Author: Bithika Mukerji
Publisher: Indica Books
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 370
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8186569553
Description
For a span of more than fifty years Sri Ma Anandamayi dominated gracefully the spiritual horizon of India. The keepers of the Vedic heritage – the ascetics orders of India – were united in declaring her the quintessence of the Upanishadic Spirit. Eminent philosophers like Mahendra N Sarkar and P M P Mahadevan acknowledged her utterances as authoritative. Much has been written about Sri Ma by erudite scholars as well as ordinary men and women.
The present book is a lively and engaging account of Sri Ma’s enigmatic personality from the point of view of a single devoted family. It is an intimate and moving study of personal commitments. Yet through the author’s perspective an emerging modern society is glimpsed where orthodox rites, political upheavals, social changes create the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope. Sri Ma and her entourage of visiting dignitaries, princes, scholars, village women and children, and renowned ascetics assume a three-dimensional image.
According to Richard Lannoy, who has written the Foreword, the book is a valliant attempt at closing the distance between the known and the unfathomable. Trained in the highest rigours of academic discipline in renowned universities of India and Canada, Bithika Mukerji, being very close to Anandamayi Ma from early childhood, as able to observe from near rare dimensions of a surpassingly beautiful spiritual being. Her reminiscences of her days with the Mother consequently, have an authenticity, charm and insight difficult to come by.
Contents
FOREWORD BY RICHARD LANNOY
PREFACE
1. The Advent of Sri Ma in our Lives
2. My Family
3. My cousins Meet Sri Ma
4. Changing Times
5. A Marriage and a Death in the Family
6. Our Entry into the World of Sadhus
7. Renu’s Marriage with N.P. Chatterji
8. The Break in my University Career
9. In Solon with Sri Ma (1946)
10. Summer Vacation at Kishenpur Ashram (1947)
11. Raipur and Solon Revisted
12. One Year of my Life as an Ashramite
13. The Best Years of the Ashram in Varanasi
14. Sri Ma and the Kanyapeeth
15. The Message of Sri Ma Anandamayi
16. Bindu and I Take up Jobs
17. Sri Ma’s Birthday Celebration at our Home
18. Random Memories
19. An Invitation from Abroad
20. At the Chateau de Bossey
21. On the Way to Canada
22. My Research Project
23. The Anti-Rudra Yajna at Haradwar
24. I Am Ever With You
GLOSSARY