Sri Sarada Devi as Shodasi

The young girl stood by the window of her modest house in Jayarambati. Her eyes shone with the green of the luxuriant paddy fields as they swayed to the gentle breeze. In striking contrast to the luster in her eyes was a dull heaviness in her heart. Barring her Bhanupisi, the entire village was taunting her with the jibe that she was married to a madman. Saradamani sighed as she turned away from the window and smiled. Her people were wrong in their surmise. Whirling the hypnotic currents of the world of senses, they could not just fathom someone who defiantly stood beyond its magnetic field, mocking its famed irresistibility. Saradamani mentally embraced her Bhanu pisi, the only one outside of herself who had perceived the preternatural personality of her husband Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and set about planning her trip to Dakshineswar, her husband’s domicile.

- SMT. LAKSHMI DEVNATH

She had been married at the age of five to him who was then all of twenty-three. The alliance may have seemed odd to many but certainly not to the couple. Story goes that two-year old Sarada was once carried along to an evening of Jatra, a folk-theatre performance at the nearby village of Sihore. As the story-teller dramatically unfolded the tale of Krishna and Rukmini, the lady holding Sarada, planted a fond kiss on the little girl’s cheek and endearingly asked her, “…whom are you going to marry little Thakurmani?”(as Sarada was then called), “Him,” little Thakurmani, pointed her chubby index finger at young Ramakrishna sitting in the crowd. The other half of this story is even quainter. Discerning that his parents were desperately searching a bride for him Ramakrishna remarked, “The girl born to be my wife is at Jayrambati, the daughter of Ramachandra Mukherjee and Shyamsundari.”