Swami Vivekananda at Shillong

While in Shillong Swamiji was very ill, as this photo, as well as the next, indicates. Swamiji told Sharatchandra Chakravarty: The Shillong hills are very beautiful. There, I met Sir Henry Cotton, the chief commissioner of Assam. He asked me, “Swamiji, after traveling through Europe and America, what have you come to see here in these distant hills?” Such a good and kind-hearted man as Sir Henry Cotton is rarely found. Hearing of my illness, he sent the Civil Surgeon and inquired after my health mornings and evenings. I could not do much lecturing there, because my health was very bad. 1 1 LSV [Kolkata, 1981] 2:590. ❊ ❊ ❊ To one of his disciples, who was attending on him toward the end of his life, Swamiji remarked: What is the use of giving way to sorrow, my boy? This body was born, and it will die. If I have been able to instill into you all, even to a small degree, some of my ideas, then I shall know that I have not lived my life in vain! Always remember that renunciation is the root idea. (LSV [Kolkata, 1981] 2:631)