"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does"
~ William James

We cannot think of Sri Rama without thinking of Hanuman, or remember Sri Krishna without remembering Arjuna. In the same way do Buddha and Ananda go together, as do Christ and St. Paul. Such too is the link between Sri- Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. While the one was the spring, the other was the stream conveying the spring's waters.

Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on-January 14, 1863 on the holy day of Makara Sankranti. His father was Viswanatha Datta, a prominent lawyer of Calcutta and his mother was Bhuvaneswari Devi, a very cultured woman of aristocratic upbringing. The Dattas named the child Narendranath.

He was equally good at studies as he was in the play-field. He was a student with superlative talents both innate and acquired. is range of reading was wide, his powers of understanding were keen. He had a very retentive memory and discriminative faculty.

He was an athlete proficient at several games. Even as a boy he had a philosophical mind-set and was deeply meditative; there were deeper powers in his young being than are usually found in youths. He was challenging and knew no fear. His brilliance was obvious even at school and college.

Narendranath was a thinker. His intellect was too robust to accept anything on feeble faith and customary belief. He demanded verification or proof, before he would consider believing in anything. The doubting youth went here and there in quest of God, but in vain. Despairing, and on the verge of concluding that God was a mad man's idea, chance took him to Sri Ramakrishna, and this meeting led to the unfoldment of his spiritual genius, so the world could know this giant among human beings - Swami Vivekananda.