Incidents Related To Sri Ramana Maharshi’s Personal Attendants

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Sri Ramana’s personal attendants were chosen by Chinnaswami.Ramana himself

never asked anyone to serve him, nor ever sent away an attendant who had

been allotted to him. It became the tradition in the Ashram that the

attendants were always young unmarried men. Annamalai Swami reports, “Once,

when a woman who was a qualified nurse from North India volunteered to be an

attendant, Bhagavan replied by saying, ‘Ask the people in the Hall’.

Krishnaswami, the chief attendant, and some of the other people in the Hall

objected. ‘No! No! We cannot have ladies doing service to Bhagavan. It is

not proper.’ Bhagavan turned to the woman and said, ‘These people all think

like this. What can I do?’â€

 

One of the attendants’ tasks was to receive the food offerings brought by

devotees and give some of it back to them as prasadam.They had to be careful

that the men sat on one side of the Hall and the women on the other.

Whenever Maharshi left the Hall, one of them had to accompany him. The other

one stayed back to clean the Hall. The cloths on the couch had to be kept

clean. Washing the cloths and preparing warm water for the morning bath was

also the duty of the attendants, as was accompanying Ramana on his nightly

walks to the toilet. There was, therefore, someone there to be helpful to

him round the clock.

 

Major Chadwick tells the story of the betel. In this case the attendant’s

omission resulted in Ramana simply giving up chewing betel.“One morning

Bhagavan was about to go out and was only waiting for the attendant to give

him the betel, which was always placed by his side when it was time for his

walk. For some reason the attendant did not do it, everybody in the Hall was

waiting expectantly but could do nothing about it as the management did not

allow anybody to attend on Bhagavan except those who had been specially

detailed. Eventually Bhagavan got up and left the Hall without it. From that

day on he never chewed again.â€

 

Although Sri Ramana could be very strict with his attendants, he was also

very concerned for their welfare. In summer, when he used to walk to

Palakothu between midday and 1.30 p.m., the sandy path was so hot that

walking barefoot could be very painful.Ramana always walked at the same

steady pace, whether it was raining cats and dogs or whether the sun was

blazing down, but he used to say to the attendant walking behind him, “Run,

run and take shelter under that tree. Put your upper cloth under your feet

and stand on it for a while.â€

 

Similarly Ramana’s concern was extended to Rangaswami, when he had to copy

out several pages of a book. “One day Bhagavan asked me if I had completed

the job. ‘I do not have the time for it’, I said. ‘What are you doing

now?’

he queried. ‘I am going to Palakothu to wash your cod-piece’. Bhagavan said,

‘Okay, you do my job and I will do yours’, so saying, he copied the

remaining pages.â€

 

He insisted that all others had to be served first and that he should be

served last. One day when Suri Nagamma was handing out fruit from her nephew

in the Hall, she served Sri Ramana first, then everybody else. At the end it

was found that there was not enough fruit for everyone. So one of the

attendants cut the remaining bananas into small pieces. Ramana said

indignantly, “This is what I don’t like. Why do you serve when you cannot

give the same quantity to all people?

 

There are lots of dining hall stories which make clear how fiercely Maharshi

resisted any preferential treatment of his person, as,again and again,

devotees tried to serve him a special delicacy or a larger share than

others. The cook Santamma also had to learn her lesson. At the beginning of

her stay at the Ashram she served Sri Ramana an extra portion on his leaf,

which he at once noticed saying angrily, “Why did you serve the Swami more

of the curry than the rest? Have you come all the way here to learn this? If

you serve more to others and less to me I would be happy. Do you want to

purchase grace by serving extra? If you show the devotees the same love as

you have for me, then your love for me too will grow.â€

 

For the Brahmins’ sakes a certain importance was attached to the observation

of caste rules. Brahmins are only allowed to eat together with members of

their own caste. To enable them to obey this rule the dining hall was

separated in two by a bamboo screen.On the one side the Brahmins had their

place, on the other side the non-Brahmins. Sri Ramana sat in the opening of

the screen on the non-Brahmin side and was visible to all. Again and again

Brahmins tried to sit on the non-Brahmin side and circumvent their own caste

rules in the Ashram. They argued that with Ramana there were no caste

differences. But he did not accept their arguments as long as they continued

to apply caste rules at home.

 

Source: Ramana Maharshi: His Life A biography by Gabriele Ebert

 

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