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Life comes at you fast, and you don’t know when you are going to be broadsided by an incident or an accident. And when it rains, it pours, as the cliché goes. So it happened that last month I got news that my father, in India, had suffered a stroke. We expected that his heart would finally give out, having had a quadruple bypass surgery when he was 75. At 85, we expected he would go marching into his 90s when his heart would finally seek rest. But the brain had suffered damage now, and it is hard to see a strong man lie in bed and be taken care of as a child.
As I mulled going to India to see my father, an old lady broadsided my car causing $2500 in damage. Then our little son had to be rushed to the emergency room with wheezing caused by an allergic reaction to an anti-histamine drug. It is at such times that we begin either to curse God or seek God! In Kannada, my native tongue, we have an adage for this: “Sankata bandaaga, Venkataramana” – we remember Lord Venkata Ramana only when we are in distress.
Yes, it is indeed true that our hankering for the grace of God gathers speed when we are in distress. In our daily prayers at home, as almost all Hindus do, we chant a shloka or two, light a couple of lamps, and then hurry about our daily chores. But when pain, disappointment, or tragedy come visiting, we cry out in pain for the soothing balm of God’s grace.
I went three weeks ago to visit my father in Bangalore. There, I heard a heart-quickening story of a Parsi man receiving the grace of Sri Raghavendra Swami, the 17th century saint, considered an incarnation of Sri Prahlada, and who attained “Jeevan-Samadhi” in the town of Manchala, now Mantralayam, on the banks of the sacred Tungabhadra River.
Mantralayam, in Andhra Pradesh, and very close to the Karnataka border, is not as famous or as popular as Tirupati, also in Andhra Pradesh. But for the devotees of Sri Raghavendra Swami, Mantralayam, in the rather rocky, barren, dry Kurnool district is the lode stone that draws them regularly to worship and commitment to Guru Raghavendra.
It seems this Parsi man from Mumbai used to get severe stomach aches, and he had consulted every doctor and tried every medicine, to no avail. One day a friend suggested that he visit Mantralayam and seek the grace of Sri Raghavendra Swami, who is entombed in a “Brindavana” there. Thinking that he would lose nothing more than the cost of the trip to the place, he boarded a bus and reached the town. Renting a room in a nearby hotel and planning to stay a few days performing prayer rituals, of which he knew very little or nothing, the man was disturbed when on the second day, early morning, he felt someone trying to push him out of bed, saying “leave”. Going to the temple, feeling no let up in his stomach ache, he performs some rituals and returns to the hotel. The next morning, early, he feels the same, rather violent pushing and admonition to leave.
Bereft, confused, shaken, he packs his bag, and rushes to the bus stand where he boards the first bus that is about to leave. He is disoriented and shaken, and feeling lost and lonely. The bus is packed with pilgrims going to a nearby village where there is a fair and some religious celebrations taking place. He goes along, almost numb, and stands in line with others in front of a monk who is doling out “prasadam” and blessings. When his turn comes, the monk looks at him and says, “So, did Rayaru (Sri Raghavendra Swami) send you here?” The dazed Parsi just nods dumbly. The monk asks him if he has anything in his pocket. The man fishes out a couple of “Gelusil” tablets that he has, tablets he keeps handy for dealing with his stomach ache. The monk takes those tablets in his hands, closes his eyes, makes a prayer, and hands them back to the Parsi. “Take these, eat them, and you will be fine. Go home now.”
As a Parsi, he now wears a trinket ring on his finger with Sri Raghavendra Swami’s picture. He is completely rid of his stomach aches. An uncle of mine asked the man, how come, as a Parsi, he was a devotee of Sri Raghavendra Swami, and the story the man told my uncle, which in turn I heard, tells us that the grace of God and His avatars are bestowed in a manner we cannot fathom. We call this “karma” in Hindu thought, don’t we?
I remember visiting Mantralyam as an eight-year old when my father, a civil engineer, was posted at a work camp called Sirwar in the Raichur district of Karnataka, close to the Andhra border. We hopped into his jeep and did the fairly short journey on back roads to reach the other side of Mantralayam, across the Tungabhadra river. Crossing the river then was in the old-fashioned way – in a “Hari-golu” – a round contraption of a boat that literally and slowly spun across the river, guided by the boatman using a long pole. Mantralayam then was a pristine, beautiful place, and one could enter the sanctorum and get close “darshan” of the Brindavana. Having a dip in the Tungabhadra was an exhilarating experience.
I visited Mantralayam again about ten years ago, and was aghast at how the town had grown crowded and cramped, and the pristine river bank had become an open-air toilet. “Why Guru Raghavendra Swami, do you allow your devotees, your bhaktas to so abuse your abode?” I chided to myself. I found the beautiful open temple had now been barricaded with iron railings that seemed like death traps in the event of a fire or a stampede. My darshan of Sri Raghavendra Swami was thus clouded by these concerns about the “outer,” and my prayers most probably therefore had little power in them.
I told my father, lying in bed like a baby now, about the story of the Parsi who was blessed by the grace of Sri Raghavendra Swami. My father began to cry. Not much into God or piety, having left that to my mother, my father now, somehow, saw the beauty of God’s grace, and the generosity of Sri Raghavendra Swami.
Life does come at you fast, and when it does, recalling God’s grace might help salve our wounds somewhat.
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