Guruji does His bit!

Bangalore Utsav:

On the day one of the Utsav of Bangalore, 2 hours or so before we were ready to begin, the election commissioner suddenly decided that we cannot hold the program in the ground that it was scheduled to be held... They got an order from the Bangalore Municipal Corporation canceling the course... Turned out that the ground was adjacent to the National College where all the ballot boxes of the upcoming Bangalore Elections would be kept, and such a huge gathering was a "security" threat or something like that...

Police were not allowing any workers or volunteers to do anything on the ground, so the pandal was not completed, sound was not ready, stage was in a shambles... All those last minute things that are to be done, couldn't be done... We had close to a 1000 registrations on the course, our team of volunteers and teachers had been working day and night, really hard, for almost 3 months to get the show together and it was about 10 minutes to 5:00 pm , the time Utsav was supposed to start and people were streaming in...

To top all that, the skies were overcast, and there was a faint drizzle of rain as well, threatening to turn into an all out shower... This is the middle of summer... 8th May!! Some confusion with the Bangalore weather Angels for sure! :)

At 5 minutes to 5:00 pm, after a flurry of useless phone calls to "concerned" authorities for the past 2 hours (and 1 phone call to Guruji explaining the situation), Dinesh(?) managed to convince the BMC people at the ground itself to let us do the course for 3 days, Thursday, Friday and Sunday (suggestion from Guruji), we thought we will do Saturday at the Ashram... Saturday being the day of the election.

In 15 Minutes miraculously, the stage, the pandal, the sound, the video... everything simply came together, everyone was registered in and seated and ready to begin... and we started the course only 10 minutes late, at 5:10 pm!

The Election Commissioner had somehow been appeased, how about the Rain Gods? A steady drizzle, very gentle continued for some time... Dinesh mentioned its the God's who were showering their Blessings on all of us... Dinesh and i were fervently praying to Guruji to make it stop raining... It never turned into an all out shower... BUT, it did keep drizzling off and on...

Then it was time for Sudershan Kriya. We told all the participants to pray that it would not rain while we were doing Kriya and meditating... As soon as we chanted Om to get ready to start Kriya. All the rain stopped. Completely. And stayed stopped throughout the hour long Kriya and meditation!

The pandal was in the huge Basvangudi Grounds. We had not cordoned off the entire ground to save costs :). We had just a 1000 registrations, so had cordoned off an area to seat the 1000 comfortably...

For the entire hour of the Kriya, it was not raining at all in the cordoned off area. Just a few feet away, on the grounds, on either side of the pandal it was raining... and about 500 meters away from the pandal it was raining heavily!!

When everyone had finished the Kriya and were read to go home, they found the ground surrounding the pandal to be wet and sticky with mud... just the pandal was absolutely dry...

I remember once Guruji saying that when you are doing something good, nature will bend to cooperate with you... I have a feeling, Guruji gently nudges nature to her bit... by doing His bit!

Jai Gurudeva!
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bawa