I was still rooted to the spot, trying to digest what I had just seen when I noticed that the crowd had thickened considerably in the part of the store Shri Mataji was in. I could hear people saying they recognized Her from posters they had seen around town. By the time I had squeezed my way through the throng that stood three or four people deep in that little area, I found that Shri Mataji was sitting on a stool, and a young man was sitting on another one, in front of Her. She was chatting to him, always smiling, but I couldn’t catch Her words. She had Her fan in Her hands, and waved it as She spoke. The heat was quite stifling, and the store’s air-conditioning wasn’t coping well with the crowd at all. My own shirt was sticking to my back and the crowd was watching the entire drama unfolding before them. They jostled to see but no one surged forward. A kind of inner protocol, observed unawares, told them to give Shri Mataji space.
Taking a closer look at the young man seated before Shri Mataji, I realised He was another salesman from the store. A pair of crutches lay beside him on the floor, and I recalled seeing him limp around in the background as Shri Mataji was shopping earlier. Now, She had Her Foot on his cast as She spoke to him. After a few minutes, She told him his foot was now alright and that he could go to his doctor the next day and have the cast removed. He bent eagerly down, taking it in his hands, and seemed about to try and rip it off there and then, but Shri Mataji told him to take it easy and just see the doctor to have that done. He got up and after some tentative experimenting, found his broken leg had healed, and laughing, he pranced about.
Robert Ramesh Tan