Praṇamāmi Guru Tīrtha Padaṁ

Guru Maharaj would always instruct me in a very gentle way. He knew I couldn't handle much criticism. I'm quite a fragile person, so Guru Maharaj was always very gentle communicating things I could have done better. Sometimes it was so subtle, He would just look at me for 2 seconds and I could understand what I did wrong. So gentle. Bindu Madhava Prabhu would often say, "Guru Maharaj gives exactly the right medicine in the right dosage for each person. Whatever they could take, he would give just the right amount." One time, however, Srila Guru Maharaj directly corrected me in front of everybody. It was during Tulsi worship when he used to come out into the library in Kolkata math. This happened because at that time I was cooking my own prasadam. Because of health problems, I needed to control my diet and wouldn't take the math prasad. He would always ask everyone, "Have you taken prasadam?" And when he asked me directly one day, I said, "No, Guru M...

Srila Gurudev told us about when he was in a college either in Cooch Behar or in Cotton College, Guwahati. While he was there, his roommate spoke roughly to him every day. He was not very senior to Gurudev, only about one year. But Gurudev was such a sadhu that he said nothing. He never spoke ill words towards anyone. Persons who have a tendency to lord over others often speak continuously. When they find a simple person who doesn’t argue, they just keep speaking abusive words and don’t stop. Only if someone argues back, they may shut the mouth. Yet Guru Maharaj never reacted or said a word. Every day, that person continued going on like that. Srila Gurudev told us that one day when his roommate started with this, he extended his cloth forward and told that person, “I am collecting all your abusive words and giving them back to you. I give these back.” On several occasions, Srila Gurudev offered to shift to another room but the roommate would not allow him to do so, probab...

Once when we were going out for Nagar Sankirtan I witnessed that  it started to rain very heavily—there was a huge downpour. Guruji said maybe Indra does not want us to go outside today. He called Srikant Prabhu and asked him to sing “Kripa karo ham par Shyama sundar hey bhakta vatsal kahalane vale….” As soon as prabhuji finished singing that kirtan the rain stopped and devotees went out on Sankirtan and came back to the math after some time. Then it started raining once again. Devotees have seen another incident like this in Simla. We saw that when Guruji was singing in Nagar sankirtan, there was no rain but rain would follow him from behind. The residents of Simla were surprised to see this and were attracted to him and his kirtans. Later many took Harinam and Diksha from him. Guru Maharaj would give me some money for arrangements of katha and kirtan programs. I  would reply, "No Guruji, all arrangements are made, everything is taken care off",  but Guru Mah...