own poetic words, 'I came to the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna. The water was very calm there. Holding the hair in my hand, I was thinking of consigning it to the water, when suddenly a wave arose and carried away the hair from my hand. The sacred waters thus took the Master's hair from my hand as if to become holier by contact with it'.
At Prayag, Lakshmi Devi, who was a widow, had her head shaven clean in accordance with religious practice incumbent on widows. But the Mother did not. For, how could there be widowhood for her whose husband (the Master) was the eternal and undying Spirit? Firm in this conviction, she had continued to wear redbordered cloth and some ornaments.
The party returned to Calcutta by August, 1887.