1996-06-18 - Tuesday - backstage moments during daily Discourses

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Photo of Brindavan of the 1970s from https://sssmediacentre.org/sai-inspires/?date=2025-10-24

1996-06-16 - Sunday - Saw the quote: "Don’t waste a single moment in idle or loose living" & thought day would be full of work. Setting up mics etc. with Damu, Anil Kumar & Balaji till 11.45 (probably in Mandir, for the daily Discourses from this evening). Lunch kept (for me in the room) by CSNK, then video camera struggle for adapter connection - lost cord - tried many stunts, even adjustable power supply from college - all failed. Some flash, smoke, etc. but working on battery. Tiffin - hifi pizza & sweet beaten rice, after discourse Vishwanath Sir’s Thermodynamics class. Study hrs putting slips to Xerox Yariv & Milloni.

During discourse, beginning & middle of speeches, couldn’t increase volume - feedback. Problem was, Swami’s mic & translator cable had been exchanged! Swami’s mic was open during speeches! (C.G. & V.C.)

Damu (one year senior to me in MSc Physics, and then he joined 1st year MBA for my 2nd PG) and I were tasked by Dr KBR Prasad to sit in the bhajan hall near the mixer and audio cassette tape recorder, and change the tape whenever it was nearing the end of one side. We were not relying on the auto-reverse mechanism, since we would like to do it manually during a slightly long section of English translation, so that Swami's words would not be lost. We also had a system of having one C90 tape and one C60 tape, so that what was missed on the 60-minute tape would be captured on the 90-minute tape, and so on.  Sometime later, Japanese devotees asked us to record speeches by students and the Discourses on Mini-Disc. Nearly ten years later, I would use these recordings for broadcast on Radio Sai.


1996-06-17 - Monday - Tomorrow onwards classes rescheduled - 8:30 am to 2:30 pm, (so that we can) rest before going to Mandir (so that we can be attentive during the Discourse). Mr. Greaves (probably David Gries?) not taking SE (probably Software Engineering) for us - too busy. Vishwanath sir full steam, thermodynamics! Not actual course of Statistical Physics. Sky still overcast, evening drizzle. Gave xeroxing job to Sampath, (who is) going tomorrow.


1996-06-18 - Tuesday - Mr. Balasubramaniam - still going slow - asynch & synch transmission... Sikka Sir did not take so tried to install DOS 6.2 in S4's machine. Erased C:\DOS, so had to get attrib.exe & erase command.com, io.sys & msdos.sys using -r-h-s. Then, while dblspace compression was going on, power failed & so (reached) hostel (only) at 3 o'clock. Lunch also due to power failure. 

After discourse (Sai sir was saying "Superb", Swami came by & (asked), "How was it?" Sai Sir joined thumb & forefinger, while going, You blessed all after "Loka Samasta" and went) put up 2 25W horns facing the gate to cover the centre area. Kushala, Balaji, SAK, DAK went up on the L&T scaffoldings. Till 7:30 pm.




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