Pangum Langhayate Girim - Bejoy Misra's life experience with Sri Sathya Sai - Part 1

Journey to God

Bejoy Kumar Misra moved hurriedly on the railway station in the city of Cuttack. A cloth bag which contained a few clothes, a book and a pen slung across his body as he made his way towards the train that would be taking him to Vijaywada in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. Excited anticipation filled him because he was about to make a journey like he had never done before. Considering his circumstances, it would also be a great adventure.

Does this look like a polio-struck 70-year old to you? Living
for God has its unique way of generating  youthfulness,
energy and enthusiasm!

For starters, Bejoy was on crutches. His left leg hung limp, afflicted with polio. Having been born in pre-independent India (1943) in the economically backward state of Odisha (formerly known as Orissa), Bejoy had been struck a cruel blow by the poliomyelitis virus. He had battled it as an infant with the help of many medicines. He won the war but lost a leg in battle. As far as his memory went, he had needed support to move around. However, that was not what made this impending journey challenging. Bejoy, with his crutches, felt as normal as normal could be. His shoulders and arms had grown stout and strong and he easily moved across barriers, climbed staircases and utilized the primitive public transport India offered in 1967. The challenge according to him was the distance that had to be travelled.  

He had not travelled anywhere in a train except between Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, a distance of just 25 kilometres. He would now be travelling 32 times that distance (805 kms) to Vijaywada and that would be just one half of his planned journey! He was doing this alone with just Rs 10 in his pocket. To make matters worse, nobody at home knew what he was up to! He had gotten out of his house saying that he would be visiting a friend.

Bejoy knew that the money he had wasn’t sufficient to even buy the ticket to Vijaywada. But then, hadn’t he decided to take the leap of faith? He literally jumped into a seat in the train and settled down, absolutely unaware of what lay ahead for him. Ticketless and filled with anticipation, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and visualised his plan. He would get off at Vijaywada and take a train to Guntur. At Guntur, he would change trains to reach Guntakal from where he would catch a train to Dharmavaram. From Dharmavaram, he would travel by road to reach Puttaparthi and, the goal of his journey, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. The whole journey would span more than 1300 kilometres - a distance that Bejoy possibly had not travelled even when he put together all his train journeys so far in life.

What had spurred a 23-year old physically challenged lad to seek a 40-year old ‘Baba’? What had motivated him to embark on a journey without any preparation? How did he get the courage? All answers lay in Bejoy’s early life.

A fire rages on

Even as a child, Bejoy took great interest in the spiritual side of life; possibly the result of several previous births of yearning. Being the eldest among 9 siblings at home (7 brothers and 2 sisters), he was naturally expected to be the most responsible one. However, things in the worldly domain hardly interested him. His father was a headmaster to hundreds of children at school and to nine children at home. He was a strict disciplinarian who practiced all that he preached. For him, duty was God; work was worship. Though he expressed no outward emotion towards his children, Bejoy knew that he was a solid support in life. Being an English teacher, he inspired love for that language in Bejoy as well. Seeing Bejoy’s aptitude for the English language, he hoped that he would prove his mettle by rising higher than the father had ever done in his life. But Bejoy was least interested in a career!

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in Odia (his mother tongue) and great proficiency in English (his father’s tongue). But then, Bejoy, to add fuel to the scorching fire in his heart, devoured books on Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Shivananda and Vivekananda. Gita was in his daily reading list. He hungered for more books that would satiate his innermost desire. Even among the English literature books, his favourites were those by authors and poets who had a deep spiritual side. But, however much he read, he wasn’t satisfied. Though he was always surrounded by siblings at home and friends in college, he felt lonely and had the least interest in anything.

That was when he read an article which would change his life forever! It was a piece by Dr. Sundar Rao in a 1966 edition of The Illustrated Weekly of India. (Simply known as ‘Weekly’ by its readership, this magazine which started publication in 1880 was considered to be an important English-language publication in India for more than a century. Many young students of English used it as a regular reading and guide for honing English language skills in vernacular India. It is now defunct, having closed down on November 13, 1993.)

The story of a blue baby and the Kali Yuga Avatar

Thondapu Arun Kumar relaxed as he steered the car onto the AH-43 and headed towards Puttaparthi. The traffic snarls at Bengaluru had been left behind and it would now be a smooth and speedy drive towards the abode of highest peace - Prasanthi Nilayam.

Arun always wanted to be at His Lotus feet. Swami proudly blesses him when
he secured a high All-India rank in the GATE CSIR examinations.

