ABSTRACT
The ashram was built, as we have seen, on a raised platform in what had been a dense piece of jungle that sometimes turned into a swamp after the monsoon. A canalised stream ran along one side of it. One reason why the area was cut off was that at first there was no bridge over the canal; in those early days Binode would wade across. There was a straw hut as the place for meditation and for the young sadhu to rest in. Another shed was for cooking. Later another tin building was put up as a place for assembly and the singing of kirtans or devotional hymns. One day the sadhu asked a disciple, Nishi Dutta, to fetch the family brahmin, Mahendra Chakravarty. That afternoon he arrived at the ashram and sat in the hut on a mat with Binode in front of him on a blanket. They negotiated about the land. This was attached to the Bana-Durga shrine, and was a religious endowment to Mahendra Chakravarty’s family. It was now a question of transferring the land to the ashram legally. Probably the young holy man had already had permission from the brahmin to establish himself there. A deal was made and the land was sold to the ashram for 150 rupees. The brahmin had come to respect the young sadhu. Being versed in the scriptures he recognised, no doubt, that the attainment of yogic skills, austerity and deep meditation without help from anyone else had been a sure sign that the young man must have achieved high spiritual attainments in previous lives.
