Sadhana Diwas - Nay, Life itself has become a Sadhana, a Tapasya.

It is past 2 a.m. and 20th Nov. has begun......yesterday was 19 Nov.- Sadhana Diwas!! My mind has transported back to 1985 when i joined Vivekananda Kendra - a naive young 24 year old girl. What all i had done to reach to this place, without knowing what it was, for what it stood, who was Eknathji Ranade, ignorant about Swamiji, not knowing much about Sri Ramakrishna & Saradamaa, absolutely nothing!! Just a decision of not marrying and doing something for the soceity were only two reasons to go to Kanyakumari.

How life changed! Oh, how life transformed!! One cannot imagine!!! A new world opened - a world where people would love me for who i am and not for what i looked. Whether i was dark or plain made no difference to them. Where position, wealth, beauty, language, caste, appearance nothing mattered. Day in and day out, every second my life was changing, widening. My mind was becoming broad, everything around me looked new, not of the world from where i came!

Mumbai life seemed so far...the Air India Building, Bajaj Bhavan where i worked, that journey by local trains, standing at the door and traveling to and fro to office was long forgotten....only one thing was common - my dear dear Ocean which connected me to Mumbai with Kanyakumari. I am what i am today is first due to my mother and second because of my Vivekananda Kendra at Kanyakumari.

At Kanyakumari a shy shraddha became a comperer, learnt to give lecture with notes first and then without, learnt yoga, how to chant Bhagwad Gita, Vishnu Sahastranam. I knew & had read about Sri Aurobindo before joining Kendra but there Sri Ramana Maharshi, Narayanguru and many more saints, poets, authors, freedom fighters from all over the country entered my life to expand my vision. Was this all not happening to prepare me for my future?

Those 6 months of training, posting to Arunachal for 4 years and then 6 years to Pune---10 years of different life and vast experience!! Oh, what a life..! Golden days of my life which never ever came again. It only prepared me for the further sufferings.

 But this change made me unfit to live in the world when i got married. Even today i find myself unfit to live in this world. Kendra life had taught me only to do Sacrifice and Seva, Simplicity and Self surrender. Even today i feel out of place in my posh office surrounded by people who are selfish, pulling each other down, treating others inhumanly, self centered and full of materialistic approach.

I feel like a fish out of pond but then i am also lucky to have Swamiji to bring me out of this world. Today i feel all of a sudden all those 26 years have just vanished and i am the same old shraddha just entering the gates of VivekanandaPuram at Kanyakumari. I close my eyes and see the Rock Memorial clearly, hear the waves at the beach, feel the hot sand, the pointed pebbles pricking in my naked feet.

Again I want to sing bhajan, i want to sit and meditate at the Rock, at the beach, under the tamarind tree, want to sneak away and eat dosa at the canteen and relish idlis, beetroot sabji and upma with sugar in Annapurna.

This change, this transformation was all  possible only beacuse of the vision of this great personality - Man. Eknathji Ranade. My pranams to him on this Sadhana Diwas. Because of him i could turn my sufferings into a Sadhana, a Tapasya!!!