building, to which he joyfully returned from his trips to the West or other parts of
India. This large room with four windows and three doors served as both study and
bedroom. In the corner to the right of the entrance door stood a mirror about five feet
high, and near this, a rack with his ochre clothes. In the middle of the room was an iron
bedstead with a spring mattress, which had been given to him by one of his Western
disciples. But he seldom used it; for he preferred to sleep on a small couch placed by
its side. A writing-table with letters, manuscripts, pen, ink, paper, and blotting-pad, a
call-bell, some flowers in a metal vase, a photograph of the Master, a deer-skin which
he used at the time of meditation, and a small table with a tea-set completed the
furnishings.
Here he wrote, gave instruction to his disciples and brother monks, received friends,
communed with God in meditation, and sometimes ate his meals. And it was in this
room that he ultimately entered into the final ecstasy from which he never returned to
ordinary consciousness. The room has been preserved as it was while the Swami was
in his physical body, everything in it being kept as on the last day of his life, the
calendar on the wall reading July 4, 1902.
On December 19, 1900, he wrote to an American disciple: 'Verily I am a bird of
passage. Gay and busy Paris, grim old Constantinople, sparkling little Athens, and
pyramidal Cairo are left behind, and here I am writing in my room on the Ganga, in the
Math. It is so quiet and still! The broad river is dancing in the bright sunshine, only
now and then an occasional cargo boat breaking the silence with the splashing of the
waves. It is the cold season here, but the middle of the day is warm and bright every
day. It is like the winter of southern California. Everything is green and gold, and the
grass is like velvet, yet the air is cold and crisp and delightful.'
After the Swami's return from East Bengal he lived a relaxed life in the monastery,
surrounded by his pet animals: the dog Bagha, the she-goat Hansi, an antelope, a stork,
several cows and sheep and ducks and geese, and a kid called Matru who was adorned
with a collar of little bells, and with whom the Swami ran and played like a child. The
animals adored him, Matru, the little kid, who had been — so he pretended — a
relation of his in a previous existence, slept in his room. When it died he grieved like a
child and said to a disciple: 'How strange! Whomsoever I love dies early.' Before
milking Hansi for his tea, he always asked her permission. Bagha who took part in the
Hindu ceremonies, went to bathe in the Ganga with the devotees on sacred occasions,
as for instance when the gongs and conchs announced the end of an eclipse. He was, in
a sense, the leader of the group of animals at the Math. After his death he was given a
burial in the grounds of the monastery.
Referring to his pet animals he wrote to an American disciple on September 7, 1901:
'The rains have come down in right earnest, and it is a deluge — pouring, pouring,
pouring, night and day. The river is rising, flooding the banks; the ponds and tanks
have overflowed. I have just now returned from lending a hand in cutting a deep drain
to take off the water from the Math grounds. The rainwater stands at places some feet
deep. My huge stork is full of glee and so are the ducks and geese. My tame antelope
fled from the Math and gave us some days of anxiety in finding him out. One of my