1990-08-08 - "Tell them goodbye!"

All the students could take trays of hard-boiled candy or similar toffees with containers of cloves, yellow rice (uncooked rice grains mixed with turmeric powder) and peeled roasted groundnuts for Your blessings on their birthdays. The trays and boxes for the cloves and yellow rice would be supplied by the Hostel "altar boys". The "birthday boys" were supposed to contact them a couple of days earlier, collect the paraphernalia, and return them the next day neatly. Yellow rice would be supplied by the kitchen. Cloves etc would be available in the Hostel stores. You would remove the bud of the clove before eating, so some of us would remove the clove buds while offering to You. Making the birthday tray ready in this manner would take quite a while, arranging the cloves, groundnuts, yellow rice and toffees on a tray covered with a decorative cloth.

The "birthday boys" would be made to sit in the first row on the Mandir portico, leaving from the Hostel half an hour earlier. The Primary School birthday boys would also sit with the Higher Secondary School and college boys in the front row on the portico, while the Primary School birthday girls would be seated near their teachers in the first row of their block. The protocol was that when You came for darshan, if You came towards the "birthday boys", all of them would get up on their knees, lifting up their trays. You would bless them by showering them with the yellow rice, maybe take a clove or groundnut kernel, take fistfuls of candy and throw it to everyone there. Then, the birthday boys could show You some photos, Your portraits, along with a pen or sketch pen or marker pen, and You would autograph them. Sometimes, You would say, "Only birthday boys", so the others wouldn't get their photos signed. Sometimes, You would keep signing till all the photos offered by all those seated in the front were signed. Some would also try to offer good marker pens for You to sign with, in case the pen brought by some small children did not write properly.

In this photo taken in 1991-'92, You're giving 'mithai' to some other students.

This was the setting for You to speak to me for the first time. Parents had come to visit, so it was customary for students to tell You, "Parents have come, Swami" hoping that You may say, "I will call tomorrow" or "Call them" and have a family interview. But sometimes, You would give answers like "Tell them good morning" or "Tell them goodbye" instead of just ignoring the submission of the student. And that was what He had told me, "Goodbye cheppu". Since I didn't know Telugu at that time, I asked around for finding out what He had said, and what it meant. Due to the accent of the person who explained it to me, I thought You had said "Tell them, good boy", and that's what I reported to my parents, who were happy with that! It was only many years later that I realized You had said "Tell them goodbye!" In my case, the "tell them goodbye" had a literal meaning, because I wished to stay back with You, and had alerted parents about this before I finished school.

There was an interesting aside which happened later, before I had actually started working as an employee here. My parents consulted an old-school astrologer and asked him to give them a summary of my future. Whether it is purely by the calculations and rituals they do, or whether they have some psychic powers, for whatever reason, some adepts are able to give fairly accurate "most probable scenarios". This astrologer told them that I would be "with Guru throughout his life" and that I would "have a late marriage". That was nice to hear, when I heard about this much later, after I got my job. Of course, You would often "overrule the stars" (Why worry about the Navagrahas when My Anugraha is with you?) as in the case of one of our teachers RK who had narrated his "marriage" story. If I remember correctly, his father had come to know that RK's marriage would be held in one particular month, according to astrological predictions. But RK was with You, and were not interested in "getting married and moving away from You". This matter had remained between RK and his father, not mentioned to anybody, but You kept "teasing" RK that entire month, with various "marriage related" questions, jokes, and even "scoldings". RK would keep saying, "No, Swami, I just want to be with You." At the end of that month, finally, when RK again reiterated that he did not want to marry, he wanted only to be with You, You finally said, "All right", and stopped the marriage saga. Among many many others, there is also the story of the "youth from Kerala" whose astrological danger was mitigated by You in the 1960s, as narrated by Mr. Raw. 

 

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