25 Samadhi and after

As I mentioned earlier in this memoir, our visits to Ganeshpuri and Swami Nityanand’s Ashram became less, but suddenly one day we got the news that Swami Nityanand had passed away and attained Samadhi. This news devastated my Mother as she had great faith in the Swamiji and his passing away left a deep spiritual void in her. After the Samadhi, we did visit Ganeshpuri but it didn’t have the same feel and became increasingly commercial. After the Samadhi, his devotees increased exponentially, and you got to see the late Swamiji’s photograph in many of the Udupi restaurants in Bombay because he had a large following amongst the Shetty community and the Kannada/Tulu speaking folks.

With her spiritual anchor gone, my Mother immersed herself in reading books of different religions. My Father helped her by buying books as well as talking about Amma’s interest in diverse religions, to his friends and colleagues. One of his friends was Mr Rohekar – he was a Bene Israeli of the Jewish faith and he was a Reader of the Torah in Bombay’s oldest Jewish Synagogue in the Masjid Bunder area. When Mr Rohekar heard my Mother’s interest, he presented my Father with a set of Jewish prayer books which my Father happily gave to Amma – these books had both Hebrew and English versions and were prayers about various festivals and holy days. So soon to our surprise my Mother started observing these Jewish festivals including the Jewish Sabbath which extended from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset! We all therefore came to know the names of Jewish festivals like the Passover, Hanukah and Purim which otherwise would have been Greek and Latin to us!

In a parallel development my Father had Christian colleagues at the Bank and they recommended books like “The Limitation of Christ” by Thomas Kempis which my Father then dutifully bought and presented to my Mother. I also recall going along with my Father to the Sodality House near the Byculla Bridge where we met an Italian Roman Catholic priest who gave us another book on The Life of Christ. So soon Amma was getting exposed to both the Old Testament through her Jewish readings and to the New Testament through the various books on Christianity and Christ which my Father was busy bringing home!