Osho’s mother, Mataji, continues with her reminiscences (part 2 of the interview)
From Raja to Rajneesh
Is it because of this spontaneous sky-like quality of her being that a master like Osho entered her womb? We were drunk on Mataji’s words. We had to gently nudge ourselves to come back, and to continue this leela for a little while longer. So, we asked, Mataji, who gave him the name Rajneesh?
“Oh, this name was given to him much later. For a long time, my father simply called him Raja, which means prince. He used to affectionately call him his ‘little prince’ and proclaimed that one day he would rule the world. Everyone used to call him Raja. Then, when we registered his name at school, my brother-in-law, Shikharchand, said that Raja was not a very nice name and that we should name him Rajneesh Mohan Chandra. That’s how he got that name. However, Osho never wrote his whole name; he always used to write only Rajneesh. I had already said to my brother-in-law, ‘Why would I call him by such a long name? I will call him just Rajneesh.’
By then, Osho had grown up and started venturing out of his mother’s home. A whole new phase of notoriety and rebellion had begun, in which Mataji played the role of Yashoda, the foster-mother of Krishna (who was a mischievous child).
Mischief and fights
Reminiscing about Osho’s younger days, Mataji said, “Rajneesh was involved in many mischiefs. Many people used to approach me with complaints. They would come and tell me this and that, but I always told them that it must have been the other children who had created trouble, not Rajneesh. They kept insisting and said, ‘Whether you agree or not – he is like Krishna. He leads, and the other boys follow. Whatever he says, the other boys will do.’
“For example, he used to go out at night and return home only at midnight. He never came home earlier. One day, someone in the village had set out his cot to sleep outdoors. Rajneesh told his friends to lift the cot and carry it [with the sleeping man on it, ed.] towards the well. The boys just needed a single signal from him, and off they went. That poor sleeping man did not even notice. Thankfully, they put the bed at the edge of the well. If they had placed the bed on top of the well, the man could have drowned. Still, the man realized that he had been sleeping so close to the well only when he woke up the next morning.”
Mataji, who were Osho’s friends?
“Who was not his friend? Anyone and everyone – be it Hindu or Muslim – would come and sit in our kitchen and eat. I used to offer them food with a lot of love. My mother would ask who they all were and to which caste they belonged and I would just tell her that they were all high caste brahmins. But she never believed me and would say, ‘Anyway, keep their used plates outside.’ ‘OK, will do,’ I would reply.
Hearing about Osho’s playfulness, we felt our own playfulness tingle inside of us and took the risk of asking:
Did Osho ever get involved in fights with other boys?
Mataji immediately replied, “Why would there be no fights? Now, if you hit someone, you get hit back. He used to get involved in a lot of physical conflicts. The boys split themselves into two gangs and used long bamboo sticks to fight with each other. One day, what happened was that all the boys had been fighting at school. The situation had gotten so out of hand that an elder woman came running to call me to help stop the boys, because they were fighting with bamboo staffs. I rushed to the school, and the moment the boys saw me, they all ran away. I brought Rajneesh back home and asked, ‘Why do you keep getting into these fights?’ to which he just replied, ‘You don’t worry. Whatever is happening, let it happen.’
Friends and family
Were there any friends who were special to Osho?
“You could consider Sukhraj as one of his special friends. The second could be Kanchhedi. These two were the only ones who stayed; the rest of them ran away. There was one more friend named Shyam Soni. His father used to say to his son, ‘Rajneesh is a Krishna Kanhaiya and people will worship him one day, but you have to become a goldsmith, as is the tradition in our family.’
“Out of those three, Kanchhedi Shukla was one who was always ready to do anything that Osho said. If Rajneesh asked Kanchhedi to steal a plate full of sweets from a nearby shop, he would quickly go and get it.”
We have heard that Osho used to go to burial or burning grounds every time someone died. And that he used to jump into flooded rivers. How did you feel about that when you heard it?
Mataji said with the utmost simplicity, “In the beginning, I used to feel very scared. But later, I became accustomed to his notoriety and rebellion. I accepted the way he was, how he acted. And then – one says something only if the other listens. The boys of his age would come and bring me news about him and his daily antics. If it weren’t for them, I would never have come to know. I never had the nerve to ask Rajneesh directly.
