It is said that in his youth Tenali Ramakrishna worshiped the black goddess Kali. For the glory of this great goddess, he read many prayers and spells, exhausted himself with long fasts, and made abundant sacrifices to her temples.
Goddess Kali was pleased with such zealous service of her young bhakta and decided to reward him herself. One night she appeared to Ramakrishna in her most terrible form - with ten heads, wearing a belt of poisonous snakes, adorned with a necklace of asura and bhut skulls. The goddess held two jugs in her hands. One contained thick, sweet milk, and the other contained sour curdled milk. The goddess placed both jugs in front of Ramakrishna and ordered him with a sign: choose! Ramakrishna, without saying a word, took both the jugs and drank them one after the other. The goddess was surprised, but did not say anything, and Ramakrishna bowed before her in an eight-fold bow and said:
- O mother of all living! If you want to reward me for loving you, answer my question!
The goddess thought: “This must be a very important question,” and bowed her ten heads in agreement.
Then Ramakrishna said, maintaining a respectful and thoughtful expression on his face:
- Mother of all living! We humans, your insignificant creatures, have only one nose. And yet, when we have a runny nose, we experience great inconvenience - we have to sneeze, blow our nose and wipe our nose every now and then, and this is so tiring! Tell me, O head of action, what do you do when you have a runny nose?
The goddess laughed.
– You will become a poet and will make people laugh all your life, so that people will call you the Mischievous Poet! - she said and disappeared.
Who knows, maybe the words of the goddess were a terrible spell, but Ramakrishna accepted them as a blessing and did not regret it until the end of his days.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru