In plain words
Sathya Sai is not one to go back on the word He has spoken
I am making these things known today to teach you about the births that come about on account of the fruits of karma. In Puttaparthi there lived a devotee named Karaṇam Subbamma. She was a woman of great wealth. She had no children. Spending the wealth she had on gifts and charity, she passed her days with an even mind and with the sacred feeling, “What I hand on to others is the very alms God has given me.” She had only one wish. One day she asked, “Swami, at my last moment, through your divine hands, you must pour water into my mouth.” That day I gave My word that I would surely fulfil her wish.
Many years after I gave My word, I happened to go to Madras once. At that time she was in good health. It was wartime. In Madras a siren would sound every hour. At once the bazaars would all empty. In such a situation we could not get back. Meanwhile Subbamma's illness turned serious. They took her to her mother's house in Bukkapatnam. Right there her life left her. In those days cars did not come to Puttaparthi. I came to Bukkapatnam by car, and from there I was coming on to Puttaparthi by cart. Many people had gathered by the roadside. “What has happened?” I asked one of them. “Swami, last night Karaṇam Subbamma left her body. Until her life went, she kept on remembering, ‘Sairam, Sairam.’ They are making arrangements to take her body to the cremation ground,” he said. In those days not everything was to be had ‘ready-made’ in the villages. Getting firewood together somehow from here and there, they were making arrangements to carry her to the cremation ground. “Where is Subbamma now?” I asked. “They have laid the body on the veranda of her mother's house, Swami!” he said. I laughed out loud. I had not forgotten the word I gave her.