poor to redeem it. But there was no period of limitation for exercising the

right of redemption. And the present possession of the land was worth

nothing. It was barren, saline coastland yielding nothing in the best of

seasons.

 

Thus ended this transaction; and sometime later there was a terrific storm.

Lightning struck down the house of the treasurer. He and his wife died. That

lady was born in the same village, as the daughter of the temple priest, to

whom the above land, had been given as service inam. And she was named

Gowri. She had come back to enjoy the land and the priest who was very fond

of her devoted the land to her use. Then he adopted a boy Basappa who was no

other than Dubaki, the mortgager of that land in the previous birth. Basappa

was to have the reversion after or a joint right with Gowri.

 

Gowri had to be married and the priest came to his great friend Sai Baba,

living in a mosque in that birth also, and asked for advice. Baba told him

to wait for the man destined to marry her would himself soon turn up. Then

came a poor boy of their caste, named Veerabhadrappa, and he married Gowri.

Who was Veerabhadrappa? That embezzler of public money, and God's money, the

treasurer. He had been born of poor parents at Muttra and named

Veerabhadrappa. Veerabhadrappa was at first devoted to Baba as the latter

had proposed his marriage to Gowri.

 

(to be contd....)

http://www.saileelas.org/magazines/saipadananda/jan1999.htm#Astoryofgreed