[A few days after Lakshmi’s liberation Bhagavan himself told the story of Keeraipatti’s years of service to him:]
At three o’clock this afternoon in Bhagavan’s presence we were again talking about Lakshmi when a devotee said, ‘It seems Arunachalam Pillai [Lakshmi’s original owner] purchased Lakshmi not at Kannamangalam but at Gudiyatham.’
Hearing that Bhagavan said, ‘This was also Keeraipatti’s town’.
That devotee asked, ‘When exactly did she come to this place?’
The mantapam in the The Guhai Namasivaya Temple comppound where Keerai Patti lived
With a smile Bhagavan began telling us her history. ‘I myself do not know. Even when I was in the Arunachaleswara Temple [in the 1890s] she was staying on the hill and was visiting me now and then. But it was only after I went to Virupaksha Cave that she began coming to me frequently. She was then living in the Guhai Namasivaya mantapam. At that time the mantapam was not as well maintained as it is at present. It had only a wooden door and a wooden latch. She had no other articles apart from an earthen pot. She used first to prepare hot water in it, bathe and then cook vegetables and rice in it. She had only one pot for preparing whatever she wanted. She used to go out before sunrise, wander about the hill and bring back some special leaves that were useful for cooking as vegetables. She used to cook them tastefully, bring me about a handful and persuade me to eat. She never failed to do so even once. Sometimes I used to help her in cooking by going to her place and cutting the vegetables. She had great confidence in me. She used to go to town daily, obtain rice, flour, dhal and the like by begging at various houses. She would store them in a big open-mouthed earthen jar.
‘Once in a while she used to prepare gruel with that flour and dhal and bring it with the vegetable curry saying, “Swami, Swami, yesterday one good lady gave me a little flour. I have made some gruel, Swami.”
‘She believed that I knew nothing. When she was not there I used to open the doors of that mantapam and find several varieties of foodstuffs in the jar. But then she had absolute confidence in me. She did not allow anyone else into that mantapam. When she could not find any vegetables, she used to sit there depressed. On such occasions I used to climb the tamarind tree, pluck some tender leaves and give them to her. She was thus somehow supplying me food every day. She never used to take anything herself.
‘She used to bring all sorts of curries, saying, “Swami likes that”.
‘She had great devotion and attention. Even at eighty years of age she used to wander about all over the hill. She was living there on the hill even before I went there.’
‘Was she not afraid of anything?’ I asked.
Bhagavan said, ‘No, what had she to be afraid of? You know what happened one day? I went to Skandashram and stayed for the night. Palaniswami was in Virupaksha Cave. At midnight a thief got into her place and was trying to get away with things when she woke up and cried out, “Who is that?”
‘The thief put his hand over her mouth but she somehow managed to shout at the top of her voice, “O Annamalai! Thief! Thief!”
‘Her cries could be heard even at Skandashram where I was.
‘I shouted back, “Here I am! I am coming! Who is that?”
‘So saying, I ran down as quickly as I could. On the way at Virupaksha Cave I asked Palaniswami about it and he said, “I heard some shouting from the cave of the old woman but I thought she was mumbling something”.
‘Some people were living at Mango Tree Cave and Jadaswami Cave but no one appears to have heard her cries.’
‘The cries were heard by the one that had to hear them and Arunachala himself responded to her call,’ I said.
Nodding his assent, Bhagavan continued: ‘Hearing my shouting, the thief ran away. We both [Bhagavan and Palaniswami] went to her, asked her where the thief was and, as there was no one there, we laughed, saying that it was all imagination.
‘She said, “No, swami. When he was removing things I challenged him and so he put his hands over my mouth to prevent me from shouting. I somehow managed to shout at the top of my voice. It was perhaps you who said that you were coming. He heard that and ran away.”
‘There was no light there, so we lit a piece of firewood and searched the whole place. We found the jar. Around it several small odds and ends were scattered about. We realised then that it was a fact.’
I said, ‘Her belief in God was profound. Hers is not an ordinary birth, but a birth with a purpose.’ Bhagavan merely nodded his head and was silent. (Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, by Suri Nagamma, letter 51, 25th July 1948)
[Bhagavan also narrated Keeraipatti’s history in 1946, including a few extra details that are not included in Suri Nagamma’s account:]
Keeraipatti was already living in the big temple in the town when I first went there. She stayed at the Subramaniam shrine in the temple and used to feed the sadhus. Later she began bringing food to me from a Kammala [blacksmith caste] lady, but after some time the Kammala lady began to bring the food herself instead of sending it through Keeraipatti. At that time Keeraipatti had matted locks. Later, when I went to live in the Virupaksha Cave, she was staying in Guhai Namasivaya temple and had shaved off her hair. She lived in the mantapam and she used to worship the image of Namasivaya and other images carved on its walls and pillars. The priest would come and do puja to the image in the temple, but she used to worship the images on the walls of the mantapam where she stayed and offer food to them.
When she got up in the morning she would go out for a walk on the small hill and from there to where our ashram is now and then on to Skandashram and back to where she was staying. On the way she would collect fuel and cow dung and carry them on a bundle on her back and hip. She would also gather all kinds of green leaves for cooking… She would offer the food to the images on the walls and pillars and then come and give it to me, and only afterwards would she go and eat some herself. In the evening she would go into the town to beg and there was not a house in the town she did not know.
The graves opposite the Dakshinamurti Shrine in the 1940s. Since they were located on highway property, they were demolished during a road-widening scheme.
…She was very much attached to me. I sometimes used to go with her and help her gather her leaves and vegetables, for instance from the drumstick tree. Sometimes I also helped in cleaning and preparing the vegetables for cooking, and then I would stay and eat with her. She died before we came here, that is before 1922. She was buried just near here, under a tamarind tree, opposite the Dakshinamurti Shrine. (Taken from The Cow, Lakshmi, by Devaraja Mudaliar, pp. 12-14. An almost identical account can be found in Day By Day With Bhagavan, 26th January 1946.)
[A visitor to the ashram wanted to know how such a good devotee as Keeraipatti could have been reborn as a cow.]
Question [Rani Mazumdar]: It is said that the old lady Keeraipatti was born as Lakshmi. How can one who had the unique good fortune of serving Bhagavan well and lovingly, have to be born again at all and even if she had to be reborn, how could she be born as a cow? Is it not said in all our books that birth as a human being is the best birth one can have?
Bhagavan: I have never said Keeraipatti had been born as a cow.
I [Devaraja Mudaliar] said, ‘I have already told Rani so, but she says, “It has been said and also written down in so many books and articles and Bhagavan has not denied it. So we can take it as the truth.”’
I added, ‘But she puts the question on the assumption that the cow is the old woman reborn, whether Bhagavan has said so or not, and she desires an answer’.
Thereupon Bhagavan said, ‘It is not true that birth as a man is necessarily the highest, and that one must attain realisation only from being a man. Even an animal can attain Self-realisation.’
In the conversation that followed on this, Bhagavan said, ‘Even as a young calf, Lakshmi behaved in an extraordinary way. She would daily come to me and place her head at my feet. On the day the foundation was laid for the gosala [cowshed], she was so jubilant, she came and took me for the function. Again on the day of the grihapravesam [opening ceremony] she came straight to me at the time appointed and took me. In so many ways and on so many occasions she has behaved in such a sensible and extremely intelligent way that one cannot but regard her as an extraordinary cow. What are we to say about it?’ (Day By Day With Bhagavan, 2nd September 1946)
