Something has just changed in me
Background:
Lord Ganesha is one amongst the many other divine powers worshipped regularly in India. He is the god incarnated in the form of Elephant head, four hands, a mouse as his career and endowed with a large belly.
Maharashtra is a province or state where he finds the highest density of followers (and probably the highest volumes) due to the great Indian freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak popularising Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations. It is one time of year when people just celebrate worshipping Lord Ganesha and forget everything else literally for 10 days. The celebration involves bringing the idol with much fanfare, establishing life in the God (in this idol) called Pranapratishtha through chanting of sacred hymns (Mantras), serving the god with best of food, pujas, clothing etc. and finally seeing him off (Visarjan) with invitation to come back again next year.
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The Story:
So this year, in 2017, we all at our home (me, my wife, son, daughter and team leader my Mom) decided that we too will like to have a personal Puja (worship) established at home. The saying goes that “once you have established the Puja at your home then you have to follow this practice for your whole life”. Lord Ganesha is worshipped for Intelligence, wisdom, skills and powers. Those who have experienced will never say this and those who haven’t will speak a lot about a variety of experiences; I dare say miraculous experiences of a large spectrum during and after these celebrations. I feel very happy in sharing mine J
Just a few hours ago while taking our Home Ganapati for Visarjan my phone with the puja flowers was thrown into the large truck meant to collect biodegradable puja stuff. We didn’t notice until in the evening I required it and then somehow my wife remembered that my phone must have been kept in the flowers bag meant to be disposed with the idol.
Now searching for a lost phone in the heap of a truckload of puja disposables in a heavy rainfall at 7 in the evening is something that is going to lead you nowhere, so thought my wife. I am a die-hard optimistic after becoming and Art of Living practitioner and Sri Sri took me into his team:) So I just said Jai Gurudev, kept cool and drove back a few kilometres to the site of Visarjan. The place was heavily jammed, it was raining cats and dogs and my wife was in her best of moods😜
We simply approached the truck, a few poor kids completely drenched in rains still searching for whatever best they may get out of the puja disposables to probably make a few bucks. We took a deep breath, braced ourselves for the worst news and asked one of them, “ did any one of you find a touch phone at this place today?”
A little girl Renuka as if god sent approached me,” uncle, was it a black smart phone”. “Yes beta,” we both exclaimed. “Come” she said and within a few minutes we were getting guided in a maze of temporary plastic sheet sewn shelters in a recently made slum. It was pitch dark, a few shelters had a small Chinese led lights, but mostly there were old age kerosene lamps as if we had suddenly reached the mumbai of 70's.
We reached a small hut, spoke a different language, called up someone and out of nowhere emerged a young woman and stood in front of us. We couldn’t even see her face. Even before we could say something, a hand was extended towards us with a phone. She held my phone, dry and well kept, everything in it intact as if nothing had changed.
She didn’t expect anything, yet we were profusely offering our hearty thanks and some cash that was in my pocket and asking where it was found etc. The kid who had found is Srinu, short form of Srinivas, who brought it home, gave to his mom that someone may come searching and left for his search of today’s livelihood in the heap of puja disposables.
Something has changed; “goodness doesn’t need a background of caste, class, economy or anything” has been reinstalled in the system where otherwise a lot of malware gets functional due to negative media coverage. We are determined to go back tomorrow to the same place to see how may we be of any help to this new friend of ours. Bless him to get the best of life.
Sandeep Sabharwal and Dipanwita Chakravarty
