In plain words
Once Easwaramma had gone to the Chitravati and was coming back with water. Beside her an old woman was walking along, carrying her water pot though she could hardly carry it. “What is it, mother? Is it hard for you to carry the pot?” Easwaramma asked. “I cannot carry it, mother! There are no children at all in my house. So every single day I myself have to carry the water home,” she said, worn out and panting. The old woman's words stayed fixed in Easwaramma's mind.
When she had come a little farther, a small boy came into Easwaramma's sight: slate and slate pencil in his hand, a heavy bag hung from his neck, he was struggling along, barely able to walk, barely able to walk at all. “My dear boy! Where are you going, carrying such a heavy bag?” asked Easwaramma. “Mother! I am going to the school at Bukkapatnam. I have to write down in these everything the teachers say, and learn it,” he said. Easwaramma kept this, too, in her mind.
When she had come some distance farther still, a mother was walking towards Bukkapatnam carrying her child. She was very weak. Seeing her, Easwaramma: “Why are you so weak, mother? Isn't it hard to walk all the way to Bukkapatnam carrying this child?” she asked. “What can I do, mother? In our village there is no doctor to give even this much medicine. My child has a fever. I am taking him to the hospital in Bukkapatnam,” she said. This scene, too, stayed fixed in Easwaramma's mind.
An ideal mother, an ideal son
In a tiny village near Calcutta there lived a poor mother and her son. The father died only a few days after the son was born. The mother toiled and somehow went on bringing up her child. As the house had not even a lamp, the boy used to sit under the street lamps to study. Studying hard in that way, the boy took a high degree. That boy was Īśvaracandra Vidyāsāgar.