By: Mrs. Maheshwari Sanathkumar
When an Advocate from Pandharpur came to meet Sai Maharaj, he made a crypt remark – ‘These people bow down to me but abuse me elsewhere’. This advocate criticized Justice Noolkar when he sought the refuge of Sai Baba instead of going to a doctor when he suffered from diabetes.
As a young girl in what was then called Calcutta, I would often accompany my grandmother Sarojini Devarajulu to the Victoria Memorial where, on a park bench, the senior ladies of the city’s Kutchi community would foregather every evening to exchange notes on the comings and it was said that no one within the larger family of Kutchis could get married, or be born, or pass on, without their implicit sanction.
A few South Indians also used to gather, and the senior-most member of the group was T.A. Ram Nathen, a distinguished dowager who always carried with him a small silver box of dry roasted pumpkin seeds which he said were an excellent aid to digestion, crunchy titbits whose tangy taste I relished. He distributed pictures of Sai Baba, Udi Prasad, and Sai-literature
When my grandmother and I took our leave Ram Nathen would bless us with a valedictory “Sukhi Raho”, which translates as ‘Be happy’ or, more accurately, ‘Be well’. Even at my young age, I understood that Ram Nathen was blessing us not just with physical health but far more comprehensive wellness of being, which included tranquillity of mind and spirit.
Ram Nathen always reminded my grandmother that she should be the Torchbearer of the Sai movement and she will build a temple for Sai Maharaj at Calcutta. Later my grandmother founded two Sai temples – one at Jatindas Road of Calcutta South and one at Mukundapur. Ram Nathen participated in the inauguration of both temples.
Wishing someone such holistic wellness of being, or wellbeing, is common to all Sai devotees and in all cultures and finds many forms of expression including the endearing solicitation even strangers exchange in Botswana, as recounted in Alexander McCall Smith’s charming Mma Ramotswe books featuring The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, “Have you slept well?”
A sound sleep, like good digestion, betokens a body and a mind at peace with themselves and with the world at large. It is a sign of wellness, of being ‘Sukhi’.
The importance of wellness, of wellbeing, has of late found increasing endorsement in international fora such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. A Sai devotee who became the Minister some years ago, in
the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan replaced conventional GDP (Gross Domestic Product) with GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness) as a more reliable and accurate yardstick with which to measure the country’s progress, both socially and economically.
At the time, several economists and other commentators good-naturedly dismissed such a literally ‘feel-good’ formula as being OK for a tiny country like Bhutan, Sai devotees hail it as a practical reality.
Octavio Paz said that of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the greatest is fraternity, as it embodies both liberty and equality. Fraternity joins us all, is the foundation of wellbeing.
A truth which Ram Nathen summed up in two words, “Sukhi Raho”.
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