Arun was a regular at the abode of his Swami, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, ever since 1998 when he had enrolled for grade XI in the Sri Sathya Sai Higher Secondary School. In the 9 years that followed as a ‘Sai-Student’, he had completed his schooling, under-graduation, post-graduation and an MTech degree from the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. Even after embarking on his career path, he had made it a point to regularly visit Puttaparthi to pay obeisance and gratitude to his God and Master. But this visit in the September of 2015 had an added agenda. Arun had come to pray to Swami to bless him and his wife, Keerthi, with a child. That was the prayer he made as he knelt at the Sai Sannidhi, the sepulchre also called as the Mahasamadhi of Baba.

Trying to conceive a child is probably one of the most fertile events to make one realize the truth in the Bhagawad Gita's statement by Lord Krishna,

“Karmanyavadhikaraste Maa Phaleshu Kadachana”

(You have the rights over action alone and not over the fruits of action).

In the true sense, one can never ‘plan’ a baby. The baby happens when it is supposed to happen irrespective of the intensity of efforts (or its apparent lack) thereof. And so, every child, whether conceived naturally, in vitro or adopted, is in fact the gift of God!

For Arun and Keerthi, the wait after the prayer was very short. In October 2015 itself they got to know that Keerthi was carrying a baby and their joy knew no bounds. Arun was sure that the baby was Swami’s gift to them. Keerthi was convinced that it was God’s gift; she wasn’t sure about giving the credit entirely to her husband’s ‘Swami’ who she considered as a good human being. Arun was not bothered. He knew that just like the baby, faith in Swami also would happen when it was supposed to happen. As of now, the couple celebrated the gift of love that had been bestowed on them and began preparations for the delivery 40 weeks down the line. As the baby grew, so did their eagerness and joy.

But all that came to a sudden halt in the middle of January 2016 as the New Year heralded dreadful news.

Transposition of the Great Arteries

The routine ultrasound anomaly scan that Keerthi underwent in Hyderabad took an unusually long time to get completed. Arun noticed that the doctor was keenly observing one particular portion of the scan repeatedly. He sensed that something was not alright. His feelings turned out to be true.

“The foetus is exhibiting a transposition of the great arteries”, the doctor said, which is a defect due to the improper development of the fetal heart...We don’t know why this happens exactly... It is a random occurrence, by chance, but it needs urgent attention.”

Arun and Keerthi looked at each other in bewilderment. The doctor explained it as simply as possible.

“See, there are 4 chambers in the heart. The upper two chambers (auricles) receive blood while the lower two chambers (ventricles) pump it. Circulation of blood happens like this - Blood is pumped from the right ventricle to the lungs via the Pulmonary Artery. This blood gets oxygen and returns to the left auricle and falls into left ventricle. From there, it is pumped to the whole body via the Aorta. In your baby, the Aorta and Pulmonary Artery connections have interchanged. So the good oxygenated blood is circulating in a loop between the heart and lungs while the bad de-oxygenated blood is stuck in a separate loop between the heart and the rest of the body.”

TGA explained diagrammatically

She paused for a moment to allow the couple to digest all that.

“The baby will need life-support as soon as it is born because there is no way oxygen supply can reach the body. There is also a high risk of some abnormality or retardation in the child which we cannot predict now. Usually, in such cases, the parents decide the drop the baby.”

“No!” screamed Keerthi within herself. She could not even imagine aborting her child. For Arun also, dropping the baby was intuitively out of question.

If you need me, you deserve me - Baba in Bahrain

“If it is okay with all of you, I wish to stay back. I’ll take care of little Gopal and stay at home...”

“But it is Patel, a close friend of Dwarkanadh. How can we not go?”

“You can go. I really don’t feel like coming”, Mrs. Pankajam Sundaram persisted, “do not force me to come along please.”

“It is okay if she wants to stay back”, her son in law, Dwarkanadh, interrupted, “My friend would not like to be the cause of discomfort for anyone. Plus, she may be eager to spend time with little Sai...”

The father in law looked at Sai Gopal and then turned to Pankajam,

“If he says so, then stay at home. But we may get late at night.”

“It is okay. Manama is a very safe city... and I don’t plan to step out of the house anyway”, Pankajam replied to her husband.

Mr Sundaram, Mrs Pankajam Sundaram with little Sai Gopal. 

Dwarkanadh knew that the main reason his mother in law didn’t want to come for dinner was because his friend was a “Sai devotee”. Pankajam was an orthodox and staunch follower of Vaishnavism and she considered Vishnu as the only supreme Godhead. She naturally didn’t want to be associated to a ‘person’ who was adored as an Avatar of Shiva! This was possibly the reason why she preferred to address her grandson as ‘Gopal’ leaving out the ‘Sai’ prefix.

