The turning point |
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| A turning point in Sathya's life came in 1940. A scorpion bite saw Sathya remain unconscious all through one night. About two months after this incident, his father returned home one day to find practically the entire village assembled at his doorstep: Sathya was "materialising" jasmine and candy and doling them out to everyone. "What are you doing? Who are you really?" he asked his teenaged son. "I am Sai Baba!" said Sathya. In spite of this, however, he was promptly sent back to school in Urvakonda. | |
| Later that year, the family went to the Virupaksha temple in Hampi (in Karnataka). There, in the sanctum sanctorum, they actually saw Sathya standing in place of the shiva linga. Rushing out, they found |  |
| the boy outside the temple, exactly where they had left him. In
October, Sathya finally broke away both from school and family ties.
He came back to Puttaparthi from Urvakonda and started staying in
the home of Karnam Subbamma, an old lady who was like a
foster-mother to him. Eventually, devotees built a temple nearby for
Sathya Sai Baba, where he moved in December 1945. The banks of the river Chitravathi and a tamarind tree there will always be associated with Sai Baba lore. In those early years, he would join his devotees in ecstatic revelries on the riverbank, even manifesting nectar, which everyone shared. The tree produced, at Sai Baba's will, whatever the devotees asked for, and so became known as the Kalpavriksha (wish-fulfilling tree). |
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| Sai Baba in Hampi | |