Early Days at Devipuram: Silence, Access, and Grace

Guruji and Amma around the time of Devipuram’s opening.

(from "The Goddess and the Guru"):

Devipuram’s new status as a functioning place of worship, however, did not immediately translate to worshipers. Though word was gradually spreading through surrounding towns and villages about the erstwhile scientist and his unusual temples, both Guruji and Devipuram remained largely unknown beyond a close, still relatively small circle of friends, disciples, and well-wishers. As a result, the hard-to-access temples were usually quite empty of visitors.

“At that point nobody even knew there was a place called Devipuram,” recalled Alok Baveja, the Rutgers professor. “Today, there’s a Devipuram bus stop. You go to the airport in Vizag and any taxi will take you directly there. But to find it back then you had to take a bus way out into this rural area, sit next to the driver and literally say, ‘Stop here!’ Then you got off in the middle of nowhere and took a walk through the jungle.”

Once there, however, the experience could be magical. One might find Guruji working on a construction project, conversing with a visiting disciple, or conducting a puja in one of the temples. The setting was completely idyllic, and many who took the trouble to make the journey in those early days found themselves rewarded with large doses of Guruji’s undivided time and attention.

“At night, Guruji and I would pull our cots into the open air and sleep out there, looking up at the stars and talking about everything,” Alok said. On one such evening he musingly asked Guruji, “If the same souls are always being reborn, and yet the population of Earth is continually increasing, then where do the souls come from to fill all of those new bodies?”

Guruji lay silently for a while in the darkness and then answered, “But you are assuming that souls operate in quanta—as units.”

“It was an answer that required me to think more,” Alok said. “And that, it seems to me, is the role of a guru. He’ll throw something at you that makes you think a little deeper, expand yourself.”

One day Alok watched Guruji perform a two-hour Navavarana Puja for a poor, elderly woman who had come to pray at the Kamakhya Peetam. “As the puja finished, I could see the beaming smile of gratitude on this woman’s face,” he recalled. “She prostrated at Guruji’s feet and then opened a knot at the end of her sari, carefully took out a five-paise coin and gave it to him. Guruji accepted that money with a reverence that seemed to me extraordinary.”

Upon her departure, Guruji carefully laid the coin in front of the shrine’s deity, explaining to Alok, “This woman walked a long distance on foot to come here. What she has given to us are Devi’s very precious blessings.” As he left the temple, he added, “It is only with the blessings of such people that Devipuram will come up.”