Amiya's Tonsils

The Story of the Tonsils

Amiya was once at Guruprasad for a gathering with Baba. On some pretext, Baba asked Dr. Goher to look at Amiya's mouth and report on its medical condition.

"Baba," she exclaimed, "various things are wrong here, but the worst is the tonsils."

"Get them removed within six months," Baba ordered.

Now if you knew Amiya, you'd know that he is mightily averse to medical procedures. There are various reasons for this peculiarity, but it is a fact that he does not like them. So, a year went by, and he did not get his tonsils attended to, and in fact he repressed the matter completely.

So, now after the year had passed, Amiya again had the opportunity for Baba's darshan, and again he went to Pune, to Guruprasad. Baba welcomed this one, inquired about that one's health, and then permitted the assembled company to get an individual hug from Him. As Amiya approached, Baba stopped him and said, "I don't want anything to do with you. Go sit down."

Well, Amiya sat, but he wondered what was going on. Finally, as he was ransacking his brain trying to find something that Baba would have objected to (personally, I think I could have found a dozen things, so it would just be a question of which thing was the cause of the trouble) Amiya finally realized that he had disobeyed over the tonsils. At that moment, from the depth of his heart, he said to Baba, "Baba, please just give me four days to solve the problem." At that moment Baba said, "Amiya, I don't want to see your face here for four days. Get out."

Far from being crushed by this, Amiya took it as the grace period he had requested, and left immediately. At the time, he was staying with the brother of a friend of his in Pune, and he immediately went to that person and said, "I've got to have my tonsils removed, immediately, this minute. Who do you know who could do it?"

His friend's brother knew a doctor, and they went there immediately, that day. The doctor was willing to do the operation, but on his own terms: first there had to be tests, and diagnostic procedures to assure that there would be no drug interactions, blood work, and all that. Amiya steadfastly refused: "I have to get it done immediately, today, so all of that is out of the question. If you won't do it, you please give me a reference to someone who will." Well, the doctor knew another doctor, and he sent Amiya to the second doctor. Initially, Amiya got the same story -- so sorry, not professional to do an operation at this speed, but eventually when the second doctor heard that there was a spiritual reason for the haste, he agreed to do the operation. With practically no delay, Amiya was in a chair, leaning back, and getting his tonsils snipped out. And the original doctor to whom he had gone was there to assist in the operation.

It turned out, from Amiya's point of view, that there wasn't much to the operation. He heard a few sizzles, pops, felt little pain, and then he heard something drop into a tray. His mouth was full of blood, but otherwise everything was fine. After only a short while the whole thing was over.

The odd part was that one doctor looked at the snipped-out tonsils, and said to the other doctor, "Should we show him these things?" The second doctor said, "Probably not. Those are the ugliest tonsils I've ever seen. He should have had them removed six months ago. They are a center of infection for his whole body."

After exactly four days' absense from Guruprasad, Amiya was feeling well enough, in spite of considerable loss of blood, and the generally queasy feeling that comes after an operation to return. When he entered the room, Baba was in the midst of a program, but Baba made an unmistakeable gesture to Amiya, slashing across His throat, to ask if Amiya had gotten the operation done. Amiya responded, "all done", again by gesture, and Baba gave His assent that Amiya might again join the company. Amiya remarked that it happened many times that Baba was able to do these simultaneous actions -- on the one hand, participating in one kind of activity while carrying on a second line of conversation in such a way that others did not even know what He was doing.