Experiences with Swami

Venkat Kumar has spent many years at Swami’s College and at the Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. He is now a highly respected youth leader in Australia, but seems to have been quite a little rogue in his younger days. At a conference in Taupo, NZ, he related many hilarious stories about his younger days. Each story has a lesson—for him in his younger days, and also for us.

Story 1:

Swami came for lunch one day when I was at His college. A follower of Swami from somewhere in the north of India had sent two boxes of mangoes. After a big lunch, Swami asked if some of us would like a mango to finish off. When He came to me I said I had had enough and couldn’t eat anymore. I then settled down to study, and Swami again came by and asked if I would like a mango. I again declined.

Swami retired. After a little while, I started to think about the mangoes. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I went back to look at the box. I decided that I really wanted one, so I lifted the lid and took one out. Then I pressed it to get the juice out and started to eat it. It was very juicy and the juice was running everywhere. Suddenly, Swami appeared beside me, looking very stern. “When I offered you a mango you didn’t want one, then you creep back to get one later. You never learn, you never learn, do you?” I felt so guilty, and I had juice all over my face.

When He had gone I started to think about what it was that I hadn’t learnt. Then I realized that when He offered me something directly from His own hands, I wouldn’t take it. I would always wait and take it myself. When I could have had it from the hands of God, I refused. Sometimes, we are all like that.

Story 2:

This was in the old days, before the mandir looked as it does now, and when there was sand outside His house. Swami used to walk silently around, and He would walk through us boys, so close! Those were such beautiful times!

It was festival time and the crowds were huge. Even the stadium could not hold all the people. Swami was going to give saris [to the women] and dhotis [to the men]. The students were packing these items in trucks to take them to the stadium. From where we were, we could see into Swami’s house and I could see that he had retired to His living room. I crept up to the door and shut and latched it securely. If He couldn’t see us we could have some fun while loading the trucks.

I went to join my friends and we were joking around and I was playing the fool, teasing my friends, feeling secure that Swami was locked in His room. Suddenly, my friends went silent and I wondered what had happened. Then out of the very corner of my eye, I thought I saw a piece of the orange robe. I thought I was O.K. as Swami was safely locked in his room. Nobody said a word. Swami was in front of me and He came at me like a plane at full speed and blasted me for 15 minutes straight. I did not utter a word. He said, “You thought you could shut Me up in My room and I couldn’t get out.” “Yes Swami,” I muttered, “I shut the door and put the latch on.” He said, “And you thought I couldn’t get out?”

I thought about this incident for about two months, to make sense of it all to myself. I kept thinking, “Why did this happen?” Then realized that I had thought Swami was just a human being, and had locked Him up in His room so we could play around. Then I realized that nothing can stop Him. He knew from inside the room what I was doing. Nothing contains Swami—doors don’t stop Him! Distance doesn’t stop Him. He is with us all the time. He is here in this room, right now!

Story 3:

I am a great lover of Indian food. Yes, really, it is my favorite food. But my wife keeps feeding me pasta. I think she must have been Italian in her last life! However, this is about a time, years ago, long before I had a wife.

Well the summer break came and we had nothing to do all day but go to morning darshan [sight of a holy person] and then to afternoon darshan—day after day. One day I was standing on the road near Swami’s house, just thinking, when He appeared next to me to have a talk. He said, “Why don’t you go and have some fun and get some good food in the city?” I thought about it hesitantly, and He said it again. The only place I could think of was one of those places where you help yourself to everything, so many kinds of food—a sort of buffet—and I knew it was very expensive. Swami said, “Why don’t you go to Bangalore and have a good time?” Then He waved His hand and made a 1,000 rupee note and gave it to me.

He then moved off to talk to some of the other students that were standing around. He called one of them over and asked him if he wanted to go with me to Bangalore, but the student said, no, he wanted to stay there. So, Swami called over a sevadal (volunteer) and said he should go with me to the best place in Bangalore to eat. He told him to go with me, but that he mustn’t eat anything.

So the sevadal and I went to an expensive hotel to eat. I said Swami wasn’t there, so he should have something, too. But he said no, “Swami said I could only come and watch you eat.” After I finished we went to an ice cream place and, again, I offered him something but he wouldn’t take it. In the end I had 1,000 rupees worth of food inside of me—the whole 1,000 rupees had been used up and I was very full. So we made our way back home.

