Girish's Blog

Dandi Ashram, Navsari, 24 th February, 2017 We were to be nine sadhaks travelling to Navsari on 23 rd , but in the end two dropped out and two decided to travel late in the evening, as a result our two cars reduced to one and we had a pretty comfortable journey. I left home at 5.07 am and picked up Deepaliji and Harishji at 5.23am (8 minutes behind schedule). I had requested Umeshji to be ready on the highway at Mira Road at 5.45am. I reached the spot at 5.40am, ahead of schedule and we waited for Umeshji who came bang on time. We got stuck at the Vasai creek bridge for about 15 minutes and then we were on our way to the Ashram. We got very heavy traffic and weaving through the traffic made the going a bit slow. I had factored this parameter into the travel time and had informed our fellow sadhaks that we would reach the Ashram by 10am. After a breakfast halt of 45 minutes at Vithal Kamats at 7am, we left for Dandi and reached the Ashram at 10.15am. During the journey, I ...

I would like to begin by giving a brief background on the preparations for this unique Gurupurnima. In the last one month or so before July 21, I had been to Dandi on three of the Sundays and to be honest with you I used to wonder how such a gigantic task would get accomplished. Mind you, I had full faith in the Guru energies and in Pratapbhai’s organisational capacity and commitment to have the preparations completed in time. Just the Sunday before GP 2013, the heavens had opened up and the rains had really made the ground soggy and only the frame for the massive pandal had been put up. (When Pujya Swamiji had made us pray for rains in Shirdi and all over India, we had no doubts that there would be plentiful rains – but rain to such an extent and spread all over the country has not been witnessed in a very long time!) In fact I had been praying for the rains to stop for some time, and fortunately that day, the sun smiled at us after almost a week of incessant and heavy rains. As the ...