Later still, Bhuvaneswari Devi of Kolkata personally prayed and requested her relative in Varanasi to pray to Lord Siva on her behalf for a son. Naren, later Swami Vivekananda, was Siva’s gift to her. She exposed the baby before his birth to music and devotional discourses. He had a prodigious memory remembering anything and everything after just once reading or listening to it. He had memorized the entire Britannica Encyclopedia overnight at the Chicago Public Library, and proved it to the librarian’s satisfaction that he indeed did so! And he was a natural leader. All because of the eclectic input he received from his mother as a fetus.

Swami Vivekananda was a marvel in every sense of the term, who clearly started a new age in India, all because of his mother’s diligent pursuit of her wish for an ideal son.