Last Friday, Marty had to attend the valedictory of his seniors at school (here's the
2010 one). Since our driver was on leave, i offered to drop him.
It's a lovely ride, full of greenery, and it's one drive i still don't mind doing in chaotic Bangalore.
Once i dropped him off, i was wondering what to do. The day was still young, as they say :-)
Earlier that morning, i had a dream of visiting a Mariamman temple, in which i distinctly saw myself offering a rupee.
There's a temple at the (Dommasandra) junction where the road from Varthur via Gunjur meets Sarjapur Road (
see). I was thinking that the temple had either a Mariamman or the Old Mother and
so i turned left after exiting Greenwood.
Parked at Narayani restau (now with a new name and management) a little further on Sarjapur Road and walked over to the junction. Of late, i always fold the INR 500 notes inside the INR 100 ones and carry them Chinese fashion, rolled up in a … ;-) band.
There was no Mariamman / Old Mother there, and it turned out to be a
samadhi mandir of an
avadhuta Sri Govardana Swami:
Avadhuta (Sanskrit: अवधूत avadhūta) is a Sanskrit term used in Indian religions to refer to an antinomian mystic or saint who is beyond ego-consciousness, duality and common worldly concerns and acts without consideration for standard social etiquette. Such personalities "roam free like a child upon the face of the Earth". An avadhūta does not identify with his mind or body or 'names and forms' (Sanskrit: namarupa). Such a person is held to be pure consciousness (Sanskrit: caitanya) in human form.
In fact, it didn't look as if anyone was there, and i had to call out a bit. One sweet-looking person, called Nagaraj, came out from the dim room to the left of the samadhi and gave me the arati.
Sri Nagaraj, who has been staying out here since 2003, gave me a brief history of himself:
He's from
Bhadravathi. He was working in L&T,
Yelahanka for a while and left the job around 1998. He disconnected from his family as well. For a while, he was moving from ashram to ashram, when, sometime in 2003, he had a dream in which the
avadhuta asked him to come to His samadhi.
So he settled down there. After some time, Sri Nagaraj had a startling experience when the
avadhuta came out of His samadhi, hugged him, and whispered the
beeja mantra in his right ear. Sri Nagaraj clarified that the experience didn't happen in a dream, but in regular life. Since then, he's been staying here. On the few occasions that he goes to holy places such as Kashi, a person called Krishna Murthy (a devotee of Lord Hanuman, who stays at the place and hardly ever talks) looks after the samadhi mandir.
He told me a wee bit about the
avadhuta as well: Sri Govardhana Swami is from North India and was, of course, a realized soul. He would eat pieces of glass and even razor blades. He'd hesitate to pee on Mother Earth and would cup the urine in his hands and drink it! On the few occasions that he'd eat a banana at a shop, the shopkeeper would find that he'd sell all his produce in a jiffy and make a handsome profit. That was one of the signals to regular folks that they were in the midst of an
avadhuta, i believe.
To the right of the samadhi mandir, there was another (samadhi) of a lady devotee, called Sri Krishnanamma (hope i got that right).
She was a devotee of the Avadhuta, who took up sannyas after two years of marriage (no kids). Every year, around mid January, a major celebration is held here.
It was nice, listening to all that from a chap who's renounced. It didn't look as if he was missing much.
On the way back, i stopped off at the Sacred Grove, between TISB (on the right) and Inventure Academy (on the left).
I love
trees and, IMHO, this is a very serene spot.
Makeshift temples adorn the area.
It was very nice to sit below this monster!
One could see mynah, squirrels (and squirelettes), and green parrots in the foliage. After some time, the many bee-hives came into view. There were as many as those further in the
tree down the road (near the Dommasandra junction). A cow waddled along, pestered by some geese (or heron).
It was all so magical. Was once more reminded of that uplifting experience of Swami Ashokananda:
When he (Swami Ashokananda) was near trees, his mind would sometimes grow very quiet, and his ordinary consciousness, human consciousness, would be obliterated, as it were, and tree consciousness would take its place, a consciousness entirely unlike our own—a different time sense, a different way of knowing and feeling, indescribable in terms of human consciousness. He felt at one with trees, just as we feel at one with human beings. He knew trees to be very happy, peaceful beings. He could almost hear their laughter. It was, he said, like the laughter of young girls around sixteen or seventeen years old, and yet restrained.
It was getting dark, so i headed back.
The magic for the evening wasn't done.
When i got back, Novak Djokovic won a
marathon match against Andy "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" Murray and a moth hovered over him as he lay prone after a debilitating semi-final.
Suzanne White commented:
People really don't understand the bond between a moth and its master. That moth is Djokovic's pet moth. His name, for anyone who's interested, is Rappaport. He's a special type of moth, bred for company. They can't talk. That's why men like to keep them as pets. They don't remind them of their wives.
