Faizabad :
Located on the busy Faizabad-Ayodhya Road, and at a stone throw from the Circuit House, Ram Bhawan over the past few decades has become a household name not only for residents of Faizabad, but also for millions of Netaji fans, who virtually started equating this building with a temple, which safely housed their ‘son of the soil’ in exile for almost three years, until he passed away on September 16, 1985.
It was here that Gumnaami Baba alias Bhagwanjee stayed from November 1983 till his demise. Recollecting the days spent with Gumnaami Baba as a tenant in his house, Thakur Shakti Singh said, “It was around mid-1983 that my father was asked by Dr RP Mishra, surgeon at the district hospital, to rent him the small quarter in the back which has separate entry and backdoor. He said it was for his ‘dada’ who wants peace and quiet for his spiritual practice which he cannot get at home.”
Shakti further stated that after initial reluctance, his father agreed to give the room to the ascetic. After moving in, Bhagwanjee had a very strict policy when it came to meeting visitors. It was only in the late evening hours if at all that interactions were allowed to a chosen few, after he had finished his ‘sadhana’ for the day.
Moreover, all of these chose few came to believe that the Baba had some special power. “Once a person entered the premises of Ram Bhawan, his mental faculties seemingly became completely overwhelmed by Bhagwanjee. Interaction only happened from behind a cotton-curtained window between two rooms. Even though the door in between was open, no one ever dared to enter or even peek inside. The only person who had full access round-the-clock was his caregiver, late Saraswati Devi Shukla, whom Baba used to call ‘Jagdambe’.”
Shakti Singh added that even he himself who was living in the same house could never gather the courage to attempt making eye-to-eye contact with him. “One time even a Police Officer friend of mine expressed great curiosity and a wish to investigate and unveil the mysterious Baba,” Shakti Singh recalled. “I told him he was most welcome to raid my house anytime he pleased on any pretext whatsoever. He arrived the very next morning, with force, and strode right up to the boundary wall before abruptly turning back without a word and leaving! That evening, Baba asked me why my friends hadn’t come and introduced themselves. Then he laughed, long and hard.”
After Bhagwanjee’s death, Lalita Bose, the niece of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose came here in February 1986. As soon as she came at Ram Bhawan, and saw the items in Bhagwanjee’s room, she started crying piteously, and said that there things belong to her uncle (Netaji). Later she urged the district magistrate to intervene, and even had a meeting with the then UP chief minister Veer Bahadur Singh, who after assuring help, said, “Ma’am even I have some limits,” and suggested her to move the court.
After the matter was brought to the notice of the court, the district administration was asked to shift 2760 articles kept in Bhagwanjee’s room (containing books, literature and other artefacts) were shifted to the district treasury in as many as 25 sandooks (huge trunks).
“A few weeks after the death of Gumnaami Baba, I observed few children playing around that room. Immediately, I asked them to give a description of the person they had seen (in this place). Simultaneously, I also hired an artist to make the sketch as per the inputs provided by the children. The artist took considerable time to give final and accurate shape to his creation, and when he turned the canvass towards us, we were surprised to see the startling similarities between the photo of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and that of Gumnaami Baba,” recalled Shakti Singh, with a rare radiance in his eyes.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Lucknow / by Arunav Simha, TNN / July 07th, 2015