June 13, 1900. The day had not yet dawned. Jaminiranjan was winding his way through one of the narrow dingy lanes of Varanasi leading to the bathing ghat. A feeble groan caught his ear. Many had already passed that way, but no one had stopped to investigate. But Jaminiranjan did and found an old lady, ill and starved, lying on the roadside. As he approached her, she said feebly: ‘I have not taken anything for four days, my son. Give me some food.’ Jaminiranjan lifted the lady and laid her carefully on the verandah of the nearby house, rushed to the bathing ghat, and begged four annas from the first gentleman he met. He purchased some cooked food and fed the old lady and thus saved her life. Thus was sown the seed of dedicated service to God in the form of the poor and the suffering, which was to grow into a mighty banyan tree of a large institution that would render service to thousands of needy.
This old lady was one of the many religious persons who come to spend their last days in the holy city of Kashi — the mukti kshetra — and who are reduced to a state of dire poverty and helplessness due to the ruthlessness of man and the irony of fate.
