VIVEKANANDA , THE FEARLESS INDIAN

The photograph of the letter posted as "BLESSINGS TO NIVEDITA" reads :

"The mother's heart, the hero's will,
The sweetness of the southern breeze,
The sacred charm and strength that dwell
On Aryan altars, flaming, free;
All these be yours, and many more
No ancient soul could dream before --
Be thou to India's future son
The mistress, servant, friend in one.

With the blessings of Vivekananda"

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WHAT DID VIVEKANANDA MEAN BY  "MISTRESS" HERE?

What I am going to write should sound sacrilegious  (But the nonconformist devil that I am, can't be defied, after I discovered long back that my alter-ego cannot be de-ified).

Narendranath was fearless, (the reason why Ramakrishna, who had always advised the common mortal to avoid Kamini & Kanchan as far as possible, felt The Spark in him, the one who could and eventually would carry forward His Message to the furthest confines of the universe ) - he doesn't care a hoot to write MiSTRESS here. I just think he didn't have an alternate word to put. 

In his times, the relationship of MISTRESS / Rakshita was well known in society (specially in houses bearing blue-blooded lineages of timeless financial abundance).

**I was born in a middle-class family, but coincidentally my great great paternal grandfather, ingloriously blue-blooded and may his soul rest in Silence, "maintained" one. I am congenitally red-blooded and stubbornly so. No shame here.** 

The relationship wouldn't be formalized by institutional auspice, and hushed voices whispered Adultery, and it was a vice - it meant a woman suffering at the expense of another if you get what I mean. It was a VICE, and  I'm sure Narendranath didn't mean Rakshita here (even when he describes relationships elsewhere as JOUBONER UPOBON & BANOPROSTHER BARANASI - ** please correct me here, I don't think I quote him correctly here) 

I don't believe in ways Good or Bad. It's been my personal choice to look at things and evaluate them in my own incomplete, unfit, ill-endowed capacity in relevance of Correctness. 

It's Right or Wrong for me - I don't have the audacity to even sermonize on the issue. I can only say - there seems to be a constant process of extrapolation of the two abstracts of Good and Bad with time, rather with "the times they are a'changing" and relevant issues even exchange sides of the fence where Judgment of Morality is seated. 

A woman suffering at the expense of another woman is Incorrect. Wrong. In any age or era, it shall be wrong Forever. 

Yet there have been relationships , and there shall be, not formalized FOR society's peace, and flies on the wall keep humming to the tune of which we (me included at times) tap our toes over coffee. I am not putting illustrious examples here with names of minstrels, poets, writers, artists for that's not my purpose.

In such a relationship not vetoed by Society, no other woman suffers at the expense of another, no family disintegrates as collateral damage, no soul betrays the trust and respect of another. Even if such a relationship bears unblemished Love and spiritual exchanges of two egos and evolves in consciousness, nothing GOOD seems to come out FOR the society to glorify it. And if it's not GOOD, it has to be BAD - such is the dictum the "vociferous section" of our society follows.

Nothing lies in such a relationship for me to cry foul. It's just that I find NOTHING INCORRECT here.

It's difficult to look at things which are shaded black and white by a colour-blind society, where the shade is controversially Grey. 

While I await my share of brickbats, I will just reiterate that this is what I understood by the word MISTRESS here, and Narendranath was definitely and simply at a loss of coinage of terms. He didn't mean the traditionally vilified RAKSHITA here. He just fearlessly put his affirmative stamp on affairs perhaps with a fearless causticity for future circumstances where Society becomes the moral judge. Perhaps by default??