Post 500a. A celebration of Mother Radha from the Ramakrishna Centre of SA.
Johannesburg, 6th June 2026.
Yesterday was a delightful Milestone on this Website and Blog dedicated to Sri Ramakrishna and our beloved Guru Swami Shivapadananda.
We were privileged to post the 500th ‘Talks Excerpt’ from the almost 800 recordings or notes that our Mother Radha from the Ramakrishna Centre of SA ashram in Avoca, made over several decades of Swamiji speaking, as she sat at Swamiji’s feet.
Radha Ma met and became an initiate of much-beloved Swami Venkatesananda Saraswati in the late 1960s.
Venkatesanandaji Maharaj was a direct disciple of Swami Sivananda Saraswati, founder of the global Divine Life Society movement. Maharaj was at the time, spiritual head of the Divine Life Society, Mauritius.
He was a frequent and much-loved visitor to us at the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa in Avoca, in then Natal province. In South Africa, Radha Ma’s ‘caretaker Guru’ was our very own Guru, Swami Shivapadananda Puri.
Our little website/blog publishing circle refers to Radha Ma as ‘our M’, as in Mahendranath Gupta, who chronicled Sri Ramakrishna’s daily activities and blessed the planet in the form of ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna‘. Just so, Radha Ma captured Swamiji’s pearls of wisdom, which her son and our gurubhai Tim, was later able to extract, transcribe and provide for uploading to the website.
Radha Ma was one of a group of four women sadhakas that I dearly loved at the ashram. Our ashram ‘Mummy’ Sri Jayanti Devi Mataji, Mother Henny Schimmel and Peggy Verbaan. Radha and Peggy were both madcaps in the most delightful way.
Radha Ma was partially raised in India by parents who worked in the British government if I’m not mistaken. She once told me how in the summer, they would go to their home ‘in the hills’, where it was cooler in the blistering Indian summer. She was fluent in Hindustani, but as all who knew her will tell you, her English came in a pukkah upper-class British accent.
There was nothing ‘average’ about Radha Ma. My private joke is that’s why she needed two Swamis to guide her spiritual journey. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and with her, it was WYSIWYG. What You See Is What You Get. She came to live at the Avoca ashram in 1976 and strode about the ashram in long white skirts and blouses, whilst wearing sensible Birkenstock sandals.
Mother Radha was the perfect partner with whom to work on ashram projects or to fulfil Swamiji’s simple but often unique needs. She knew Durban like the back of her hand and would guide me, with her confident strides, through the Casbah District of Durban. There, she always knew the perfect spice shop, fabric outlet or electrical store for whatever item, widget or gadget we needed at the time.
She could quite quickly become ratty on these trips, but I found the perfect solution in the form of snack bars or sweets. Whenever I sensed that she was getting irritable for whatever reason, I’d haul out the sugar boosts. It worked every time.
She easily but innocently rubbed people up the wrong way, because her refreshing style of communicating was straight from the shoulder or hip. You didn’t get to choose which location! I loved her very dearly and still do. I referred to her as a ‘Sadhini’. If males are sadhus, then she was a sadhini. When we think of eternal life, in one way, in earthly terms, it’s because people like her continue to live on in our hearts and thoughts.
While some ashramites or devotees would be reluctant to ask Swamiji questions in a public forum in case people judged them, Radha Ma had no such qualms and would ask Swamiji about anything and everything. Their engagement often produced gales of merriment because there would be a parry and thrust in the conversation. Which was never disrespectful, but more like that of a parent and inquisitive child pushing boundaries in a loving but robust relationship.
Radha Ma would never have landed a job in the diplomatic corps or the United Nations. One day, she clearly overstepped the mark with Swamiji. Swamiji was talking about something and Radha Ma, uninvited, chose to give Swamiji some very direct ‘advice’. Swamiji paused, looked at her and said in an even tone, ‘Do you think I’m your husband?’
I so loved her for her unfiltered directness. While some people were pretentiously gliding about the ashram in embroidered kurtas, Punjabis and the like, she would be getting on with whatever she was doing in a totally down-to-earth way. She didn’t do gliding.
In the early 1970s, Radha Ma started making extensive notes of what Swamiji was saying. And Brother Tim later made those available as ‘Daily Talks’, which we switched to ‘Talks Excerpts’ because they were highlights from talks or discussions with devotees.
She later began recording Swamiji when he spoke. The portable cassette recorders in the 1970s weren’t great quality and usually included their own mechanical noises as they ran. Add to that the echo in the uMngeni Road Temple Sri Vishnu hall, and the huge Sri Sarada Devi ashram shrine where many full-blown talks were recorded, and we have some transcribing challenges as a result. But the information has been captured and with Swamiji’s grace, will continue over time to be published on the website.
Please share our joy and offer loving thoughts of gratitude for this spiritual Sister of ours who did such a sterling job of capturing so much of what Swamiji had to say. As I mentioned to Brother Tim yesterday, the vast range of issues dealt with in the talks and recordings, is more than enough to lead anyone who seriously seeks spiritual growth or God-realisation, to that destination. There’s truly something for every possible personality type and intellectual capability. And for that we’re grateful for the inspiration from Sri Ramakrishna, for Radha Ma to undertake the blessed task and the grace of our Swami Shivapadananda to pursue it.
Footnote: Swami Venkatesananda attained mahasamadhi in Johannesburg at the Divine Life Society Parkview/Westcliff ashram in 1982. Our Swamiji asked this writer to go and convey comfort and condolences and give love to Swami Shushila and other disciples of Swami Venkatesananda. I had the privilege of touching this monk’s holy feet as his body lay in bed upstairs in the Westcliff ashram.
Swami Shivapadanandaji, along with our beloved ‘Grandpa’ Swami Nishreyasananda Puri and Mother Radha, flew to Johannesburg where he conducted the funeral rites and gave a stirring speech for the beloved sannyasi, Swami Venkatesananda.
Radha Ma was able to bid farewell to the mortal remains of her Guru, whilst held safely in the spiritual embrace of her second ‘caretaker’ Guru – Swami Shivapadananda.
It was Steve Jobs of Apple fame, who said that he wanted to ‘leave a dent in the universe’. Radha Ma left her dent – and it’s one that continues, with Guru’s grace, to bless all of us who associated with her or get to read her notes, transcriptions and listen to recordings that she so lovingly made.
May we all learn from her example of guru seva. Jai Sri Ramakrishna! Jai Sri Guru Maharaj, jai!
The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.
These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.