I, ALONG with other members of our family, always waited for her arrival and thought what could we offer her when she arrives because she has great love for all of us. We get busy distributing our tasks that we will do when she comes to live with us. We know that she has been missing us as much as we have missed her all those years. Everyone is full of enthusiasm. All plan together and individually this and that to her when she would set her foot in the house.

We plan to go to the market to buy articles, prepare an itinerary to visit places which the city has to offer, arrange to eat at restaurants choosing such and such dishes, organise to go to the movies, consider showing her various places, for the last time she was with us we were residing at another place. We also purchase a variety of ingredients in advance for different types of delicacies. But alas! When she came, she was completely transformed. She had acquired a different way of living under the influence of some religious guru. This time, our endeavours proved in vain. All our keenness coalesced as if someone had poured cold water on boiling milk.

She came and without paying much attention to our feelings, kept herself aloof from us. We offered her certain cookies for munching for which she said she didn’t eat anything bought from the market. Even if we prepared something at home, she was selective about the ingredients which had been added in the dish. When we proposed to go out and ordered something special at some special restaurants, she hesitated. We wanted to enjoy a party with her at some restaurant at night but that was a problem for her. She showed contemptuous gestures as if the restaurants and its services were impure. Another reason was that she never eats anything after the setting of the Sun.

The whole of her morning is spent filtering water from this pot to that and performing some other rituals. Later, we came to know that these were some religious rites she had adopted from a guru. She segregated her clothes. If someone else touched it she would wash the clothes and herself twice. Sometimes her behaviour towards others seemed as if she had been following the custom of untouchability.

All this was quite disappointing. How she has acquired this disposition of mind? We wished to share all the pleasures with her and dreamed of her to be a part of it. But it did not happen. We were all awe-stuck. It is difficult to understand what has made her assume this mode of life. Why she has made her life unnatural. God has made everything perfect and simple. He has given us various senses so that we could take pleasure in them. What will she gain by adopting these rules of abandonment; as to what to do and what not to do. All in all, she has made life miserable for herself and equally miserable and complicated for others. I don’t know how she has got that bent of mind that she has deprived herself the pleasures of the world. Sometimes she wants to enjoy but some guilt or an unknown force stops her, as if she is perpetrating an act of sin.

She has love for one and all, talks lovingly to everyone, ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of others but when it comes to following her set of rules, she seems uncompromising. Now, even children are afraid to go near her. I am distressed to see why some people are like this who live in a cocoon and isolate themselves in them and make their life complex and abnormal. Do such people grow spiritually from it or is it some ploy of these so-called gurus?