arrived unannounced at Dakshineswar one night in March 1872, stricken with fever on the way, to boot.
The Mother at Dakshineswar
It was in every way a very strange meeting. Sri Ramakrishna had been passing through a mood of intense longing for God, and his spirit of renunciation of what he called 'Woman and Gold' was raging in his mind with the tempo of a whirl-wind. An ascetic in that mood is the last man one can expect to meet a situation of this type with composure. We expect him to flee the place or put on a very rude and cruel attitude of disregard. But the Master's response now was as unexpected as when the proposal for marriage was made. He extended a very warm welcome to his wife, made arrangements for her stay and medical treatment, and in every way behaved towards her as a devoted husband should do.
This great event took place in March, 1872. From now onward, with breaks of short intervals for visits to her mother at Jayrambati, Sarada Devi was by the side of Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar and later at Cossipore till 1886 when death separated them in a physical sense. It was a period of training and discipleship, during which the Mother in her became more and more manifest making her ready to take up the leadership of the spiritual Movement that the Master inaugurated. She became the first and foremost of his disciples. This transformation was effected through her service of the Master and the practice of devotional disciplines he prescribed for her. It was a silent and profound process, about the details of which the world knows so little. The type of personality into which she was shaped through that training was one characterised by inexhaustible patience and peace, extreme simplicity combined with dignity, a non-turbulent but compelling spiritual fervour, a loving temperament that knew no distinction between friend and foe, and a maternal attitude of a spontaneous type towards all, that charmed and brought under her influence everyone who came near her.
She spent nearly the whole of the Dakshineswar period of her life of thirteen years, extending from 1872 to 1885, except when she went to Jayrambati periodically, in a small room in the northern side of the temple compound, called the Nahabat, from where she could get a view of the room in which the Master lived.
The ground floor of the Nahabat or Concert House was a small