Nityanand Swamy, who is guru of Baba Iyer’s family, ordered Baba Iyer’s family to go to Shirdi and do seva of Sai Baba of Shirdi. Based on the orders of Nityananda Swamy they came to Shirdi, about 70 years ago and started a hotel business. Now they have made it a practice to do annadaan for the poor and needy and devotees who visited Shirdi on a daily and large scale. Baba Iyer narrated how they got into the practice of annadaan. Once, his father had to go to Ahmednagar for an urgent work. However he did not have sufficient money to go to Ahmednagar, and thus,he was in sad mood. His family was in a bad financial state and his father approached his neighbour for a loan but they demanded some security deposit for giving the loan. His father felt that Sai Baba did not bring them to such a condition that, they had to mortage jewellery for a loan. At that moment a devotee of Sai Baba came and asked a begger for whereabouts of Swamy Madras Hotel. The beggar said that the hotel is now closed but he will take him to the owner’s house.
The devotees’ name was Shri. Varadarajan and he hailed from Matunga in Mumbai. He asked for the welfare of his Baba Iyer’s father and his father said that the business was down. This devotee assured his father that all will be well
Shri. Varadarajan gave Rs.5000 to Iyer’s father and asked him to feed one devotee on a daily basis. They started on a small scale starting with 5 or 10 people and today baba is getting it done at a different scale. Then a devotee from Chennai by name Jagdeeshan and his friend suggested that they should streamline the annadan in an orderly way and so get it registered. Based on his advice Baba Iyer applied for the annadaan program to be registered
He applied for registration and got the number 786. He was unaware of the significance of 786
A devotee of Baba came and asked him if he knew about it and explained that it is a great number it is the number of “allah”. Being a tamil brahmin he got this number. It means, in the form of :”Sab ka Malik Ek”, Baba Iyer got the number
“My intention is to feed lots of people in the centenary year and my prayer to Baba is to give me the opportunity to serve more” —- Baba Iyer.
Omsairam really heart touching experience