“But let me tell you something. Osho’s effect on us was such that no one would ever say anything to him. We had realized one thing – that this boy was unique. I felt happy whenever I saw him do anything. Only later when I took sannyas I accepted him as my master, but even just after he was born, something had been shaken up deep inside of me. To simply have him near us, gave us joy.”
Holy men and saints have filled pages upon pages of their scriptures writing about the glory of being in the company of an enlightened one, but here was Mataji whose love had brought the fragrance of Buddhahood to life in just a few words.
Mataji, wasn’t Osho argumentative too?
“Oh well, that is an altogether different story! Ever since he was a child people gathered around him. I never saw him alone. People whom I had never seen before used to come to my house and there would be arguments till late at night. I would fold my hands in prayer and ask, ‘I have a small house. All of this disturbs everyone’s sleep. You please go home now and come back in the morning.’ But the arguments would still not end. Finally Rajneesh used to say, ‘As far as the argument is concerned, you win, I lose. But as far as the truth is concerned, it’s on my side. Let’s finish the debate here and now.’
“In childhood, Osho was defiant and rebellious. He would always poke fun at the so-called honoured, respected people of society. However, he used to take a lot of care of the older people in the house, especially his father and his grandparents.”
Mataji’s eyes teared up while she remembered and spoke about it.
“The untimely death of Dadaji’s sister, Ratni Bai, the mother of Osho’s cousin sister, Ma Yoga Kranti, affected Dadaji very deeply. He became ill and suffered every single day that year. I told the doctor to give him some medicine that would help him, otherwise we would have to take him somewhere else. The doctor advised us to take him to Indore. We stayed there for six months. Rajneesh took such good care of him that it seemed as if Dadaji got better because of him.
“He would massage his feet till midnight. Together they would go for walks to faraway places. On their return, they would bring sweets along with them and then offer them to everyone. The best thing was that the doctor had not restricted Dadaji’s diet. So even if Dadaji asked Rajneesh to get rabri [a condensed milk-based sweet dish] at midnight, he would quickly put on his shoes, pick up a container and head out to the bada sarafa market to get it. They would then both sit and eat it with great delight.
“We felt that the rabri that Osho used to get from the sweet shop at midnight was a blessing. Perhaps the day when his uncle named him Rajneesh, it was destiny speaking through him, because Rajneesh means ‘lord of the-night’. It’s another name for the moon.
“I remember one more instance from that time,” Mataji said with a smile emerging on her lips.
“Right next to the hospital in Indore there was a garden in which there was a falsa bush, an Indian berry bush. Rajneesh was around eleven or twelve years old at the time. He got together with other 4-5 children and climbed over the wall of the garden to get to the falsa fruits. The moment they would see the doctors or nurses, they would climb back and jump down. By and by his mischiefs became known to everybody. As if this weren’t enough, he once latched the door of the doctor’s clinic from the outside and locked her in. She had to shout and call for help. We used to stay in room number eleven, so he soon became known as the boy-from-room-eleven.”
Osho’s love for books
When did you register Osho into a school?
“Dadaji used to feel that sending children to school too early might affect their growth. So Rajneesh only started going to school when he was nine years old.
“When we had gone to Indore, Rajneesh was with us for six months and his studies were affected due to his absence from school. He would have been in third grade. When we returned to Gadarwada, Dadaji suggested we get a tutor for him. When the tutor arrived, Rajneesh asked, ‘Dada, why have you called him? It is useless. He doesn’t know anything. I can teach him instead.’
Mataji, since we are talking about his schooling, didn’t Osho always read a lot of books?
“Always. He used to read till 2-3 am. The moment he came home, he took off his shirt, lay down on his cot, lit the lamp, put it on a chair and start reading. I would make his favourite sweets for him and he would eat them while reading. He used to enjoy eating kheer, a sweet made of milk, rice and sugar, and lauki halva, a bottle gourd halva*, so I would make them specially for him.
“He would buy so many books that the cupboards were overflowing with them. One day Dadaji said to him, ‘Rajneesh, there are so many books here. It becomes difficult for Mataji to organize and clean the room.’ That was enough to prompt him to call a tanga, a horse cart, load all his books onto it and take them to the public library. He donated them all to the library. I had tears in my eyes when I heard about it, knowing how it must have hurt the little boy’s heart.”
