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The Rasagulla Story

By Girija

Om Vishnupad 108 Tridandi Swami Sri Srimad Bhakti Sravan Tirtha Maharaj ki Jai !!


Baba himself once narrated a wonderful pastime related to rasagullas! He was staying at Kundan Farm in Delhi at the time... office work was light on that day ... Shankari and I went to the Ashram to have His darshan.

It was very hot and the Ashram was cool and quite. Baba was in the darshan room and hardly any devotees were present. He was in his usual trance and we thought He didn’t know that we were there. When He awoke, He said ‘Ah I was waiting for you both ... now sit at my feet and have some prasad’. When the rasagulla prasad came, they were a bit over sized... so we told Baba ‘we’d never seen rasagullas like this before!’ And then came the story... and also about His Guru. 

When He joined Gaudiya Math as a brahmachari, Baba started at the Math in Patna.  After his initiation his Guru, Srila Bhakti Pradip Tirtha Goswami Maharaj, left on his preaching. Baba was told to start serving in the kitchen as a cook.  Baba being Baba, thought ‘let me start my first seva by preparing some sweets’.  And of course, He thought that rasagullas would be the best and started preparing them.

He made the rest of the bhog and offered the same to the Lords.  His Guru along with the other devotees and inmates were all waiting to have the prasad and Baba first served them the rasagullas. Baba told them that He wanted to do something different and therefore He first prepared the sweets and offered them all the same way as He had offered them to the Lords.  

His Guru, when he looked at the size of the rasgullas, did not say a word and ate them.  Baba was waiting for some comments from him and was expecting some remarks but nothing was said at that time.

After finishing their rasagullas everyone actually got up and said that they had had enough and were full for the rest of the day. They skipped the rest of the prasad.

The rasgullas were the size of tennis balls !

His Guru was very amused and pleased and just said ‘it’s very delicious but make them smaller next time!’ And he also said, I don’t want anything more for the rest of the day!

This story connects with another one.  Narayan Maharaj (my siksha guru) was Baba’s assistant and helped him with the other chores in the kitchen during his time in Patna and both were very young.

Many years later, after Baba’s departure, Narayan Maharaj along with his disciples during Kartik month had gone on Govardhan Parikrama.  When everyone came back to Narayan Maharaj’s Ashram in Govardhan after a hot and humid parikrama – they all looked forward to some good prasad and lo! they were all offered rasagullas as desert.

When one of them commented on the delicious rasagullas, Narayan Maharaj instantly referred to the above episode and said ‘If only you had all tasted the best and the biggest rasagullas made by my god-brother Shravananand Maharaj ! Nobody can ever make them like him anymore’!  

When the story was over, once again Baba offered another rasagulla and we all just couldn’t eat but he said we had to ……. Needless to say, that was the only meal of the day for us too !

Jai Guru Dev !