MA!

What follows is a brief description of the last days of Satprem and Sujata Nahar that was reported to me by Shrimati Suprabha Nahar, youngest sister of Sujata Nahar and Shri Kireet Joshi:

Two months before Satprem left his body he had said: «The work is done.» His end came on the morning of Monday 9th April 2007. The last word he uttered while taking his breakfast was: «MA.» He was helped by the lady who looked after him and Sujata Nahar to get up from the bed and sit on the sofa kept near the cot. When she went to remove the curtains so that the morning light could enter the room, she heard two guttural sounds. She came to Satprem and saw that he had left his body in the sitting position with one eye closed and the other eye looking at a photograph of Sri Aurobindo. The following night his body was laid to rest in his garden.
Sujata Nahar was already bed-ridden when Satprem left his body. She had stopped talking and would only indicate whether she would take the liquid food or not that was given to her. Occasionally she called: «MA, MA.» On 4 May 2007, exactly twenty five days after the physical departure of Satprem, she was reading a passage from Mother’s Agenda (20 April 1966, re: Anusuya’s demise). Afterwards she was given some water to drink which she took and soon after she left her body.

Anurag Banerjee
May 2009

And yet, there is something really doubtful in this description… Satprem take his breakfast in the room still darkened, in his bed, and the curtains will be removed only afterwards, when the passage from the bed to the sofa is done…
And how Sujata should read the passage from Mother’s Agenda, being in a state of consciousness in which she seemed always elsewhere?
Something doesn’t fit!
We have good reasons to suppose that when Satprem left his body, he was all alone and the attendant noticed his departure only after many hours.