Courage and Faith in Sarajevo
Bhagavan Baba guides us all in His own silent way so that we can move closer to the goal of realizing our true potential. In the following story, Prini Wimlachandra of New Zealand—a former student of Bhagavan—briefly narrates her profoundly moving experiences after Swami asked her to follow her husband, Hasitha, to Bosnia between 1998 and 2000.
I did not want to go to Bosnia. For the first year of my husband’s assignment I stayed behind in New Zealand. After being deep in Sai activities for over six years there, what would I now do in a war-torn country?
At Prasanthi Nilayam during Christmas, Swami asked me what I was doing. I said I had remained in New Zealand to continue my work. But His command was brief and clear: “Join your husband, go to Bosnia.”
Why did He say this? Why did He want me to leave all that work in New Zealand that had become the most intense and important part of my life?
We lived in historic Sarajevo, the city of the start of World War I. When I got there in mid-1998, there was a comparative lull for about a year after five years of fighting. But the city was ravaged. Being in a valley, it had been an easy target for those on the hills. Water, electricity, and heating had now been restored. This was after years when even books, shoes, and wooden fences had to be burnt to survive winters of several feet of snow and temperatures that plunged to –20º C.
The roads were pitted horrors where grenades had struck. Each hole was now marked with red paint as a reminder that every few yards, in this city, someone’s life had been lost. You had to keep to the main roads and pathways for fear of landmines. Without having gone through the austerely disciplined life of a student in His collage and ashram, I would never ever have survived these years in Bosnia.
Why, why had Swami sent me here? Soon enough I knew. The people of Bosnia were hungry for Sai activities, but, even more, I needed these shattered people to realize for myself how desperately man needs God. It was, indeed, a humbling experience to meet these kind people who were not rich in money or property. The war had taken away all their possessions, but they were rich at heart with love for the lord.
After a few months, I tentatively began some service activity. How could I compare what I now experienced to what I had known in the peaceful and affluent country of New Zealand? The latter was only preparing me to handle Sai organization activities that were so new to me, having just come out of the sheltered atmosphere of a student’s life. The initial experience of a few years in New Zealand being over, Swami must have considered it now time for me to go wider and deeper into the outside world and into my own self too. When I met Azra, Raza, and so many others, I was taught that faith and courage were not pious comfortable words but the very breath of life.
Azra, a middle-aged schoolteacher, returned home from work one day to find herself homeless because her apartment in the Serbian part of the town had been ransacked. Only Swami’s picture remained. He, alone, stayed with her. Throughout the war, life in the Sarajevo Sai center continued with clinging determination. Even the all-night vigil of Shivaratri was observed with non-stop devotional singing in severe winter.
Azra, like many others, had spent hours collecting firewood in a jute bag for Shivaratri night. She was carrying it to the center once when snipers aimed at her from the dark alleys. Somehow the bullets only struck the sack; while ducking, dodging, and crouching, she went on. Never once letting go of the sack on her head, she dashed for shelter. Without the light and heat from that wood, they would not be able to spend that icy night in prayer. So, to her, life itself was of no importance if that bundle of firewood did not reach the center that day.
The Sai group found itself facing an atmosphere of questioning and suspicion in these times of religious tension. They used to be ready for any kind of police investigation in the predominantly Muslim town. The lady who owned the apartment where regular bhajan [devotional singing] was held was ever prepared for a sudden swoop. So, when the police did arrive one day, at her first sight of them on her doorstep she gushed out her story before they could ask a thing.
Amused and a little sorry at her nervousness, they were kind enough to give just a cursory glance around while remaining at the door, and then they left. Swami’s life-sized picture was on the wall facing the front door. How was it that they didn’t even ask about this strange figure, unknown in this country? Full of tense excitement and relief, she turned around to question Swami’s picture itself—and found He wasn’t there. He had got Himself off the hook and had slid neatly under the carpet. And the police had not even stepped in to see this bulge on the floor!
Neither winter nor the war ever daunted the devotees in the least. Their regular programs went on steadily. One winter, when it was particularly unbearable, devotees suddenly found heat radiating from Swami’s picture. When they touched it, their palms grew very hot. Swami had not warmed the room, but a faith more blazing was kindled in their hearts—for what He had shown was not the kind of heat that could be gotten from wood or electricity, but from that He was there with them. He was no more a picture. This was the light and heat He offered during the days of darkness and despair.
Raza’s faith is as fierce as that of Azra. Both her sons died in the war, one when in the army and the other to a sniper’s bullet. She had long been in charge of sorting and packing the aid items that German Sai devotees regularly sent to refugee camps in Bosnia. Now she continues her work with even more dedication, for now her service is not merely compassion but a passionate commitment to the pain in her heart and to the memory of her children. A human being can experience true sympathy with another when one knows that burning agony too.
Such faith is not only that of the old but of the very young too. Two sisters and a brother were staunch devotees and workers at the center, all the while keeping this a secret from their strict Christians parents. The brother, a bhajan singer with a beautiful voice, lost his life to yet another sniper. But the tender lives of the sisters remain firmly faithful to their God, although they stand alone, no parents, no friends.
Such people’s lives embody the words of an Indian poet who, after the death of his wife, wrote the entire philosophy of his life in one line: “I have lost my children, but should I then lose my King too?”
Such undaunted faith and courage are themselves the great miracle. For it is at these moments that men have seen a revelation in themselves. They realize that they are more than mere mortals eternally burdened with sorrow and fear, and that they walk behind God as His true followers in the light of their own strength and steadfastness.
I knew it is to awaken this strength in me that my own destiny—or God’s hand—had taken me to Bosnia, and now to another land, Israel, where I am experiencing similar faith and courage amongst Sai friends.
~Prini Wimalachandra
Israel, 2001
