Letters from India

12. Adventures in Madras - Jan. 1985

Adventures in Madras

January 20, 1985

Madras, Tamil Nadu

Hotel Karpagam

19 South Mada Street

Madras, Tamil Nadu 600 004

Dear Family,

This is my address here in Madras. I won't be here for long but just liked to write the address for you to see. :-)

As I said, I wasn’t planning on coming to Madras. Neither was roommate Barbara. We were drawn towards quiet sadhana at the ashram. Other roommate Diane wanted to go. Then, stories came to Barbara’s ears of the wonderful, special Darshans of Sai when He travels. She was tempted. Soo, she finally decided she’d go, and wrote a letter to Sai asking permission. Sai looked at the letter in Darshan, passed her, then turned around and said, “YES”. Diane had had a dream of following Sai when He went. In it, Sai had said, “See or not see, I have called you.”

Buuut, it would be very expensive (Diane had to take a taxi because of neck and spine problems), and they needed another person. By this time (mid-day on 17th), I was pretty tempted. A once in a lifetime opportunity! So, I wrote Swami a letter, staying that if he didn’t want me to go, take the letter. He put me in the 2nd row (this was night darshan, the 17th - no morning darshan the next day so His answer had to be now or never). He came by. I held the letter waay out and was praying, “Take it if I don’t have Your permission!” He looked at it twice, as if He was reading it. It was right under His nose. Then He walked right by it and said, “Manchi, manchi (good, good).”

Soo… off to Madras! Sai was going via Anantapur so we planned to go the same way and follow Him (wouldn’t that be something!).

The next morning, Sai appeared at 7:30 AM, smiling and waving. He got in the car and off He went.

It turned out that our taxi driver, Sulaman, had important business in Bangalore plus for other reasons, we ended up going via Bangalore. It seemed the right thing to do, I knew immediately it was right.

Our taxi driver, Sulaman, is a really honest and good Baba devotee (he’s Muslim). He isn’t into money-grabbing and we can trust his fares. Roundtrip, Puttaparthi to Madras plus four days with him at our disposal, cost Rs 2,200. If Sai stays longer, we have to pay him Rs 225 extra per day.

We did errands in Bangalore and then off to Madras – planned on arriving before Sai, about 6 PM. Unfortunately, but fortunately, we got lost! Passing many small villages, beautiful! But where’s Madras?? We got typical Indian answers to our queries – an out stretched hand in a general direction and a wide smile, “This way of course!!” Indians, they never want to say 'no,' so they’ll give you any direction just to make you happy. And you have no others to follow, so you ask every ½ block or so, to get a general idea of where to go.

Anyhow, I was in bliss the whole way there – imagine a warm summer night, tons of stars above, and you riding in the darkness through the sacred land of India! I was right at home. The villages we passed were a lot dirtier, plus the shops (actually stalls with wares displayed) were closer together. Very crowded, very noisy. One-way dirt roads – INDIA! Heaven, Vaikunta!

He had left at around 2:30 or 3 PM from Bangalore, the trip was said to take 5-6 ours (we stayed in Bangalore longer than expected – moan); we finally arrived in Madras at 10:30 PM! Went straight to ‘Sundaram’, Baba's residence in Madras. Found out Sai had arrived two hours before, at 8:30 PM.

Soo, we had beautiful Darshan of the sacred Mandir, all lit up like a Xmas tree, with the Physical Form of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba somewhere inside. :-)