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Parthi Update
Dear Brother
Sairam. Even before we start our update for this week, let us share with you a very, very good news. 14 students from the II PG Courses who had applied for the GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering – an examination taken by Engineers and Post Graduate Students of Science for pursuing their further studies like M.Tech.) examinations this February, have secured All India Ranks and have a percentile above 90%.
The greatest honour to our Institute is done by Sri E. Naresh Kumar from the II M.Sc.(P) class who has secured (hold your heart!!) the All India First Rank!!! This is a matter of great pride for all of us and we must congratulate all these budding intellectual masters who have brought pride to our entire Sai Student fraternity!!
Another point to be noted is that, whereas their counterparts elsewhere would have gone through elaborate coaching and 24 hours of mugging, these heroes have followed the rigorous routine of our Hostel, participated in all extra curricular activities and still reached the top! Once again, hats off to all of them!!
More interesting is the events that followed this evening at the Mandir. Sorry you’ll have to read further on to know about it in the 15th March update at the end. We now present to you the 14 heroes of our II PG batch!!
10-03-2005
This evening Bhagawan came out for Darshan at 3.35 p.m. He sat on the sofa outside until 4.25 p.m. and then went into the interview room. Bhajans were held as usual.
11th of March was a dry day for Prasanthinilayam as there was no Darshan full day. 12th morning too went past without His Darshan. However 12th evening Bhagawan came out for Darshan; spent some time in the interview room and retired at 4.45 p.m.
Well, on the 12th evening, there was a very special event at the Institute and this will be of great interest to all of you. Hence we share this news with great joy and thrill! For the past, more than a year, several of our Institute and School Alumni students have been working hard to realize a great dream. The dream is to have a comprehensive Sai Student website that will truly serve as a web to which all students can hold on to with our dear Mother Sai right at the centre providing succor to all of us!!
The efforts started way back with brother T.N. Giridhar and Biju Mukund contributing their best to this cause. Later several other students, across the globe, well accomplished in their own professions, got together to further these efforts. Today we have a strong cross functional team of geographically spread members of diverse professions working together on this grand project. To name a few, we have Sri Aneesh from USA, Sri Amit from U.K., Sri G. Srinivas from USA and a number of senior students from Bangalore, some of them being, Sri Srihari Boregowda, Dr. B. Raghavendra Prasad, Sri Vidyadhar, Sri Manu Rao, Sri N.V. Shankar, Sri S.R. Mahendra, Sri B.S. Vija Sai, Sri K. Sudhakar, Sri D. Anil Kumar and others.
All of them have put in their heart and soul to bring the website to a stage wherein it is now ready for launching. As part of the pre-launching formalities, the expert team had made a presentation of the website, its purpose, content, technicalities, etc. to Mr. Narasimhamoorthy – Warden of the Brindavan Hostel and the other faculty members at Brindavan on the 3rd of March. Mr. Narasimhamoorthy was all praise for the hard work and the others too shared their appreciation and joy.
12th evening, they had slotted the presentation in the Audio Visual Room of our Institute at Prasanthinilayam. The Principal, Prof. U.S. Rao, Prof. Sudhir Bhaskar, The Warden Dr. Siva Sankar Sai and many of us were present to witness the outcome of days of hard work. For around 2 hours plus, we all were glued to our seat witnessing the long felt dream coming to a reality. To start with, the team members made an excellent presentation on all aspects of the website.
The website has been designed very comprehensively, professionally and the presentation too was very professional. All the team members were very nostalgic of their good old days at the Institute and with Bhagawan. In fact, the coming together of so many members at one place for this task was a great achievement by itself – all due to His Grace! This was the strong feeling in everybody’s heart. Without His Sankalpa, all this could never have happened.
Allow us to share a few striking points about the website that made an impact on all of us. The level to which every detail has been worked out is marvelous! As the saying goes, “No detail is too small to be ignored”. For example, the selection of the colour of the site had so much significance attached to it. When we first looked at the colour, it looked very pleasing and soothing. But when we were told the symbolic meaning, we were thrilled! The background colour is velvet – the colour of Swami’s Convocation robe and the letters are all smoke grey – which is the colour of Vibhuti!!
The purpose of the site was stated as “The purpose of this site is to effectively network alumni of Sai Educational Institutions to be part of Swami’s Mission, relive the student memories and help one another to implement the Convocation Oath”. This was very striking because all the members of the team felt that every word of our Institute oath was pregnant with meaning and purpose and realizing that purpose is possibly all that a Sai Student needs to do to make our Swami happy! Easier said than done – but that must be our constant endeavour.
