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| Haran Aiya, Sundhara Arasaratnam and Guruji in Rochester, NY, with a set of recordings of Guruji’s early lectures, c. 1988. |
(from "The Goddess and the Guru"):
“When Haran came to see me and asked me, very hesitantly, for initiation into Sri Vidya, I gladly accepted him as my spiritual son,” Guruji said. In all, he initiated Aiya and Sakuntala Amma into 16 Sri Vidya mantras, including the Maha Shodashi, and later taught them “the intricacies of performing Sri Chakra Navavarana Puja according to the Dattatreya tradition.” Aiya, for his part, displayed a nearly insatiable depth of curiosity over every nuance and subtlety of Sri Vidya liturgy.
“When I met Haran, he was a live wire!” Guruji said years later, joking about the intensity of those
months together in Lusaka. “I made the fundamental mistake of trying to correct some errors in his
pronunciation, and the next thing you know I had become his guru! That was a real problem! If I hadn’t
made that error, I would probably have been an ordinary person today!”
~
As the relationship and collaboration between Aiya and Guruji deepened, the problem of Brahmin
prejudice, such as it was, soon faded as well. “Guruji never discussed it with me, but I heard through the
grapevine that a few of the Brahmins actually confronted him on the issue,” Aiya confided. “Guruji Amma told me later that she had never seen him so angry! After that, no one had the courage to confront him
again.”
But they were still watching Aiya. What would he do with this long-exclusively-Brahmin knowledge?
Would it have any effect at all on this presumptuous man and his ever-more-popular puja gatherings?
“Well, in two months’ time, they saw the change taking place in me,” Aiya said. “Because when deep
change begins to take place inside a person, it’s going to manifest on the outside as well. And they started thinking, ‘My God, maybe this fellow really got something! What if we missed the bus?’ And quietly —one by one by one—they too went and asked Guruji for initiation. And Guruji, with no hesitation whatsoever, gave it to them.”
A rich period of spiritual common purpose ensued, which Balu would later credit to the Goddess’s
grace in bringing Guruji to Africa:
How else can one explain the fact that the many who so aspired, in this far-off city of Lusaka and this far-off land of Zambia, found their Guru at the right time? And what is more, [that] the Guru came to Zambia, unbeknown to the shishyas-to-be, as if in search of them. One can only say She willed [it] and things happened. … The acceptance of any[one, regardless of caste] as a shishya and an upasaka, and the Mantras which were to be given, were all as revealed to Guruji by Sri Devi. Blessed indeed are those who were thus initiated in Lusaka!
Aiya’s daughter Saru, though only a child of seven at the time, fondly remembers one of her first
encounters with Guruji. “My most vivid early memory of him took place at his home in Zambia,” she said. “Any time Aiya went over there he’d bring me along. That day Guruji was in his shrine room, just
finishing a Navavarana Puja, and all I could see was this beautiful red fruit—some sort of African plum,
I think—sitting under the little pedestal where he kept his Meru. I kept staring at it while he and my father were talking; for some reason I thought it was the most beautiful fruit I’d ever seen. And Guruji must have noticed because, as we were leaving, he leaned down and handed me that fruit, saying, ‘Here, this is for you.’ I still think it was the most delicious thing I ever tasted!”
~
On any number of levels, Guruji was getting an on-the-job crash course in spiritual leadership. He was
invited to perform weddings, something he’d never done before. He was asked to consecrate an idol of
Lalita Devi, another ritual he had never performed. He became a driving force in the founding of Sri
Lakshmi Narayana Temple—Zambia’s first Hindu temple, in Lusaka—and played a pivotal role in
establishing the Amman Temple in the smaller city of Kafue, 30 miles away through remote grasslands
teeming with elephants, lions and hippopotamuses. Both temples still thrive today—and three decades
after their founding, a newspaper story on the Kafue Temple still noted Guruji’s and Haran Aiya’s
contribution:
In 1979, ten devotees constructed a hall to meet the needs of devotees visiting the temple. … On the suggestion of Mr. Vijaya Haran [sic] and Dr. N. Prahlada Sastri [sic], a Professor at the University of Zambia, who were expounding Lalitha worship, it was God’s will that Lalitha Ambigai (or Kanchi Kamakshi) be installed in the temple sanctum. The deity [was] specially made in India. The duo
[Guruji and Aiya] visited India and brought the deity specially made of five-metal alloy [i.e., panchaloha] in Madras. At the installation of Lalitha Ambigai, along with a Maha Meru, on Masi Maham day in February 1980, it was suggested that her sons, Ganesh and Skanda, accompany the mother. Mr. N. Gananadha volunteered and brought the two deities, [also] made of pancha
loham [sic], from Jaffna, Sri Lanka. On 13th September 1980, Dr. N.P. Sastri installed Ganesh and Skanda at the temple.
Guruji accomplished all these tasks, he said, by following Gurugaru’s advice and directly asking the
Goddess to instruct him. “I only learned the mantras from my guru,” he said. “Their inner meanings, their deeper meanings—and the deeper aspects of how to conduct the pujas and such things—these were all taught to me directly by Lady Saraswati.”
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