57. Ba - Every one's mother

Two or three days before Ba passed away she asked Dr. Gilder for a dose of castor oil. The doctor, however, dissuaded her from taking it, saying it will make her still weaker. "Let it be so," said Ba, "after all I shall very soon be on the funeral pyre."

"Why do you say like this?" remarked the doctor. "Today your sons, Ramadas and Devadas are coming to see you. Would you not like to meet them?"

At first Ba smiled a little and then told the doctor that for her, all of them were like her own children. So, in the event of her death, any of them, too, could perform the last, rites.