In plain words
I gave scholarships to both of them. For sending them to America, I took that responsibility on Myself. I sent them off, telling them, ‘Not only here; in America too you must get a first class.’
All our children are children like gold. Not adulterated gold. ‘Pure gold’! Whatever work they are told to do, they are ready to do it. Every year they go round the villages for a month and do service. They cook rice, mix in sāmbār and serve it to everyone. However many there are in each house, they serve every one of them. Seeing our children, all the village folk rejoice greatly, saying, ‘Our Swami has sent you, dear ones!’ On the day our children come, they plaster their whole house and draw muggu designs. They receive Swami's prasādam, touching it to their eyes, and eat it with joy. Soon we must send the children to the villages again to distribute prasādam. Our children are accomplished not only in their studies but in games and songs, in music and dance as well. There is not a single task our children cannot do. Wherever they go, to villages or to towns, they are most careful about their ‘character’. Girls and boys alike hold their ‘character’ as dear as life.
In Anantapur there are 700 girls. There too they pass in first class. Though they are girls, they go to the villages to do service. They pull down old houses, have new ones built, and come back. The girls themselves built houses of stone, laid good roofs on them, and helped the poor a great deal. Asked, ‘Are your houses leaking at all?’: ‘No, Swami! How soundly Your children have built them! Work that even engineers would not do, Your children did free of charge,’ they said. Our boys are just the same! From these three campuses, Anantapur, Bangalore and Puttaparthi, the children go out to the villages and help the villagers in the ways they need. Our children have not come here just for the sake of studies. Whoever you may be, do not come merely for studies. When you find the time, you may certainly study. But what you must do above all is service. God gave you the body for service alone. Kṛṣṇa said, ‘An eternal part of Myself alone has become the jīva in the world of the living’; all are parts of God. So you must serve everyone. Service is God. Serve all. Putting such teachings of Swami into practice, our children are earning a fine name. Wherever they go, people have great affection for Sathya Sai children. Let our children only be seen in white clothes, and people praise them: ‘All these are Sathya Sai children, very good ones.’ The clothes our children wear are white, and their hearts too are white: very pure.
You see every day how these children hold Me as they bring Me in! How they take Me away! These two have completed the M.B.A. We have put the third boy into the M.B.B.S. Ādikeśavulu gave him a seat at Vaidehi Medical College. He is giving seats to many children like him. Anywhere outside, if you want a seat in a medical college, you have to pay a large fee. Besides that, you have to pay three thousand rupees a month. But he did not take a naya paisa from us. In this way he has admitted many of our children. He is a great man of sacrifice. He lives in Bangalore, close to the Sri Sathya Sai Super Speciality Hospital. In our hospital in Bangalore there is equipment worth crores of rupees. In a hospital outside, having a heart operation done costs lakhs of rupees. Many poor people come to our hospitals and have their operations free.
I resolved that these three, education, medical care and water, the support of life, should be given to the people free. In the East and West Godavari districts we are supplying water to many villages, taking pipes up even onto the hills. Plenty of water flows in those two districts. But that water does not reach the people of the dry uplands. Even after all this time they go on suffering from the want of water. We spent 80 crore rupees, had pipes laid, and are supplying water to all of them.