Saranagathi Song

Sri Ramana Maharshi

10-4-1946 Morning

In the afternoon Mr. Narayanaswamy Aiyar’s daughter, married to our Sundaresa Aiyar’s son, sang a few songs and then related the following miracle: 

“In Cawnpore, we are living on the third floor of a house and we are the only residents on that floor. We have a tap there, but water rarely rises up to that level and we have daily to go down several flights of stairs and climb up with all the water necessary for us. My husband used to do this work daily for me. It was too much for him. And I was too weak to be able to help him in this daily task. One day, when I was alone in the house and my husband was in his office, I was pondering over this hard situation of ours and how we were to find a solution for this. I had kept the empty vessel before the tap and was singing in a pensive mood. Then I began singing the song Saranagati.(This is a song well-known among Bhagavan’s devotees. It was composed by Mr. M.V. Ramaswami Aiyar and is sung by him and the members of his family whenever they want Bhagavan to interpose and avert evil from them or bring them good). It says, in brief, ‘We take shelter under you and you are our sole refuge. Who else is there to whom we can turn? If you delay to come to our rescue, we can bear it no longer. So, come at once, end my misery, give me happiness!’ Then the water began to trickle down the tap and kept on flowing more as I went on with the song. So I sang the song till all our vessels were filled with water. When my husband returned home, he was surprised to find so much water and could not conceive how I could have got all that water. Then I told him, ‘I have discovered now a secret device for getting water. If I sing Saranagati I can get water.’ My husband naturally could not believe it and so I tried the same device again in his presence and the water flowed from the tap. Ever since then, my water problem has ceased. I had only to sing Saranagati, and water will flow from the tap. I have tried other songs. But they don’t give the same result. Afterwards, when I fell ill and father came to see me, I told him about this and he too could not believe it, till I again repeated the experiment before him and he saw it succeeded. He asked me to try other songs. I did. But none of them produced the same result.” The girl told all this with great glee and there was such a ring of truth about the whole narration that I consider it would be absurd to doubt the truth of the experience.