Mr. N.R.Dwarkanadh, on the other hand, was a sincere devotee of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. In fact, a couple of years before in February 1981, he had founded the first Sai Samithi in Bahrain along with a few other devotees. When a son was born to him in February 1982, it was natural that the parents christened him with the prefix ‘Sai’. The doting grandparents, Dwarkanadh’s in-laws, had travelled from the Indian capital New Delhi to Manama to attend the boy’s first birthday. The father in law had taken to Swami the way a fish takes to water. But Pankajam had her reservations against dining at a Sai devotee’s place!

Thus it was on the evening of 17th of March, 1983, Dwarkanadh, his wife and his father in law left for the friend’s place at about 7:30 pm. Pankajam and the year-old Sai Gopal stayed back at home.

Unexpected visitor

Grandmother and grandchild spent a couple of happy hours in each other's company. Past dinnertime, the child seemed to get hungry. Pankajam fetched the feeding bottle and started giving milk to her grandson. Gopal contentedly settled with the bottle in his cradle, suckling at it with gusto. That was when there was a knock on the door.

Pankajam ignored it at first. She didn’t know anyone in Bahrain and so, the house could practically be considered locked as far as any visitor was concerned. However, the visitor was quite persistent with the knocking. Pankajam thought that it was her son in law’s cousin and his wife who were staying next door. They might have come to check on her to see that she was fine. The knocking continued and finally, Pankajam rose from the chair at the dining table. She walked to the door. She unlocked the door and opened it. Instantly, she realized that she had been totally wrong in her guess of who it might be. Her face turned pale and she instinctively moved to slam the door shut. So fast was her reaction that she hurt her hand in the process.

                                                                  *************

The best gift a parent can seek for a child - Bhakti (devotion)

December 15, 2015

The day turned out to be a landmark one in this lifetime of mine. Poetically speaking, it was the day when a soul in the heavens above decided that Pooja (my wife) and I would be the appropriate beings as its parents in its earthly sojourn. Prosaically speaking, it was the day when I became father to a baby girl. But however prosaically you may state that, the experience is always poetic! I felt a thrill like never before and my first sounds were similar to the ones that the baby made -

“Oooooooo...Awwwwwwww”.

The innocence, detachment and purity with which the baby seemed to look at everyone around reminded me so strongly of my dear Swami.  So, the first thing I felt like doing, even before carrying the baby or cuddling her, was to gently touch the lotus feet. Ah! How soft they were and so similar to Swami’s. It was indescribable divine joy.

The baby is the easiest and closest that anyone can come to experiencing the Divine. With a baby, you become like a baby!

As parents, you want to give your child the best things in life. But what is the best thing in life? Both Pooja and I felt that the greatest gift we had received from our parents (and grandparents too in Pooja’s case) was ‘Love For God’. Having love for Swami is the greatest treasure, a bounteous blessing and the most intelligent investment that a parent can gift a child. And so, ever since we had come to know about the baby, all of us at home had the same prayer,

“Swami, let this child be one that will love you with all it’s heart...”

What’s in a name? Everything

Even as the baby grew from a single cell into an embryo, we began discussions on the choice of a name. The name is a very important part of life. It will possibly be the most-heard word for the being and therefore, it is vital that it be something inspirational and aspirational. No wonder that all societies in the world spend considerable time and effort in naming a new-born.

Our plan was to make a list of boy and girl names and then choose the most appealing one. Though we started like that, somewhere along the line the plan got changed into me naming the baby if it was a girl and Pooja naming it if it was a boy. Thus I began focusing on girl names. My pick was “Vibhuti”. Having sought vibhuti, the holy ash from Swami all my student life, I felt it was a perfect name because, more than anything else, it symbolised Swami’s prasadam (a gift blessed by God).

I had this feeling that Pooja was carrying a boy. That is when I discovered that ‘Vibhuti’ is a unisex name! Irrespective of the gender of the baby, ‘Vibhuti’ could be used. One day, I asked Pooja,

“What do you think about the name ‘Vibhuti’?”

She was silent.

“You like it? Or you don’t like it?”

“See, Vibhuti is a unisex name...”

“Exactly my point! If we agree on it, then we needn’t search further...”

She wasn’t in conformity. She wanted a female name for a girl or a male name for a boy. Unisex names didn’t appeal to her.

“We have decided na that if its a girl it's your choice and it's my choice if it's a boy?”

I agreed though I was feeling defeated because of my gut feeling that we were going to have a boy. In that case, Pooja would win the naming rights. Pooja was smiling with a gleam of victory. Intuitively, she also felt that she was carrying a boy and knew that she had already won in the ‘naming choice’.