Passage 10

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In plain words

I have that good fortune, and so I serve You,” she said. “If you wish to see him just once, see him; that debt too will be cleared,” I said, and then: “Just step outside for a little,” I told her. Outside there was a drumstick tree. Her husband Narayana Rao was sitting under that tree, smoking a cigarette! Subbamma saw that sight with her own eyes. Seeing him, she was not only glad; she scolded him too. “Even after dying you have not given up these bad habits! I will not look at your face,” she said, and came straight back inside. He had had a second wife called Kamalamma. Kamalamma lives in our Mandiram even now. “Kamalamma! You too go and see him once,” I said. “Swami! We are with You. We need nothing more,” she said. “Just once, go and see him and come back,” I told her again. When she went and looked, he was drinking piping hot coffee! He appeared to them doing the very things he used to do while he was alive. In the same way, Kṛṣṇa too showed again things that had happened long before.

“Sing a Song, O Kṛṣṇa!”

When Kṛṣṇa lifted the Govardhana hill, everyone held a festival. The Gopikās performed the Varalakṣmī vrata. Among them Rādhā was a very great devotee. But many people kept tormenting her. Not only today: there were atheists in those days too. Theists, atheists and theist-atheists have been there in every age. Thinking that if Kṛṣṇa came into sight Rādhā might run off after Him, her relatives put her in the house and shut the doors (I wrote this as a play and taught it to the children); from inside, weeping, she prays to Kṛṣṇa. Hearing her prayer, Kṛṣṇa goes to the people there: “It does not matter if you have no Bhakti, but to torment devotees like this is a great sin,” He says. He frees Rādhā and takes her away with Him. Then she fell at Kṛṣṇa's feet: “Swami! I have no desires of any kind. Just once let me hear the music of Your flute; that is enough,” she prayed.