Passage 7

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In plain words

What great Bhakti there is even in them! What Ānanda! When they see Swami, they are overjoyed. They are full of love. Hearts filled with such pure Prema will ripen sooner or later.

Bhārata is the birthplace of devoted wives

Today the Kerala Bal Vikas children will stage a play called ‘Sāvitrī’. Sāvitrī was the wife of Satyavān, a wife of great devotion. By the power of her devotion to her husband and by her firm resolve, she brought her dead husband back to life. She went about after Yama; she did not let him sit down for even a moment. “Give my husband back to me. I want nothing else,” she said. In the very end Yama had no choice but to give back her husband's life. You see! Women are very great in power; they can achieve any great deed whatever; they can even bring a dead husband back to life. In any other country, in any place, do we see a wife who restored her dead husband to life? No. Only in Bhārata were such great jewels among virtuous women born. Bhārata is the birthland of devoted wives.

She who brought back to life her husband whose life had gone, Sāvitrī: was she not a wife of Bhārata? She who by the power of her truth quenched the forest fire, Candramatī: was she not a holy woman? She who leapt into the pit for her honour as a wife of noble line, Sītā: was she not a daughter born of Bhārata's earth? She who in anger turned the arrogant hunter to ash, Damayantī: was she not a woman of Bhārata? The earth girt by the seven seas: the people of Bhārata are spotless in wifely devotion; this is a great harvest-land for the wealth of feeling; is this not the teacher of all lands!