RAJAS

If I had to describe her life in just one word, it would be “Rajas”. Did she then lead her life in the luxury of worldly possessions?…… to a large extent no. Did she (seek) pleasure in seeking the possessions that seem to make us happy?.....no. Did she denounce as they say to be happy?....not even that! This is like describing her “neti-neti’!! Why do people want to name her, confer upon her some kind of a title hood then? That is the way she touched their lives by her special existence! Just by being, no preaching, no advice even if asked for, not even self  experiences (read gloating), never! Only one sentence oft repeated “leave it to HIM (Shri Maharaj),and he will take care of it”. Only others could not surrender as she could. Did not realize the courage in it, confusing it with timidity, flight, laying down the weapons and all that stubborn jargon!

             Did she then just breeze through life?….again net-neti. Coming from an orthodox and religious family she was educated in an English medium school some eighty or odd years back. She was a doctor’s wife who left her with two toddlers, to serve in the army during the world war! Death brushed past her husband thousand times a day in the form of bullets and grenades. Then was probably her first lesson from the chapter ‘surrender’. Complete faith (‘nishtha’ if you may) in her father Shri Tatyasaheb’s words and of course Shri Maharaj’s when she was asked to remove this word “worry” from her life and she did just that! To help her do that she was asked to visit Maruti temple each day and write ‘Shree Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram’ at least 21 times each day. This gave her strength then, she said, and kept her on her feet walking and hands helping (even after amputed right thumb) till her age of 92. Here came the test, what if she was traveling which took days in trains those days…..surrender! Some co-passanger would tell her casually that there is a temple just outside the station where the train would be stopping! Write she could wherever she was, but with amputed thumb at 90 how will she? Deftly came the pen in left hand the very day, and here she was getting ambidextrous at 90!! Post war with a lucrative option of starting practice in Mumbai, her husband chose to settle in the then remote Kolhapur instead. When modern medicine doctors in Mumbai were handful and had roaring practice, kolhapur presented tough challenges for a fat fee of farm grown vegetables! Managing now a family of six, ( not to mention the ever steaming guests who came for treatment of chronic complaints and were never ‘discharged’ from their home until all well) must have been a tight rope walk, but she never mentioned. “People half as educated are earning much more, are staying in their own houses does it not bother you”??  Questions like these seemed to trouble others and never them both. After all was  everything not as per “His” wish?! She was an active member of the ladies club and was in the fore front in organizing various programs. She also taught swimming to the school going children in the vacations. All this with the daily chores of house keeping, observing all festivals and fasts scrupulously.

        That she always saw the brighter side, one could perceive from her approach to life.  She lost her sixty year old daughter to the big C which she herself had survived for last twenty five years,(with homoeopathy), forget complain, she didn’t even whine for a second. Something that would have happened when her daughter’s children were small, had happened when everything was settled, so why regret? Probably this is the reason that she took the light and brightness with her wherever she went. She was in demand and ever ready too to help, be it doing night duties in the hospitals, offering firm support, company anywhere and everywhere. Did she not believe in “kamave te samave” (help and be included) after all? She accompanied her daughter- in-law to Bangalore while she pursued her post graduation to look after the house and the grand children for six months, leaving her home and husband behind. Grand children still remember the days at Bangalore apart like night and day, before and after her arrival!! On the platform itself as they went to receive her they felt tall and strong shouldered!

    She was always there doing ‘japa’ when grand children needed someone by their side as they sat studying at night. As an octogenarian she offered company to her grand child as she stayed alone in a flat in a different town for her post graduation. It seems adjusting or is it adapting that came easily to her. As she visited her grand daughter abroad in her nineties, first thing she mentioned to her as she reached there, now that she was on holiday and so were her weekly fastings and dietary inhibitions of the chaturmaas and ‘maharaj’s punyatithi utsav. Even imagining someone to say, that, who had observed it all her life, makes one feel breaking with rigidity. But as ‘maharaj’ would pamper her as she always said, the marwari cook there refused to cook anything in onions and garlic so long as she stayed there! She would be up and ready to visit different places, and if you felt lazy, one look at her and you would be jumping with enthusiasm.

  Yes enthusiastic is also what she was. Otherwise traveling across the length and breadth of the nation and abroad, even after a number of serious illnesses and surgeries is unthinkable. She would prefer accompanying you out, any which mode you took, than sit at home. Apart from speaking metaphorically, life truly was journey for her. Hence truly ‘rajas’- a way of life that takes one from ‘tamo’ to ‘satva’! She believed in “chalavisi haati dharoniya” (you lead me through). Maharaj in turn had to stand up to her belief and never let go off her hand. He fulfilled all her wishes however small, right from respecting her wish as to where to breathe her last, to meeting all her people whom she loved, just a day before, to have all her children by her side. In days when you hardly find people dying from old age, she left with an ease with which a lamp should burn out, when she had survived many illnesses that could have easily taken her away.

     She was so much a part of our life that we almost took it for granted that she would always be there. She indeed is here with us in our memories and so this time omnipresent!