In plain words
I created a photo of Sai Baba with my hand and gave it to her. No one knows what will come into the hand of this Sai Baba. Venkamma kept that picture with her till she died. In the family Kondamaraju alone recognised my divinity. For that very reason he advised Pedda Venkamaraju to change the name of Gṛham Ammāyi to Easwaramma (that is, Easwaramma, the mother of Īśvara). In fact the name her parents gave Easwaramma was Namagiramma. One day Kondamaraju gently called Venkamma. ‘Venkamma! All our people are passing their lives in ignorance and innocence. No one is even trying to recognise the power of Satyam. He looks purely like one born of a portion of the Divine. He does not say he is hungry. He does not say he is sleepy. He goes on without hunger and thirst, without sleep and food,’ he said. When I lay down to sleep at night, Kondamaraju would get up, come to me, put his finger near my nose and look. He would look to see whether the breath was coming or not. “Sohaṃ, Sohaṃ can be seen, but no air can be seen! Perhaps there is some illness in his body! Yet why should I go into these tests?” he thought. Within a few days crowds of people set out and began coming to Kondamaraju's house. ‘Why are you going to Kondamaraju's house?’, if anyone asked: ‘His grandson is there in that Kondamaraju's house, they say! He appears as a divine power, they say! He came to all of us in dreams. He told all of us in dreams,’ they would say. Meanwhile Seshama Raju came to Puttaparthi for the holidays. Seeing the people come in throngs, recognising Satyam in this way as one born of a portion of the Divine, he quarrelled with Kondamaraju: ‘See that no one comes to our house,’ he said. In the conditions of those days the educated were held in great respect. The village people kept thinking of Seshama Raju as a great scholar. He came to Kondamaraju: “Grandfather! Let no one come near this boy. This is going the way of some madness,’ he said, and gave it a name, ‘hysteria’. ‘It is no divine power, no power of any kind,’ he went on mocking in this way. As he kept on doing this, this greatness kept growing day by day. All the people who came to know of it came in their bullock carts. The carts stood outside. The villagers, noticing these people, quarrelled and came to blows with one another, saying a ghost had seized Satyam. Some said, “The madness has grown very bad; it is no longer possible to cure it.” ‘Near Kadiri there is a man who drives out madness. Take him to him,’ they said. Then they yoked a cart, seated Venkamma and me in it and took us away. Venkamma would not leave me even for a minute. They took me to Kadiri. The healer there was a great drunkard. He would just drink and fall down. “This boy has gone mad. I shall cure this madness,” he said, and beat me hard. My whole body was covered with sores. Since nothing at all was working, he brought poison and put it in my eyes. He did it thinking that at least for the burning of my eyes I might give in. That very evening I came to Venkamma and told her, ‘Pour cow-dung juice into my eyes.’ By the second day itself my eyes had become white as usual. However harshly he tormented me in this way, I went on putting it right by telling her the remedy. Since it was no longer working, he had my head shaved smooth. He made cuts with a knife. Blood was flowing. It looked like a wound. As if this were not enough, he set a vessel at a height of ten feet, poured water into it, seated me below and made the water fall on my wounds. As that water fell on the shaven head, it would burn. Even then I bore it. Since this was not working, he cut lemons and kept rubbing them hard on my head. Venkamma could no longer bear to see these torments. Overnight she hired a cartman, took me and came back to Puttaparthi. From then on the greatness of this Sai kept growing day by day.