ADDRESSING a devotee named Mahendra Mukherjee, said Sri Ramakrishna: “You have no children. You do not serve anybody. And still you have no leisure! Goodness gracious!”
“You have no children to divert your mind. I know a deputy magistrate who draws a salary of eight hundred rupees a month. He went to Keshab’s house to see a performance. I was there too. Rakhal and a few other devotees were with me and sat beside me. After a while Rakhal went out for a few minutes. The deputy magistrate came over and made his young son take Rakhal’s seat. I said, ‘He can’t sit there.’ At that time I was in such a slate of mind that I had to do whatever the person next to me would ask me to do; so I had seated Rakhal beside me. As long as the performance lasted the deputy did nothing but gibber with his son. The rascal didn’t look at the performance even once. I heard, too, that he is a slave to his wife; he gets up and sits down as she tells him to. And he didn’t see the performance for that snub-nosed monkey of a boy.” (49)