If someone is mine, I shall drag them towards me like a sparrow tied to a thread.
As you read Satcharitra, you come across these words and instinctively a gush of happiness enters your mind, because you realize that these words are addressed towards you. For, you know that you didn’t intend to visit shirdi by your own thoughts and for some reason or another, you were hypnotized and dragged towards baba without your explicit consent. Isn’t it amazing that an ever-lasting and ever-permeating soul like baba thinks so much about a tiny little and constricted soul like yours? Despite being worshipped worldwide by hundreds of millions of followers, he still has a desire and interest in nurturing and growing a tiny soul like you? Wonderful are the ways of the guru and wayward is the way of our mind. Why wayward? Because in the grind of our daily lives, we forget our roots and the interest shown by the divine in guiding our pathways towards them.
I never paid much attention to baba or have shown any interest in the stories of shirdi saibaba when I was growing up. I liked Gods and Goddesses and grew up hearing the tales of Hanuman, Ganesha and Vishnu. My grandmother told me these stories and these gods and goddesses captured my imagination. My grandfather used to read an old Sai Satcharitra book, but he never told us any stories and surprisingly my grand mother didn’t even mention baba once. The oldest recollection I have is a visit to a Saibaba temple in Bhoigooda, where my parents did some pooja and I partook in that event. The priest praised me for my utmost attention and dedication during the pooja. If my memory serves me right, my mother prayed for my poor eyesight to be corrected and it did get corrected. I left my highly powerful study glasses and could study easily without any glasses. And by his blessings, thats true to this day.
My aunt’s in-laws believed in putta parthi saibaba and we went to their house for a bhajan meet. I was in my seventh grade back then and I found the bhajan’s extremely long and boring. I didn’t know when they would end and thank god, they ended after quite sometime and during that time, many thoughts swirled in my mind, like a telugu movie. It's always fashionable to show a fake baba or a smuggler disguised as a baba and for my young, impressionable mind, those thoughts kept circling around. And that summer, due to one reason or another, I had a huge inflammation develop on my face and being a devotional kind, I subconsiously attributed that to my ill thoughts in the bhajan and since then, I keep my monkey mind in check and do not encourage it to keep dwelling on thoughts.
Then came the real thing, I guess? In my eighth grade, my aunt’s and my ammamma visited our place on their trip to Shirdi. My town was on the way and they wanted to drop in and say hello. Behold! During the same time, there was a strike that happened and all the buses in the erstwhile state of Andhra pradesh stopped. A little bit of drama ensued and they were going to Shirdi in an ambassador car. They were already a party of 5 and the driver, but still my mother, god bless her instincts, suggested that there was space for one more and I accompanied them. I have no clue on why my mom thought there was still space and how others agreed and why I was chosen to go instead of my sisters or anyone else. I was happily on my way to Shirdi and I don’t think I paid much attention or devotion in the temple. I attended the aarthi’s and boy were they long! First, they are sung in marathi and second of all, I didn’t have the book. Thankfully, I was sitting down during the aarthis, but you are basically listening to an unfamiliar language and wondering on when they would end. Thankfully, this was the extent of my thoughts and they didn’t venture into some bollywood potboiler ideas or else, I would have to contend with another boil. I prayed for one thing and which was to get atleast in the top three of the class so that I could get onstage and collect a medal, an occurance that had never happened until then and an occurance that happened to my younger sister very often. I told my mother after the visit that if such a thing happened, I would believe in Baba. And unfortunately, it didn’t happen. And so I never followed up on my words of believing baba.
And so life went on…or so I thought. And within three years, I was reading baba satcharitra after going through some tough times in my intermediate college and I was doing the parayana as a way to get some inner peace and to subside some turmoil. Nothing drastic happened, but changes happened organically and I was happy. So, this is how baba has always handled me: No drama but all blessings. No big signs or symbols but slow changes. My mind resents that at times and would love to have a more dramatic and bold signs, ala movie-style, but he doesn’t seem to conform to the movie like experiences, or perhaps he only wants art-movie style experiences, where the changes are done subtly. In any case, I’m not the one to dictate the terms with him at this stage. But, there were times when I could do so.
To be continued