Girlfriends and wives
Everyone knows that Osho’s companion, Ma Yoga Vivek, had been his childhood friend in her past life. Shashi was the daughter of Dr. Sharma from Gadarwada and she used to regularly visit Osho’s house. We wanted to ask Mataji if she could recall any glimpses of those moments. As always, Mataji refused to tell us what wasn’t her own knowledge or what was not related to her. And we wondered where Mataji had received the initiation into this way of thinking…
All she said was, “I can only tell you that when he used to come back home from school, Shashi would be with him. There were also two or three other boys who would come. They would sit, discuss, read and laugh together. Shashi’s mother and I were good friends. We visited each other every now and then. Rasa, my eldest daughter [later called Ma Yoga Bhakti] would also visit us often. She was a sweet girl.”
Do you remember what Shashi looked like?
“I cannot remember her face but she was a thin girl. She must have been around 12-14 years old. Her father was a doctor – Dr. Sharma. She used to come and study at our house. But our village was quite small. People would tease Vijay, Osho’s brother, that Shashi was his bhabhi – his sister-in-law. He used to come and tell me that people teased him. I had become a bit angry when I heard this, so the next day when Shashi came, I told her about what had happened. She sweetly told me, ‘Mother, I will not come again.’ After that day, she never came to our home, but Osho would go and visit her.”
Mataji, Osho was your eldest son. Didn’t you and Dadaji ever feel that you should get him married?
“I never said much to him about marriage. But friends of Osho’s father would tell him to get married. Many elderly people who had become Osho’s friends would tell his father not to get him married. They would say, ‘He is such an intelligent, bright boy. He will get stuck in a mess if he gets married.’
“So, we really didn’t say much to him, but yes, my mother would tell him to get married. She would say to him, ‘It would bring me happiness to see you get married and bring a wife home.’ To this, Rajneesh would say, ‘Nani, if I bring a wife and she doesn’t make food of your liking, what will you do? Right now you are free to prepare food of your choice and offer the same to us.’ I must have told him once to get married and he said, ‘We can get Vijay married off. You could be happy about seeing his wife instead.’
Osho’s enlightenment
It was during this time, on 21st March 1953, that Osho became enlightened. We asked Mataji eagerly, After this happening, did you see any difference in Osho when he came home?
Mataji spoke with simplicity, “A mother’s and a father’s eyes don’t notice any difference in their children. If people say something against their child or in their favour, they still see the child in the same way. So we did not really see any difference in him. To us, he was the same as he had been when he left.”
While talking, Mataji suddenly remembered something and said, “Now, whenever I see Osho wearing his shiny caps, I think of his childhood. Many Marwari people used to live in Timarni, where we also lived. Just like the Marwari people, I too wore long skirts and paisley scarves that covered my head. I always dressed Rajneesh in beautiful, loosely-fitted velvet kurtas and glitter-adorned caps. We called him Raja and he really looked like a Raja. I did not have real pearls and diamonds, so I made use of artificial gems. Now when I look at him with his shiny caps, I remember those old days, and sometimes tears well up in my eyes.”
Many changes took place in Mataji’s life after that. Osho left Jabalpur to live in Mumbai. It seemed as if his familial life had come to an end. Or perhaps one could say that on another plane, his family had expanded to include people from all over the world. What was a small family before, has now merged with the ocean of Osho’s worldwide family.
* The term ‘halva’ or ‘halwa’ refers to a variety of dense, sweet confections made using a base of ingredients such as flour, semolina, grains, lentils, or nuts. These ingredients are typically cooked with sugar, ghee (clarified butter), and water or milk to achieve a thick, fudge-like consistency.
Updated 12.5.2024: The original (and our translation) erroneously said that Dadaji was affected by Osho’s cousin sister’s death, whilst it was the death of his own sister, Ratni Bai.
Related article
- When Osho was born… – Part 1 of an interview with Osho’s mother, Ma Amrit Saraswati
This interview was first published in the Hindi Rajneesh Times (PDF) in three consecutive issues between 1986 and 1987, and re-published in the Hindi Osho Times on 16 December 1993, under the title, A Pilgrimage from the Ocean to its Origin. Translation by Anuragi with edits by Osho News. Photos and PDF courtesy: Osho Resource Center
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