Papaji and a Very Sick Baby

In order to get Meera’s account of the months she spent with Papaji in Rishikesh and Vrindavan, I interviewed her one afternoon while he was asleep. All the stories I have related so far came from this initial interview. At 4 p.m. Papaji woke up and came out for tea. We didn’t tell him what we had been talking about but he seemed to know
He told Meera, ‘You didn’t tell the story of the baby at Pagal Baba’s ashram. Tell him about the baby with the big head.’
Meera had completely forgotten about this incident, but with a little prompting from Papaji she remembered the following details:

We had moved to the ashram of this man Pagal Baba who was a well-known saint of Vrindavan. Though he was a chain smoker and seemed to act in a very eccentric way, he was very kind and generous. He seemed to fall in love with Master straight away. Though he had never seen either of us before, as soon as we walked in, he was calling out instructions, telling his assistants to put us up and to look after us properly. The rooms were smaller than the previous ones, but the hospitality was just as good.

One day a couple walked into the ashram with a very sick baby. We could see that it was seriously ill because its head was swollen up to about twice its normal size. I don’t know what the problem was. Maybe it was a tumour, or just water on the brain. Anyway, we soon found out that the parents had been told that the condition was untreatable, so they were taking it to all the saints they could find in the hope of getting a miraculous cure. I remember one of them said that the child was only expected to live a few more weeks. Since Pagal Baba was not there at the time, the baby was brought in to us. The mother put the baby on Master’s lap and then disappeared with her husband. We thought that perhaps they had gone to arrange some food for the baby, or had gone looking for a bathroom.

After a few minutes Master suddenly became suspicious. He called out to me, ‘Quick! Go and see where they are! Go and see what’s happening!’

I rushed out and found the mother getting into her car. It looked to me as if they were both about to drive away, leaving us with the baby. I told her to come back and take her baby with her. She apologised and said that she had completely forgotten about the baby because she was in such an agitated state. Personally, I think that she felt that leaving the baby with a saint was the best thing she could do with it. Master handed the baby back to them and they all left a few minutes later.

One month later she came back with sweets, garlands and a healthy baby. We were not there at the time; we only heard this story later. The baby had defied the doctor’s prognosis and had suddenly got better.

I asked Master if he had done anything and he said, ‘No. They just had a strong faith that something would happen if they brought their baby to a saint, and so something happened. If your faith is strong enough, any kind of miracle can happen.’

Excerpt From Nothing Ever Happened Volume Two, pages 38-39
By David Godman