At the end of the presentation, we had a discussion. Some suggestions were made. Now that the green signals have been procured from the senior members of the Institute, they propose to go ahead with the next step. That is to get it Blessed by Bhagawan. As you may know, Swami had already Blessed it on an earlier occassion. But then it was in its embryonic stage. Once Swami Blesses it, they plan to launch it as soon as possible, so that the 80th Birthday activities of the alumni can be coordinated on this very platform!
Let us wish the team all the best and we hope that the launching gets going asap. Once that is done, we would like to merge all our individual groups and sites onto the Sai Student site, which will be like a mighty ocean!!
13-03-2005
Being a Sunday, we all had gone for morning Darshan. The clock ticked by and it was 9.00 a.m. Bhajans started. We almost lost hope of having His Darshan and then suddenly at 9.05 a.m., Swami gave us a pleasant surprise by emerging out of PC. He took a full round and then to our delight, He came and sat down on the sofa placed at the centre of the dais. Bhajans went on till 9.50 a.m. and we had a fantastic 45 minutes Blissful Darshan of the Lord!!
In the evening, He came out at 3.25 p.m. He sat down on the sofa and started interacting with the Warden. The III UG students were ready with their Gratitude Programme this evening. In fact, they had been trying on so many occasions to present their programme. Swami had even Blessed their card but they had not been able to manage a slot. This evening, finally, their prayers were answered.
Their presentation was titled “Nuvvu Unte Chalu” – “It’s Enough if You are There”. The introductory song based on this theme was catchy and the lyrics were very meaningful. The first scene was a skit showing a dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna. The skit shows Lord Krishna Blessing Duryodhana with all wealth and prosperity inspite of him accusing and insulting Krishna. On the other hand, a Brahmin devotee who sincerely prays to Krishna is Blessed with the death of his only cow, which was the main source of income for him.
Arjuna is totally confused. Then Lord Krishna explains that He had given Duryodhana all the wealth and had thus moved him even farther away from Him, whereas by putting an end to the cow, He had enabled the Brahmin to get over his attachment to the cow and come closer to Himself! For the Brahmin, it was enough if Krishna was there. Nuvvu Unte Chalu….
In the next module, several students expressed their gratitude in words and poems, in different languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Hindi, Kannada, Nepali…
This was followed by the song – Love is so wonderful – so wonderful Love.
It’s so high, we can’t get over it… It’s so deep, we can’t get under it…. It’s so wide, we can’t get around it…
With each song, two students would go to Swami with a Card and Bhagawan would read through each of those letters and cards and Bless them profusely! The presentation concluded at 4.35 p.m. with group photographs. Bhagawan was so compassionate that He stood up and posed for the group photos. He then called each character of the skit and spoke to them individually. Prasadam was distributed to all and Bhajans began at 4.45 p.m. At 5.10 p.m. Swami took Aarti and retired for the day.
14-03-2005
The Golf Cart moved out with Swami at 3.20 p.m. He got down at the centre of the dais and walked up the steps to the sofa. Today was to be a great day for several students. He called one by one a number of students and spoke to them. At 3.40 p.m., He stopped the Vedam Chanting. This evening was to be a student speeches day. Six lucky boys got a chance to express their thoughts in the Divine Presence.
The first one to speak was Sri Amrit Thapa a student of the II M.A. class. He gave a 20 minute talk expressing very thoughtful and noble ideas. The main theme was the Grace of the Lord. He said that the Grace of the Lord was like the sun and it was our clouds of ignorance that covered the same. Grace of God is like water and anybody can collect it so long as we keep our vessels upright.
Divine Grace, he said, could come in any manner – in most unexpected ways. Brother Amrit narrated the story of the drowning man who ignored the help offered by the boatman and even by the pilot of the helicopter. For in his opinion, God would come directly to save him. Later, during his interaction with God in heaven, He realizes his folly for not having perceived God in the boatman and the pilot.
Talking about the functional aspects of Grace, he said that God’s Grace works just like the morphine injection which makes you numb to the pain and you do not feel it though it is there. Grace of God postpones the Karmic effect to a point beyond which the pain is not felt, just like a tablet which is consumed after the expiry date. God also cancels the Karmic consequences by experiences in the dream state. Thus His Grace could flow in a variety of ways, concluded the spaeker!
The next speaker was brother Jagannadan from the II M.Tech. class. He spoke in Sanskrit – impromptu and delighted all of us with his lucid style and rendering of classical songs. The third speaker was Sri Anshuman Das, a I Year M.Sc.(P) student. It happened to be his birthday and Bhagawan gave him the gift of talking in His Presence! It was his first experience and he spoke about Mother’s Love.
He began his talk saying that one promise that everything in this world makes is that ‘it will come to an end’. The only exception is Love for Love is eternal, ever to stay! He spoke about the Grama Seva and how it all began by a mother’s heart touching the Divine Mother’s heart!
