Final days

Towards the end of the year 1927, when his labours had come to a sort of finish, The Guru became unwell. His complaint was old-age, which laid its hands on him.

There were with him several doctors, besides representatives of the various public and religious bodies that he had founded, form the various parts of Travancore, Cochin and Malabar.

The time was early, and the guru had a bad night’s rest. He was resting, seated on his bed and supporting himself erect with his now emaciated arms. His breathing was difficult and he could not speak except in monosyllables. “ These”, he said. Meaning the sounds of this obstructed breaths.. “Have come as escort.”

The people came to visit him and expected that, being super-human as they believed him to be, he would not, feel any pain when he was ill. As if to contradict this ideas, the Guru was heard to cry like a child at every pain.

While the crowd of villagers waited outside, they could hear the Guru’s voice from inside murmuring like a distressed child, “ O Mother ! O Mother !”, again and again conveying to them, thought the tone in which it was uttered, a containing the same attitude, the same essence of devotion and simplicity to which he head dedicated the rest of his life.

Suffering and bed-ridden as he was, he would argue the minutest details with his doctors and those who attended on him.

He went to palghat and traveled about four hundred miles North-East to Madras, carried in stretchers and transported from place to place, from one doctor to another, from the care of one devotee, who loved to keep him under his care, to another.

Then he came back to Travancore from where a strong deputation had arrived to take him to Varkala.