Cat Me-owing and Maa coming
Meow! Meow! The sound was unmistakable. But, where was it coming from? I was clueless. There was no cat nearby. At least, I couldn’t see one.
Yet, the meowing continued. Clearly, it was a distress call. I craned my neck from my comfortable seat below a sacred fig tree in a temple courtyard. Again, there was nothing to be seen. Self doubt crept into my mind. Was it a figment of my imagination, concocted by my fear of cats? Another look and there she was: perched on a porch roof, hidden by a canopy of mango leaves. How did the cat get there? I scratched my head but couldn’t figure out how she managed to climb up the porch. Neither could I think of a way to rescue her. Well, I wouldn’t dare to attempt it in any case. What if she bit me or gave me a nasty scratch?
Anyway, I was getting late. I rose from my seat. But the thought of the cat wouldn’t leave me. It kept tugging at my conscience. Do something! That was the command of the inner voice. Having given in to my irrational fear of the feline species, all I could do was hope and pray for the cat’s rescue.
By then, the portals of the temple’s sanctum had opened. I entered the shrine. As I seated myself on the floor, I sent up a silent prayer for the cat’s rescue. For awhile, nothing happened. Then there were voices in the courtyard. Others too had spotted the cat. And now, a rescue operation was planned. The ‘onerous task’ of bringing the cat down to the ground fell on the watchman. He hesitated at first. But then, a ladder was procured. I didn’t wait to see the climax of the exercise. Since I was running behind schedule, I chose to make my exit from the premises comforted by the knowledge that something was being done to save the creature.
There was no doubt the rescue work was a success. For, the next day, I saw the cat furtively making its way across the same temple courtyard.
It dawned on me that unlike humans, the cat had surrendered her ‘me’ and chosen to ‘meow’ for divine intervention when self-help was no longer possible. And the Divine Mother did not disappoint.
This cat was a good example of the type of devotee that Bhagwan Sri Ramakrishna Dev talks about. Sri Sri Thakur says such a devotee is like a kitten with total dependence on the Mother. The kitten only knows how to meow and Mother does the rest, placing it where She wants to and saving it from trouble when the need arises. Jai Ma! Jai Thakur!