He also quoted a fascinating experience that he had in Brindavan during his school days. When they had visited Brindavan as a class, few years back, they had prepared some group songs. Among them were the songs O Sai Maa and Mother of Mine. To make the song shorter, brother Anshuman, a musician himself, had fused the two songs together, cutting one stanza – Maa Bachon Ki Jaan Hoti Hai…from the first song.
When they sang this fusion song in front of Swami, as they reached the point where the first song gets truncated and the second comes in, Swami asked them as to why they had skipped the next stanza. The boys did not know what to say. Then Bhagawan repeated the lines - Maa Bachon Ki Jaan Hoti Hai…Wo Hote Hai Kismatwale… Bhagawan said, “Without this stanza the song has no meaning”. This is the importance that Swami gives to Mother’s Love!
The fourth speaker was brother Ganesh from the Diploma in Indian Culture and Philosophy class. He is the one who dances very often in many programmes in the Kulwant Hall. He spoke for around 10 minutes followed by Sri Karthik Prashant of the II M.Tech. class. Brother Karthik again spoke of the Love of Bhagawan and gave an example of how when a team of children on hearing Swami say that their hairstyle was not good, had tonsured their heads, Bhagawan was so happy with their prompt response that He gave them an interview everyday for the rest of their stay in Prasanthinilayam!
The final speaker was Sri Vijay Subramanyam Prasad from the II M.Sc.(M) class. Very scholarly in his English language and adept in his poetic skills, the speaker captured our attention for the next twenty minutes with his fascinating talk. He spoke about Bhagawan saying that test is His taste. He said that every test is a pretext for God to confer on the devotee the taste of His Love!
Bhagawan calls us Bangarus but our mind jumps like the kangaroos! Life is a canvas that can induce many an emotional stroke. We must love the Lord’s uncertainty because Love is His certainty – were some of his poetic and thought provoking statements!
He concluded with a beautiful experience of how Bhagawan clarified a doubt that he had in his mind. When Swami in one of His Discourses said that we should always look at the positive side of things, brother Vijay wondered what positive aspect could he see in the recent disaster of the Tsunami. As this doubt nagged him, from within came a clear voice that asked him to focus his attention on the second Tsunami and not just the first one! There were two Tsunamis that occurred one after the other! One without and one within!!
The first Tsunami brought out the fury of Nature whereas the second Tsunami brought out the best in Human Nature. The first one caused huge tidal waves across 2 continents whereas the second one bound all the continents with its love and compassion for the victims. The first one occurred due to shift of tectonic plates under the sea while the second one occurred due to movement of the hearts within millions of people. The first one led people to believe that God is Nowhere but the second one helped people to believe that God is Now Here!!
He concluded his talk amidst loud applause. Bhagawan Blessed each speaker at the end of his talk and also clapped for all of them. Bhajans began at 5.10 p.m. and at 5.15 p.m. Swami took Aarti and proceeded towards the Poornachandra Auditorium leaving us spell bound with the noble and loving thoughts shared by all our dear brothers.
15-03-2005
This evening, Swami came out for Darshan and went away into the interview room. The I PG boys who had secured the top ranks in the GATE exam were seated in front to seek Swami’s Blessings. After 4.00 p.m., they went into the Bhajan Hall and sat in the front. Around 4.45 p.m. when Swami entered the Bhajan Hall, He started asking for Naresh Kumar. Brother Naresh went forward. He was the one who secured the All India first rank in the GATE exam for M.Sc.(Physics).
Swami was beaming with joy looking at all His bright children. He spoke to brother Naresh for some time. Then Bhagawan called the Primary School Headmistress and asked her if there were any erstwhile Primary School Children among them. Indeed there were a few. One of the boys got up and mentioned to Swami that there were quite a few who had studied from our Primary School!!
Subsequently, Bhagawan was enquiring from Sri Sai Surendranath – School Teacher and Tabla Maestro, as to what the Government would give them. Would they receive any cash award or any other prize? Bhagawan was told that all that they would get was a certificate. Swami was very concerned. He said that if the Government would not reward them, He Himself would honour and award them!
After the Aarti, as Swami sat in the Golf Cart, He called for Sai Sir and gave him some instructions. Accordingly, the former Vice Chancellor, Sri S.V. Giri made an announcement. He shared the good news about our boys securing top All India Ranks in the Gate exam. He said that these students would be honoured and rewarded by Bhagawan in a special ceremony to be held in Sai Kulwant Hall tomorrow evening at 3.30 p.m!!
So we’re eagerly waiting to witness this unique – first of its kind – ceremony in the Divine Presence. We’ll append the details of tomorrow evening’s ceremony onto this same update. Therefore, kindly visit this update once again on the 17th.
Sairam A Anantha Vijaya sent on 16.03.2005 |
