Features | Experience of the Divinity of Bhagavan by Devotees | Group I | Mrs. Indira Sarathi

Mrs. Indira Sarathi
10 / B-2, Peetambaram Street
Ganapatipuram, Radhanagar Main Road
Chrompeta, Chennai – 600 042

Mrs. Indira Sarathi (46), a housewife, relates her experiences of the Divinity of Bhagavan in her own words.

‘Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba came to Chennai in 1977. I was then in my second year graduation course. During vacation, I was feeling very, very bored. My mother said, ‘there is some bhajan next door. Why don’t you go there?’

I went. That was the first time I attended a bhajan. It was conducted very well. I felt it very exhilarating. All my boredom left me. I began to feel invigorated. I had not experienced such happiness till then. Since that time, I have been attending bhajans. That is how I came into Swami’s fold.

One day I had a dream. Swami came in my dream. I am handicapped due to polio. ‘Do pradakshina twenty-four times to this building’, Swami told me in the dream, showing a building, ‘it will remove your handicap’. I began doing pradakshinas in the dream. But no sooner did I complete twenty pradakshinas, than I awoke. This was in 1980.

I joined as Balvikas guru in 1982. I continued till 1986, that is, till my marriage.

I don’t remember the year when the All India Conference of Balvikas gurus was being held at Prasanthi Nilayam. I had just joined service in a private travel agency. When I applied for leave to attend the conference, they pooh-poohed. ‘It’s not even a couple of weeks since you joined here’, the office people told me, ‘all right. Get us some bulk order. We will give you leave’. Everyone was saying, ‘Indira’s leave is gone’. I used to reply with confidence, ‘no! Bhagavan will see to it that I attend the conference’. The date was drawing to a close. I did not get any order. That was the last day when I should proceed on leave to attend the Balvikas gurus’ conference. I was praying to Bhagavan. It was 4:30 p.m. In another half-an-hour, time would be up. Just then a phone rang, ‘I want 25 tickets for so and so place. Can you get?’ I was happy; Swami sent me the bulk order. I said ‘yes’ and arranged it. I said this to our officer. He sanctioned leave. I could attend the conference at Prasanthi Nilayam and also had Darshan of Bhagavan.

When I was carrying, the doctor said, ‘you should not exert at all’. But I had to go to Srirangam to attend the marriage of my close relative. The wedding was in the evening on May 29, 1988. We reached there. Then I began getting labour prematurely. They shifted me to a hospital.

‘I can’t say about the child’, the doctor said, ‘I will try to save the mother’. If I had delivered then, the marriage would have to be postponed because of our family custom.

We all began to do Sai Namam. The marriage was consummated on a grand scale without any impediment. The doctor did caesarean on me a few minutes after the time of marriage. I delivered 90 days prematurely. But owing to Swami’s grace, my daughter and I – both survived. She is healthy and hale now.’

-- Mrs. Indira Sarathi

(As narrated to Mr. B. Parvatala Rao at Prasanthi Nilayam on 07.05.2005)