PADMALOCHAN was a man of deep wisdom. He had great respect for me, though at that time I constantly repeated the name of the Divine Mother. He was the court pandit of the Maharaja of Burdwan. Once he came to Calcutta and went to live in a garden house near Kamarhati. I felt a desire to see him and sent Hriday there to learn if the pandit had any vanity, I was told that he had none. Then I met him. Though a man of great knowledge and scholarship, he began to weep on hearing me sing Ramprasad’s devotional songs. We talked together a long while; conversation with nobody else gave me such satisfaction.
Padmalochan told me an interesting incident. Once a meeting was called to decide which of the two deities, Siva or Brahma, was the greater, and unable to come to any decision, the pandits at last referred the matter to Padmalochan. With characteristic guilelessness he said: “How do I know? Neither I nor any of my ancestors back to the fourteenth generation have seen Siva or Brahma!” (146)