I remember the grand procession in Nadiad in 1971. Swamishri was sitting on the float. It was somewhere around 4 or 4:30 in the afternoon of what had been a hot summer's day. Everything was fine except for one small thing: I had no shoes to wear. The roads felt as if they were on fire as I hobbled along, trying not to make it obvious that my feet were burning.

Swamishri must have noticed my bare feet. He called down to me from high above on the float. "Here!" he shouted, as he took off his own slippers and threw them down to me. "Put these on. It's not good for your eyes to walk barefooted in this heat."

Without stopping to think, I put them on. How was I to know they were Swamishri's? A couple of minutes later, it dawned on me. 'These look like Swamishri's slippers!' I took them off immediately.

Swamishri saw this and called out again. "Put them back on. I didn't give them to you to wear on your hands!"