2023 – The Year That Was

Places
impact you
for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different
people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual
experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally,
every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply
spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has
emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this
year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited
recently.


I began
this year
with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a
relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt,
but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh.
It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few
hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There
was an indefinable connect with the sculptures which brought the temple alive.


In February,
I visited our kula deivam or family temple, at Nainar Koil in
Ramanathapuram district of Tamilnadu. I attended the Shivaratri programme at
the temple, staying awake through the night as abhishekam was performed to Lord
Shiva. The night is divided into four quarters and the second quarter’s
abhishekam is traditionally performed by our extended family. Some more family
members had gathered for this auspicious occasion, and as I sat awake, watching
the abhishekam being performed, chanting the Rudram, there was another kind of spiritual
connect I experienced. This one was very different. There was a sense of belonging,
as well as a sense of responsibility, of keeping this tradition alive.

In March, I
had another kind of spiritual experience, one where I went with a group of
friends to Pandharpur where we sat in the mandap in front of the Lord and sang
songs in his praise. I have written about that experience on the blog here. This
was a totally new experience for me, and I was deeply moved by the act of
singing in the hall where many great saints had sung, and where the Lord had appeared
in front of them.

In April, I
went to my father’s ancestral home town of Kadathur near Palani, also in
Tamilnadu. The occasion was the inauguration of a new temple to house an
ancient bronze sculpture of Nataraja. This experience was once again unique,
because this is a temple and a village we had completely lost connect with, since
my great-grandfather had moved out when he was young, and no one ever went back.
I have been visiting the village and the temple since 2002 and have experienced
a deep sense of coming home every time. This time, the feeling was stronger,
since, for the very first time, we stayed back for the night in the village, at
a distant relative’s home. I was deeply conscious that I was the first person
from my family to have stayed at the village in over probably 150 years.


In May, we
travelled to Binsar. This was our annual family holiday, and the aim was to
relax. While there were many highlights of this trip, the spiritual connect
happened at Jageshwar. We had visited the temple on an earlier visit more than
a decade back, so Samhith and Shankar decided to stay back in the resort, while
I decided to go to the temple again, mostly to see the museum which I had
missed on our earlier visit. The museum was of course outstanding, and I loved
every minute I spent there. Visiting the temple was a very standard temple
experience, nothing to talk about. However, it was as I was walking around the
temple, clicking pictures, that the spiritual connect happened, through a
random stranger who was chanting Rudram. I joined him in chanting as I continued
to click photos, and suddenly, there was a deep sense of connection that
happened in the midst of the chanting. I simply sat down and continued to chant
for the next half an hour or so, simply basking in the experience.

In June came
our trip to Vaishnodevi, and the connect there was completely different, which
happened on the walk to the temple and standing outside the entrance to the
original cave. I have written about that experience in detail here.

From July to
October
, I was busy with studies (for those who don’t know, I am doing an MA in
philosophy) and other things, and travel took a backseat. However, the spiritual
connection happened through the books I was reading, especially the Viveka
Chudamani by Adi Shankara, which is part of one of my papers. Shankara’s verses
are not only beautifully composed, they are also deep and thought provoking,
though he makes it sound so simple to connect with Brahman. This period was
also marked with festivals, which kept the spiritual connection alive and busy!

In November,
I made a trip to Puttaparthi, in Andhra Pradesh, the abode of Sathya Sai Baba, my
spiritual mentor. I attended the akhand bhajan for his birthday, during
which people sang bhajans for 24 hours continuously. While I didn’t have the
energy to sit for the entire stretch, I managed to sit for quite long stretches
during the day and parts of the night. This was another beautiful experience of
namasmarana, singing the name of the Lord. Here, the bhakti of the singers was
palpable, and made my connect with Swami all the more effortless.

Also in
November
, Shankar and I visited Bidar, in Karnataka. Our main destination was
the Jungle Lodges resort, and seeing Blackbucks. We also visited Solapur, Tujapur
and the Naldurg fort. However, the highlight turned out to be a tiny temple
which wasn’t even on the plan. We heard of this temple at the resort when they
screened a video about Bidar and its surroundings. It was en route to Solapur,
so we decided to stop along the way. A temple built during the Kalyani Chalukya
period, it seemed to be a precursor to the more elaborate temples of the Hoysalas.
It is a temple dedicated to Lord Siva, at a place called Jalasangvi, and once
again, I connected with the sculptures here, which made my day!


This brings
me to December,
and the trip I have just returned from, to Dharampur. Dharampur
is in Gujarat, near Valsad, and is home to the Srimad Rajchandra Mission,
founded by Pujya Gurudev Sri Rakeshji. I had heard of them since some time, and
appreciated the work they are doing, so I joined my husband and a group of his
friends to visit the ashram. There is a beautiful temple to Mahavir, and to
Rajchandraji, at the highest point of the ashram. While the temple is built in
the traditional style, the other buildings in the ashram are absolutely modern,
with a cuboid theme. Both, the modern and traditional architecture are
excellent, and worth a second, and third, and fourth look. However, while I loved
the architecture, it wasn’t the temple I connected with, but the massive seva activities
the organisation does. We visited the 250 bed hospital, which is not only up to
date with the latest technology, but built with the idea of serving everyone. Built
in an area where access to good medical care is difficult, the hospital treats the
locals for free, or at the most, a minimal charge. They have outreach
programmes wherein they visit the villages and treat people, and bring those who
need further attention to the hospital. From the design of the hospital, to the
way it functions, it an example of compassion shining through seva.

If this was
impressive,
even more impressive is their upcoming animal hospital, which can
treat 150 large and small animals at once. They already have a functioning
hospital, albeit a small one, and an outreach programme where they visit farmers
and treat their animals at home. The new hospital will make medical care for
animals more accessible and affordable for everyone in the area. They not only
take in pets, but also strays, and arrangements are being made in the hospital to
house abandoned animals. Compassion for humans is seen in a lot of places, but
to see it for animals is truly touching.

Compassion and
love
is seen in every aspect of the mission and the ashram – from the visionary
thoughts to the planning and execution.

This was
another kind of spiritual connect
, one that took me back to twenty years back,
when I first became aware of the service projects of the Sathya Sai Seva
organisations. Then, my father-in-law and husband were part of the water projects
happening around Karjat, and I was simply tagging along. As I saw the
activities and their impacts, the first spiritual connect happened, and my love
for Swami grew, and I became more and more connected with him and his
activities. This last weekend, seeing the activities at Dharampur, once again I
enjoyed that experience of a spiritual connect through seva.

My hands
have been itching
since I returned from Dharampur, wanting to write about my experience,
but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about. Most of my thoughts are too
personal to share at the moment, and I am not in the mood to simply write about
the place like an informative post. I spent most of yesterday mulling about thoughts
I wanted to share, and not getting anywhere. Then, last night, I had a conversation
with my sister, and the topic of spiritual connect came up. We spoke about how
this connection can happen in the most unexpected ways at unexpected places. Then,
this morning, I woke up, and knew just what I wanted to write about. It seemed
an appropriate end-of-the-year post, to reflect over the year that it has been
for me, through my travels.

Besides, in
November
, the blog completed 16 years. It has been quite a journey, and I wanted
to write a post to commemorate it.  I have
come a long way since then. What I wrote about then is not necessarily what I want
to write about now, and I certainly don’t write as often as I used to. But then,
this space is for me to share my thoughts as they come up, and that has not
changed. At this point, all I hope and pray for, is that I continue to travel
and write and share the thoughts of my wandering mind with all of you.

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