The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 7/Epistles - Third Series/I Sir
I
(Translated from Bengali)
Glory to Ramakrishna!
BAIDYANATH,
25th December, 1889.
DEAR SIR (Shri Balaram Bose),
I have been staying for the last few days at Baidyanath in Purna Babu's
Lodge. It is not so cold, and my health too is indifferent. I am suffering
from indigestion, probably due to excess of iron in the water. I have found
nothing agreeable here — neither the place, nor the season, nor the company.
I leave for Varanasi tomorrow. Achyutananda stopped at Govinda Chaudhury's
place at Deoghar, and the latter, as soon as he got news of us, earnestly
insisted on our becoming his guests. Finally, he met us once again and
prevailed on us to accede to his request. The man is a great worker, but has
a number of women with him — old women most of them, of the ordinary
Vaishnava type. . . . His clerks too revere us much; some of them are very
much ill-disposed towards him, and they spoke of his misdeeds. Incidentally,
I raised the topic of __. You have many wrong ideas or doubts about her;
hence I write all this after particular investigation. Even the aged clerks
of this establishment highly respect and revere her. She came to stop with
__ while she was a mere child, and ever lived as his wife. . . . Everyone
admits in one voice that her character is spotless. She was all along a
perfectly chaste woman and never behaved with __ in any relation but that of
wife to husband, and she was absolutely faithful. She came at too early an
age to have incurred any moral taint. After she had separated from __, she
wrote to him to say that she had never treated him as anything but her
husband, but that it was impossible for her to live with a man with a loose
character. His old office-bearers too believe him to be satanic in
character; but they consider __ a Devi (angel), and remark that it was
following her departure that __ lost all sense of shame.
My object in writing all this is that formerly I was not a believer in the
tale of the lady's early life. The idea that there might be such purity in
the midst of a relation which society does not recognise, I used to consider
as romance. But after thorough investigation I have come to know that it is
all right. She is very pure, pure from her infancy — I have not the least
doubt about it. For entertaining those doubts, you and I and everyone are
guilty to her; I make repeated salutations to her, and ask her pardon for my
guilt. She is not a liar.
I take this opportunity to record that such courage is impossible in a lying
and unchaste woman. I have also been told that she had a lifelong ardent
faith in religion also.
Well, your disease is not yet improving! I don't think this is a place for
patients unless one is ready to spend a good deal of money. Please think out
some judicious course. Here every article will have to be procured from
elsewhere.
Yours sincerely,
VIVEKANANDA.