1990-05-30 - Family background

You have been with us over many lives, as You mentioned to Sri Chakravarthi, "l may be new to you. You are old to Me". So, Your hand can been seen, with my mother surviving as an extremely premature baby due to my grandmother's dogged determination, my father getting educated with a grant from the Queen consort after his father passed away, leaving them in penury, when he was just beginning his teens. My father attributes his devotion to Vadakkunnathan in his formative years as one of the factors which brought us to You.

The Vadakkunnathan (Lord Shiva) temple at Thrissur.

Though my maternal grandfather was a senior scientist and paternal grandfather was a senior government functionary, my grandmothers did not have formal education beyond the primary level. My maternal grandmother learnt many languages on her own, by living in various parts of India and speaking in those languages, and my paternal grandmother was home-schooled so that she enjoyed reading literature in English as well as Malayalam. My mother was a poet at heart, though she was trained as a doctor, who loved (and loves) books. Our house had hundreds of books when we grew up, and Mother would read to my sister and I before we started reading on our own - her love for reading certainly rubbed off on us.

For seven years after my parents' marriage, they did not have children. Many years later, my mother learnt about an ultimatum given by my father to Lord Ayyappan, whom he used to worship with the arduous pilgrimage to Sabarimala every year. He told the Lord, "If I don't get a child, I will not be coming to Sabarimala next year onwards!" And the Lord made sure that my sister was born within a year! I followed a couple of years later, as an unexpected bonus, perhaps, when my parents were in the UK for a few months for my father's FRCS exams. Though my sister started speaking even before she started walking, by the age of one year or so, I refused to speak proper sentences even at a later age, even after I turned 2 years old. I was a fussy child too, not comfortable with strangers. My parents took me to the Mookambika temple. Apparently I co-operated very nicely with the temple priest there, when he wrote 'Aum' or something on my tongue, and within a short time, began speaking. Another thing was that I had a feature on my forehead, a birthmark of sorts, which would be seen like a red 'tilak' as a vertical line at the centre of my forehead, but be visible only sometimes. All this to indicate that You had specially blessed me even before we started coming to Prasanthi Nilayam.

We started coming to You as a family, visiting Prasanthi Nilayam and or Brindavan several times a year after 1978-'79, after my mother read 'Sai Baba - Man of Miracles' by Howard Murphet which she picked up from a Railway station book shop, "Higginbotham's". She read it, passed it on to my father, both of them felt drawn to You, and we started visiting You almost every Onam and Christmas when we children had school holidays. Every Thursday and Sunday, we would have bhajans at home with my mother, sister and I participating. Later, my father also joined in, and the bhajans shifted to Thursday and Monday to avoid clashing with the Sunday evening movie on television!

Up to 1985, when she passed away in her early 90s, my father's mother, along with her sister, lived with us. Both of them lived very God-centred lives, doing a set sequence of Japa and scripture reading every day, for most of the day. Having my grandmother live with us encouraged us children to be trained in the conventional religious outlook - offer a flower every morning and evening at the altar after bathing, sitting down for a quick prayer, saying a prayer before sleep. As a small child, when I had issues with bed-wetting and nightmares/difficulty in falling asleep, Mother would sit patiently beside me and talk me to sleep with positive affirmations which gradually got rid of my issues.

Next: My first month as a Sai student

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