Hyderabad, April 26: When I am asked about the time when I became Bhagawan Sathya Sai’s devotee, it reminds of the day when as a 6-year-old I saw this picture of a person in an orange robe with an Afro hairstyle lovingly smiling at me.
I wondered who he was and why so many people were singing such beautiful songs in praise of him … such was his aura that even when I was a naughty 6-year-old he managed to make me sit quietly and listen to bhajans for almost an hour.
I remember being lost in the pleasant smell of incense and vibhuti. That was my first contact with Bhagawan Sai.
It was after this incident that my father, an Army officer, was posted at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh in 1988 and we met dad’s friend who was also an old devotee of Sai’s. With him our frequency of attending Sai bhajans started increasing. It was during this tenure of dad in Meerut that we became Sai devotees.
As a 7-year-old I started singing bhajans and participated in Narayana seva which included feeding the poor and helping them with clothes and shelter. My most memorable experience as a Satya Sai Seva Dal member was providing medical relief to the people of far-flung areas of Majuli (The world’s largest is river island in the Brahmaputra river in Assam, India) where for six months of the year the people remain submerged in water and are mostly afflicted by water-borne diseases.
With almost no means of reaching this area, we Sai devotees made it to the island by a ferry and subsequently a rickety bus with only one purpose in our minds: seva. Baba is a God to us and our lives revolve around him.
He may not be with us in his physical form but his presence in our life would always be there guiding us and inspiring us always as our Divine Parent.
–Agencies