Birth 1931

Shashi Kumar and Yogamaya Ghosh

I was born in our village home. In those days people did not go to the hospital. The day I was born, our house in the town was burnt to ashes. Therefore, my grandmother said to the family members that this rascal would destroy the whole family. 
 
My mother said, "No, my child is going to bring tremendous name and fame to our family."
 
A week later my grandmother composed a couplet in Bengali that said: "The Bhadra-born people turn everything topsy-turvy." The name of August is "Bhadra" in Bengali, but in the Chittagong dialect we say "Bhada." The words to the poem were:
 
     Ek bhada jar
     Ut put tar
 
My mother also composed a couplet in Bengali saying that he who is born in this month, Bhadra, is definitely going to beat the golden kettledrum. The golden kettledrum is being played in the Heavens by the cosmic gods. The poem was as follows:
 
     Ek bhada jar
     Sonar madal tar
 
They gave me the name Madal, which means "kettledrum," but my very first name when I was born, my horoscope name, was Ganapati. Ganapati is the elephant god. It is he who grants realisation.

[Source: "Madal is Born" in Sri Chinmoy, To the Streaming Tears of My Mother's Heart and to the Brimming Smiles of My Mother's Soul, Aum Publications, Jamaica, New York, 1994.  Accessed 14 December 2004 at www.srichinmoylibrary.com/streaming-tears/4.html]  Copyright © Sri Chinmoy.