Rabindranath Tagore's Bhagini Nivedita (translated) concluded..

Sati’s love for Shiva was enormous, gigantic, overwhelming and overflowing. Hence she could subject her graceful body and her consciousness to the ardors of an extremely difficult tapasya or spiritual labor.  This labor involved standing on one foot, going without food and withstanding the continuous heat of fire, for the length of the tapasya. Nivedita too, was like Sati. The kind of spiritual labor she subjected herself to, was practically unbearable. Her Sati like state involved living in a house of a particular lane, where there was no breeze in the summer. The nights were so hot that she passed many nights without sleep. However, she ignored all the pleas made by her doctor as well as her friends to abandon that house. She allowed herself the daily and constant discomfort of doing without the amenities and habits that she had enjoyed from childhood onwards, and yet passed her days happily. That she did not move away from this spiritual labor, and withstood the many stresses of daily existence, was because her commitment to India’s well being was absolute and complete, and not a momentary fad. The Shiva that exists in each human being is the Shiva that this Sati (Nivedita) worshipped. What worship (sadhana) could be more difficult than worshipping Shiva, in the inner Kailash temples of the hearts of her ‘people’?

As the legend goes, Shiva came to Sati in disguise, and said, ‘Oh beautiful Lady, who aspires so spiritually, is Shiva worthy of the penitence and spiritual trials that you are putting yourself through?’ ‘He is poor, old, taciturn, and kind of odd in his ways’. The angry Sati replied, ‘What you say may be true, but it is in Him that my entire being is concentrated in every possible way’.

Is it possible that once the consummation of her love takes place in Shiva, Sati will be able to live according to the superficial norms dictated by youth, beauty and external form? Sister Nivedita’s mind was also always replete with the overflowing joy of having surrendered her being to Shiva. She had seen Shiva in the poor of India, and instead of turning up her nose at their apparent lack of beauty, like some people, she fell in love with them and garlanded them with the flowers of her eternal life.

We saw this incredible Sati like figure in our midst. Such a life removed all cobwebs of skepticism and lack of faith in our minds. Her life made us realize that Shiva truly resides in the human being, in the huts of the poorest of the poor, and in the abandoned and marginalized. That person who through the power of her own exalted feeling, penetrates the veils of ugliness that poverty creates and the loathsome effects of uncivilized habits, to see the eternal beauty and wealth of Shiva in peoples, sees the splendour and the magical beauty of the Ultimate Truth. This Beauty transcends the beauty of one’s child, one’s most precious possessions and indeed even one’s ultimate concept of what ‘beautiful’ might be. She overcomes fear, self interest, is indifferent to questions of comfort, she destroys old patterns of inhibiting thought, and does not spare a single thought for herself