In plain words
“King! You are like a father to us. All this time you have guarded us as the eyelid guards the eye. Without you we cannot live. So we ourselves will go to the forest, do tapas, and pray to God to lengthen your span of life,” they said. The king had no choice but to agree. All the people went to the forest and did tapas. Pleased with their Bhakti, God appeared before them and told them to ask for whatever they wanted. All the people, with one voice: “Lord! Only if our king is well can we live in that kingdom. So grant our king a hundred years more of life,” they prayed. “So be it; I have granted it. Go,” said God. With a joy they could not contain, the people came running to the palace. “King! We have come back with a boon from God that you shall live a hundred years more,” they said. The moment she heard these words, the queen bowed to the king and said, “King! Now I am going, to do tapas.” All the people: “Alas! We asked for a hundred years more only for the king; we did not ask for the queen. Perhaps that is why she is angry,” they thought, poor things! But the queen's thought was not of that kind. She went to the forest and did tapas. God appeared. “Lord! Have You given our king a hundred years more of life?” she asked. “Yes, I have,” He said. “Then, as long as the king lives, these people too must live. What use is such a king without such people? So You must give the people too a hundred years of life,” she asked. Pleased with her large-hearted feeling, God said, “Mother! I have given your king a hundred years, the people a hundred years, and you too a hundred years. Go in joy.” “Yathā rājā tathā prajā”: because the kings of those days were large-hearted, the people too were large-hearted. But today such kings and such people are nowhere to be seen.
Today is the day Vāmana came down as Avatāra and granted Mokṣa to Bali Cakravarti. Bali Cakravarti was very great. But he was not all that good. For there was in him the vice called Ahaṅkāra. Vāmana came, pressed down that little Ahaṅkāra, and took him into Himself. In Bali Cakravarti's kingdom there was never a famine. He had great affection for his people. He looked after them as his own children. That is why, at the time of his going, he promised the people that every year, on this Oṇam day, he would come and see them. Oṇam means just this: coming down, beginning a new life. Even today in Kerala, while atheism grows on one side, on the other Bhakti to Viṣṇu too keeps growing a great deal.
“Your test is My taste”
Pain and pleasure seem to balance each other. The pleasure is an interval between two pains. Between two pains there is a pleasure; between two pleasures there is a pain.
“Pain and pleasure live together; to part them is in no one's power; nowhere do we see pleasure on its own; when pain bears fruit, they call it pleasure.”
Without pain, the value of pleasure is not known. That is why God, now and then, brings some hardships and pains and tests everyone. Only when He tests you is it possible to send you up to a higher level. Otherwise you stay just where you are. But, by some misfortune, the devotees of today ask God not to test them. Foolish devotees! Do not ask so. Your test is My taste! Devotees must ceaselessly ask God to set them tests. However many hardships He sets, they must bear them, push on and go forward. Only then will divinity emerge in you.