I tried to make the journey home last a long time, so that it would be so late and Swami wouldn’t be up. That way He wouldn’t ask me what I had been doing. But they were all singing bhajans (devotional songs) when we got back, so I had to go in. I felt very uncomfortable when Swami looked at me and I tried to twist and turn and look up at the ceiling. Then one of the students asked me to sing. I was feeling so full, but I managed somehow. When I had finished the bhajan, Swami looked at me and asked if I had had enough to eat and I said, “Yes.” He asked me if there was change from the 1,000 rupee note and I said, “No Swami, I have a 1,000 rupees of food inside me.” He just looked at me, His jaw actually dropped—it really dropped! He looked quite shocked that someone could have that much food inside him or her.

I thought about it afterward to see what lesson I should have learned from it but I couldn’t work it out. Perhaps this is why Swami sees to it that my wife feeds me pasta!

Story 4:

Before I came to Swami’s college, I lived in Bombay and was a bit of a rowdy, always up to mischief. I really loved films [movies] and would see two or three a week. Then my mother asked Swami if He would take me in His college. He said yes, so I went to Swami’s college.

I had been there for one year and people were going home for the summer holidays. I was in the hostel when Swami came and asked me, “What are you doing here?” I said I wanted to go home to Bombay. “Swami, I want to go so much.” He just said to me, “Go, go.” He started to leave and went down the steps to get into His car.

I started to think, “I haven’t seen a movie for one whole year. I want to ask Him if I can see just one, when I am at home.” So I followed Swami out to the car, but He was already in the seat. He opened the door to speak to me and said, “You want to go to the movies, so I will let you go and see just three. I mean just three, so if you go to more, just see what I will do to you.”

The next day, He came and gave me a watch to put on my arm. Then He said that if I went to see more than three movies, the watch would transmit it to Him. If I did more than He had allowed me, this would do more than tell the time; it would tell Him everything. He has a medicine and a cure for everything, even ‘Hollywood disease!’

So I went home, and several times I went to my aunt’s house and watched TV there. There was a movie called: “Murder on the Orient Express.” Then I went to see a Hollywood movie and came home and watched half of a movie that was on the TV. Later, I watched another movie on TV. In this way I watched about five movies, but my logic was that Swami meant three movies at a theatre, so that was all right.

Then I decided to go to the beach. But Swami had said that I mustn’t get in to any nonsense. He is very strict, so I didn’t know if going to the beach was alright or not. I decided to take off the watch and leave it at home so it couldn’t transmit anything back to him. I had a lovely time at the beach and then went home and put the watch back on. Soon it was time to go back to the college.

My mother came back to the college with me, and I was very confident that I had behaved well. When I went to darshan Swami would look the other way. When He was walking, He would always go away from me. After a while the other students started to leave me alone, because they said if I was there Swami would go somewhere else. After a week, I started to think that something was really wrong.

My mother said she was going to ask Swami what was wrong, what I had done. One night after darshan Swami came over to my mother and said to her, “Your son is a real rowdy, he never listens to a thing I say, I will not talk to him. He should think about what he has done.”

My mother saw me after darshan and asked me what I had done when I was at home, and I said I had been very good, had only seen three movies, and had gone to the beach one day, nothing else. I still didn’t think I had done anything.

Then one night Swami called my mother and me for an interview. Swami said to me, “Why didn’t you do as I had asked?” I said I had, but He said no. Then He asked me how many movies I had seen and I said three at the theatre. But He said, “No, you have seen more than that. How many altogether?” I said, with the TV, five. Then He said that is not all, you also went to the beach and had a good time. I said, “Swami, but I took off the watch when I went to the beach.”

He said to me, “Do you think that I need the watch to tell Me anything?” Then He told me everything that had happened at the beach, the plane in the sky, how the waves were. He described everything in detail. He said, “Do you think you can trick Me? I can see everything. I know everything. You can’t do anything I don’t know about. What do you think of yourself? Don’t do it again.” It made me realize that He is everywhere and can see and hear everything. It was a long time before I went to a movie again!

Source: Sathya Sai Baba Newsletter, Aotearoa, New Zealand