criticised her for wearing these ornaments while being the wife of a man of such great renunciation. Thenceforth she put aside most of them.
While receiving all her loving services, and moving with her in all frankness and child-like innocence, the Master always maintained an attitude of profound respect towards her as his spiritual counterpart and fulfiller of his life's Mission. This attitude was generally implicit, but sometimes expressed itself in striking little actions. One day the Holy Mother entered the Master's room with his meal. He thought it was his niece Lakshmi, and asked her casually to shut the door, addressing her as
'tui', an expression meaning 'thou', but used with reference to juniors or inferior persons. When the Holy Mother responded, the Master felt very much embarrassed and said, "Ah! is it you? I thought it was Lakshmi. Please pardon me." But the Holy Mother tried to pacify him, saying there was nothing wrong in his addressing her like that. But the Master was not satisfied. Next morning he went to the Nahabat and said to the Holy Mother: "Well, I could not sleep all the night. I was so worried because I spoke to you rudely." Referring to this incident, she often said in later times, especially when some of her senseless relations behaved disrespectfully, "I was married to a husband who never addressed me as
'tui'. Ah! how he I treated me! Not even once did he tell me a harsh word or wound my feelings. He did not strike me even with a bunch of flowers !"
It will thus be seen that Sri Sarada Devi received from her husband all that a Hindu wife expects. But some may perhaps object, that she had no issue. Her own mother Shyamasundari Devi once lamented: "My Sarada has been married to an ascetic. She will never know the happiness of being addressed as 'mother'. The Master, who happened to hear it, remarked: "Your daughter will have so many children that she will be tired of being addressed day and night as 'Mother'. And countless indeed were her spiritual 'sons' and 'daughters'. She was the Sahadharmini, a companion in life, not of an ordinary man, but of the Incarnation of the age, who came to generate Bhakti and Jnana among men, and whose main teaching inculcated renunciation of lust and possessions. In conformity with his ideal, which was hers too, the children born of her were not physical, but spiritual, and of these she had a countless number.