A few days after their settling down in that country, Santhananda and his three disciples were arrested by security guards and taken to the Chief of Security.
"Tell me the real reason for your visit to our country. If you speak the truth, I will ensure that you are given minimum punishment" said the Chief.
"Sir! We have come here to propagate our spiritual philosophy. If you don't like our spreading our message, we will go back to our country. Please set us free" pleaded Santhananda.
"How can we set you free? We have been coming across many cases of foreigners masquerading as spiritual teachers or saints and spying on our country. Even recently, we caught two such saints. When we interrogated them, they spit out the truth that they had come here not on a spiritual mission but on a mission of espionage" said the Chief, with a mischievous smile.
From the tone of the Chief's words and his use of the phrase 'spit out,' Santhananda and his disciples realized how the spies that were caught would have been made to spit out the truth.
"Just because some people who came to your country in the garb of spiritual masters were involved in espionage activities, is it fair to assume that all those who come to your country on a spiritual mission have the intention of intelligence gathering?" asked Santhananda.
"Our suspicions are not without any reason. We have information that a person, who could be a suspect, visited your monastery"
"I can say with certainty that no such person visited our place."
"A guard had noticed a person leaving your place surreptitiously through the backdoor. When the guard called him to check on him, he ran away" said the Chief.
"Someone might have entered our place stealthily, intending to commit robbery and finding that there was nothing valuable to steal, might have run away through the backdoor, when he was sighted by your guard. We never allowed any visitor to leave through the backdoor" said Santhananda.
"No. Our guard saw someone from your monastery talking to a person standing near the backdoor. Our guard also says that it seemed that the person from your monastery placed something on the palm of the suspect. We suspect that that man had given you some information and someone from your monastery gave him money in exchange for the information."
"This is preposterous" said Santhananda,
"I am going to award ten whiplashes to each of you. If you won't come out with the truth even after that, I will understand that you aspire for more rewards and shower more rewards on you. The rain of rewards will keep falling on you, till at least one of you come out with the truth" said the chief.
The Chief then signaled to a guard, who went inside to bring the whip.
"There is no need, sir. I will tell you the truth. The incident mentioned by you did happen. It was me who gave ten gold coins to that person and sent him out through the backdoor of our place" said Gunaseelan, one of the three disciples.
Santhananda and the other two disciples looked at Gunaseelan, with surprise and shock.
"Ten gold coins? What did that traitor sell you for such a low price?" asked the Chief, with indignation.
"Sir, he is a traitor alright. But, he didn't betray your country. He betrayed a poor man like me, by deceiving me and collecting ten gold coins from me!" said Gunaseelan.
"Tel me what happened, in detail" said the Chief, feeling impatient.
"Sir! This is the second time I have visited your country. When I came here last year for the first time, I met a young woman called Poovizhi. She was working as a construction labourer. I fell in love with her. Even after returning to my country, I was tormented by my love for her and craved to meet her again. I had no money to travel to your country. I learnt that this saint was planning to visit your country. So, I became his disciple and came here along with him. After coming here, oneday, I went to a construction site and enquired about Poovizhi, hoping that someone would be able to give me information about her. A man working there told me that he knew Poovizhi. He offered to bring her to a specified place to meet me, if I paid him ten gold coins. Since I had no money with me, I asked him to come to the backdoor of our monastery at a specified time. I stole ten gold coins from the cash box at the monastery and gave it to him. But he never came back. I realized that he had cheated me after receiving the money from me" said Gunaseelan.
"You scoundrel! You have used the noble practice of asceticism to subserve your quest for lust. You have brought disrepute to me and to my other disciples by your deceptive act" said Santhananda, angrily.
The Chief told Gunaseelan "How do I know that you are speaking the truth? I am going to imprison all the four of you. Our guards will give a special treatment to you alone, by treating you to whiplashes, to see whether any more truth is coming out of you. In the meanwhile, if we are able to catch the person who ran away from your place, we will extract the truth from him."
He then turned to Santhananda and told him in an apologetic tone, "If what your disciple says is verified to be true, I will apologize to you and send you back to your country, with all honours due to a saint. Till that time, you will be treated as a royal guest. That is to say, though you would be confined to a guest house and your movement restricted, you would be given all the facilities inside the guest house. Of course, you won't be given the 'rewards' your disciple is going to be given!"
Saying this, the Chief chuckled.
Gunaseelan's body was rife with lacerations caused by whiplashes he was receiving every day. Gunaseelan continued to maintain that he was speaking the truth and that he had nothing more to add. The guards could not trace the person who ran away from the monastery.
After ten days, all the four of them were released, taken to the border of their country and made to step into the territory of their country.
"Welcome, Gunaseelan! Have your wounds healed?" asked Bhupathy, the Intelligence Chief, warmly receiving Gunaseelan, who came to meet him, a few days after returning to his country.
"That is not my name, Chief!" said Gunaseelan, smiling.
"You are right, Kathirvelan! You are no longer Gunaseelan, since Gunaseelan's mission has been completed! The intelligence you have gathered is highly useful. Congratulations. It was good of you to have sent me the full report through one of our agents immediately on returning to the country, with the message that you would meet me in person after your wounds healed to some extent. It was great of you to have protected Santhananda and his two disciples from being hurt by your captors, by telling the captors that they were not aware of your being an impostor."
"Yes, Chief. Though I was not a genuine disciple of my Guru, I believe that my saving him from being subjected to ill-treatment by my captors was a kind of Gurudakshina* to him.
*Gurudakshina - an offering made by a disciple to the Guru, as a token of his gratitude for the learning bestowed on him by the Guru.
Section 2
en seyinum sOrvu iladhu oRRu.
Verse 585
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