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VIII.
Lord of Time and Space
The Omnipresent
Protector
How the Governor was saved mysteriously,
twice!
Late Shri Burgula Ramakrishna Rao was the
Chief Minister of the old Hyderbad state, and later Governor
of Uttar Pradesh and Kerala. An ardent devotee of Bhagawan,
he experienced Baba’s divinity on numerous occasions.
The Governor shared with Howard Murphet some of his miraculous
experiences and he has recorded them in his book “Sai
Baba: Man of Miracles”:
In 1961, when Dr. Ramakrishna Rao was Governor
of Uttar Pradesh, his wife and he were travelling by fast
train from Bareilly to Nainital in the Himalayas.They were
the only occupants of their first-class carriage and the train
had no corridor by which anyone could enter or leave their
compartment.
At about 11 p.m. the Governor noticed some
sparks coming from the electric fan. These rapidly increased
in number until he and his wife grew quite alarmed, thinking
the compartment would catch fire any minute. He looked for
a cord or bell by which he could sound the alarm and stop
the train, but could find none.
It began to look as if the Governor and his
lady might be burned to death before anyone learned of their
plight. There was nothing they could do but pray - which they
did, wholeheartedly. Then there was a knock on one of the
outer doors.
Very surprising this was, because the doors
simply led to the open air through which the train was roaring
at a good speed. Dr. Rao walked over and opened the door.
In from the dark night stepped a man dressed in the khaki
uniform of an electric wireman.
Without a word this man went to work on the
faulty fan from which the sparks were now flying "like
chaff from a threshing floor''. About a quarter of an hour
later the electrician said to them: "There's no danger
now. You can go to bed and sleep." With this he sat down
on the floor near the door.
The Governor's wife lay down on her bed and
closed her eyes. But she kept half opening them to watch the
man by the door because, as she told her husband later, she
thought that anyone who risked his life to walk along the
running board of a fast-moving train was probably a burglar
who, when they were both asleep, would rob them.
The Governor himself, with no such suspicions,
was deeply engrossed in a book. Suddenly, he was startled
to feel the touch of the workman's hand and hear his voice
asking quietly if the doctor would mind closing the carriage
door after him, because he was now leaving.
The little doctor was astonished that the
electrician did not wait until the next station before leaving,
but before he could say anything the khaki-clad figure had
opened the door, and the night air was whistling in to the
carriage. Dr. Ramakrishna Rao jumped up, and stepped to the
open doorway in time to see the man stand a moment on the
running board, then vanish into the darkness.
It was all rather mystifying. How in the
first place did he know that the fan was giving trouble? How
did he get to the carriage and why did he choose to leave
and make his way along the running board of this swaying,
fast-moving express when he could have easily waited until
the next stop?
He either liked living dangerously or he
was simply crazy, but in either case he must also be clairvoyant
to know about the fault in the electric fan. With a mental
shrug the little doctor lay down to sleep.
About a month after this incident the Governor
was again travelling, this time by the aeroplane that was
kept for his official use. With him on this occasion, besides
his wife and the pilot, were his A.D.C, his personal assistant,
and the pilot's wife. They were flying from Kanpur (the capital
city of Uttar Pradesh) to Benares.
Above Benares the Governor noticed that they
seemed to be circling a very long time over the airfield before
landing. He asked if there was anything amiss and was informed
that the under-carriage was stuck; the wheels would not come
down. Furthermore, they were now almost out of fuel.
With Dr.Rao's agreement, the pilot decided
to attempt a crash-landing on the grass of the airfield. He
signalled the ground to this effect. The fire-engines were
brought out, and everything made ready for the attempt. All
knew, of course, that it was a highly dangerous operation,
and both the little doctor and his wife sent fervent prayers
to their Gurudev, Sai Baba, for his much-needed protection.
Perhaps the A.D.C. was praying too, for he
also was a devotee of Sai Baba. Like the doctor, he wore on
his hand a talisman, a ring that had been materialised by
Baba. The pilot knew this and, as a last resort before trying
a crash-landing, asked the A.D.C. to try his hand at working
the lever for releasing the jammed undercarriage.
The A.D.C. placed his hand on the lever and
pressed as directed. The undercarriage came down without any
difficulty. They were able to make a normal landing!
The next day Mrs. Ramakrishna Rao, knowing
that Baba was at Bangalore in the south, phoned Him from Benares
in order to thank him for his grace and protection, which,
she believed, had saved them from their perilous predicament
in the plane.
She found, not at all to her surprise, that
He knew all about the event, and mentioned details. Then He
remarked: "But you have said nothing about the
train incident."
"What train incident, Swami?" she
asked, for it had slipped from her mind.
"Why, when the fan was almost
on fire and you thought I was a thief," Baba
laughed.
Dr. Ramakrishna Rao was sure the train story
could not have reached Baba in the ordinary way because neither
his wife nor he had talked to anyone about it. They had refrained
from mentioning it on the following morning, not wanting to
upset any of their staff; then the incident had faded into
the background of their busy lives.
Nothing superhuman that Sai Baba did could
ever surprise the little doctor; he had through the years
seen and experienced so much.
Reference: “Sai Baba: Man of Miracles”
by Mr. Howard Murphet. Page:
172-174 (paperback edition, 1972). Published by Macmilan India
Ltd.
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