In plain words
As hundreds of devotees came every day to have the darśan of Swami, the people of the house were unable to make proper arrangements for them. Then, when Pedda Venkamaraju told the devotees, ‘Come only on Bestavāram (Thursday),’ everyone grew very afraid. ‘Our illnesses are getting worse. How are we to last till Bestavāram?’ they kept quarrelling. Then Subbamma called Venkamaraju: ‘Venkappa! You cannot live in this house keeping this child of God. Send the boy to our house. I shall look after him in every way,’ she said. As a result all the brahmins in the village took up hatred against this Subbamma. Subbamma was of the brahmin caste, while this Sai Baba belonged to the kṣatriya caste. She was keeping him in her house and looking after him in every way. So they decided that no one should go to her house. To that she: ‘I have no children; I need not go to anyone saying, take my child, give me your child. Do what you will, but this Satyam I will not give up,’ she answered them firmly. As this was going on, there were some houses of the Malas in the village. Those Harijans loved Swami dearly. All the Harijans kept taking Swami to their homes. At that time Subbamma too came with me: ‘I will not stay even a moment apart from this boy,’ she said. Subbamma was then sixty-five years old, and this Sai Baba eleven. She looked after Swami like her own child. With that the whole village took up hatred against her. In the end even her mother and her younger brother took up hatred. But Subbamma did not waver in the least. She told herself that such obstacles keep coming in God's way. ‘Let any amount of hatred come; this boy, at any rate, I will not give up. Do what you like with me,’ she held firm. In no time so many people came that even her house could not hold them. Seeing that, Venkamaraju came to Subbamma: ‘Amma! Why should you have all this inconvenience on our account? Let us keep Satyam separately in a house,’ he said. Then Subbamma gave some land beside the temple of Venugopalaswamy. There they built a small room for Swami. Subbamma helped with it. They began seating Swami in that room and shutting the doors. When they shut the doors like that, I would somehow slip away and sit up on the hill. ‘When we look, the lock is still on. Yet the boy has gone out,’ everyone would say in wonder. Wonders like this kept happening day by day. Meanwhile one day, saying, ‘This Subbamma is ruining the brahmin caste,’ they tried one day to poison me. I was very fond of vaḍas. They had vaḍas made, put a little poison in those vaḍas and invited me to their house for a meal. Subbamma told me not to go to their house. But I said I would go, and went. In their house I ate only the ones with poison and left the vaḍas without poison. The whole village came to know of this. So no harm of any kind came to me. Since nothing was working, someone had the house where I stayed set on fire. As for what kind of house it was, it was a house roofed with straw. At night they set fire to that straw. It was burning fiercely. Meanwhile many people came running in fear of what had happened to Sai Baba. After a while heavy rain fell there. But, wonderfully, the rain fell only on that house. The flames went out. Hearing of this, Venkamma, Subbamma and Easwaramma all came weeping. ‘Which wicked people, which villains are doing such things as should not be done,’ they grieved. The whole roof of the house had burnt away and was empty. Bare walls were to be seen. They all climbed up on the wall and looked. I was fast asleep. Learning that nothing had happened to Swami, they all breathed again. Then Subbamma broke the lock of the house and took me to her house.