This incident goes back to October 2010. I was at my ancestral house in Jharkhand. Construction work was on in our house. Having finished my Seva, I retired for the day to my bedroom on the first floor. Suddenly, I woke up from my sleep at the stroke of midnight and I tried to sleep by turning over to one side; but surprisingly, I was not able to sleep. Such a thing has not happened till date. I got up and tried to do chanting, but that too I was not able to do attentively; so, I went to the room on the ground floor where I normally sit for meditation and sat down there; but that night, surprisingly I was not able to even meditate. I could not understand what was happening that day. Just a couple of days ago, my brother had got a TV set installed, so that I could watch the news. I switched on the television set; but so late in the night, all the channels were running teleshopping and other such programmes which did not interest me. I switched on to a channel just like that and started doing chanting and within five minutes, I could meditate and the television was left switched on. Around 5.00 a.m, I came out of my state of meditation and I got up for my daily ablutions. Since the bathroom and the kitchen are in the courtyard, as soon as I wanted to open the grill gate of the verandah, I found that someone had bolted it from the outside. I was surprised, I understood that a thief had come at night. I took my stick and putting my hand outside, opened the grill gate and came out in the courtyard, I saw that the thief had used bamboo stairs to clear the wall to escape.
I felt that the fans kept on the floor above would surely have been stolen, for the main door to the floor above did not have a bolt as the construction was still going on and door fittings and the latches were still to be fitted . I went to the floors above, but surprisingly nothing had been stolen from there too; but the thief had come in, for the doors to all the rooms were open. After that I went to the well, thinking that the motor used to draw up water would have been stolen, but the situation was the same. There were several expensive items worth stealing, like cooler and big steel utensils, as well as other items in the courtyard, but the thief had not taken anything. My surprise knew no bounds. For the next three days, thefts kept taking place in my village, somebody’s utensils, somebody’s motor, while at some places the fan of the veranda was stolen. However, I was alert by now and everyday, used to get up at night to check everywhere and told everyone in the village that if the thief entered my house, I would kill him. It was important to say this, for not even one gentleman said a word in my support, nor made any special arrangements for my security. This has been one of the peculiar characteristics of a majority of Hindu men; but I was fully prepared for my security. But later I felt it was basically the grace of vastu devta who first awakened me and then inspired me to go down and start the television set and then do my meditation , hence the thief hearing the sound of the television thought that I am awake and he ran away by bolting the latch outside.
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