A sleepless night
Prasanna sat at the altar, tears streaming from his eyes. Though the ticking clock announced the time as 2:30 in the wee hours of the morning, he was wide awake. There was a gnawing emptiness in his heart that did not seem to go away irrespective of what he did. He looked at the golden framed picture that formed the centerpiece in his altar. It was a photograph of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba taken by his great grandfather, more than hundred years ago, in 1990.
Prasanna sat at the altar, tears streaming from his eyes. Though the ticking clock announced the time as 2:30 in the wee hours of the morning, he was wide awake. There was a gnawing emptiness in his heart that did not seem to go away irrespective of what he did. He looked at the golden framed picture that formed the centerpiece in his altar. It was a photograph of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba taken by his great grandfather, more than hundred years ago, in 1990.
It had been almost seventy years since Baba had given up the physical frame and Prasanna had come to know Him most intimately only through the stories told to him by his grandparents. His parents too had shared many of their own experiences of Baba’s omnipresence and omniscience with him. These were incidents that occurred after the Mahasamadhi - the giving up of the Physical - of Baba on 24th April 2011. And of course, Prasanna had also had his own share of miracles in his life which had convinced him of the divinity of this being in orange. But what he sought today was something beyond all that.
“Swami, you know the innermost recesses of my heart. You know me better than I know myself. Then, why this cruelty? Won’t you come to me and put an end to these pangs of suffering?”
He burst into loud sobs after that. Prasanna was unable to bear it any longer.
A name that perfectly reflected his life?
“The baby shall be called Sathya Sai Prasanna to indicate that his Lord, Sri Sathya Sai, is and will be, happy with him always...”
Having pronounced that, the priest had instructed the father to write the full name in a plate of uncooked rice with a golden ring. The baby thus was christened Sathya Sai Prasanna and though his parents called him ‘little Sai’, he became ‘Prasanna’ for the rest of the world. Even from his birth, Prasanna’s life seemed to perfectly mirror what his name said.
He had been a child of extraordinary skills and talents. Early in life itself, he became a delight for his parents. Apart from being a brilliant student and having a natural flair for excelling in sports and games, Prasanna also was a music maestro and learned to play almost a dozen instruments with ease. Naturally, he was the crest jewel of the Sri Sathya Sai Higher Secondary School and, later, went on to become the unrivalled all-round champion of the Sri Sathya Sai University. Today, he was the CEO of Bharat Bhagya Vidhata, India’s largest company which specialized in all matters pertaining to the creation and sustenance of renewable energy. His yeoman contribution had won him dozens of awards including the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award.
Yet, he was an epitome of humility and service. He was among the world’s leading philanthropists and had already pledged billions of Rupees (which had replaced the Dollar as the world’s reserve currency) for the causes of Educare and Medicare which were very close to his Swami’s heart. Such was his large-heartedness that he seemed to have no enemies at all. There had not been a single article in the media that portrayed him in a negative light. Nobody in his family tree was jealous of him as he never strutted about with his power, wealth or eminence. He had married his childhood friend with whom he shared a common first priority - Swami. He was a father to two healthy children - a boy and a girl - though he indirectly fathered more than ten thousand children through a network of orphanages all over the world.
In short, Prasanna was an example for what anyone would call as ‘the dream life of happiness’. But he was not happy!
