The True Guide and Guardian
Jigar Rajesh Desai was a student (1996-2008) at the Sri Sathya Sai Higher Secondary School, and then he did MTech (2014-2016) in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Prasanthi Nilayam.
It was Sunday, June 20th, 1999. I was studying in my fourth standard in the Sri Sathya Sai Primary School. It being a Sunday, all the Primary School students had gone for morning darshan. But in an unfortunate turn of events, I fell sick and was admitted to the General Hospital. As I was sleeping, the school doctor came and informed me that Swami has called my family for a personal interview that morning.
I felt sad and depressed on hearing this news and started crying, and in the process I fell asleep. In my sleep, I dreamt that my entire family was sitting in the Interview Room in front of Swami. Swami then looked at my elder brother, called him and asked, “Where is your brother?” My brother kneels and replies, “Swami, he is down with fever and is admitted in the General Hospital”. Swami just casually replies, “Don’t worry, he will become all right very soon”. With this my dream came to an end. Around noon, I was woken up as my family had come to meet me. While I was interacting with them, I asked my brother if Swami had inquired anything about me during the interview. My brother replied in the affirmative and then began narrating the happenings in the interview. The description that he narrated matched the scene that I had dreamt of. I narrated this to my parents who were overjoyed on hearing it.
Later in the evening, I persistently requested the doctor to let me go back and recuperate in the school as I did not want to stay in the hospital. After a while, the doctor relented and let me go back to the school. By nightfall, my condition again took a turn for the worse and the doctor decided that if the situation got any worse, I would have to be admitted again in the hospital. She gave me some medicines and told me to sleep. By next morning, around 7.00 am when the doctor came to check upon my condition, to everyone’s surprise, I was awake, hale and hearty, and sitting upon my bed. The illness had completely vanished. Swami’s word had come true. Swami had ensured that I did not miss the opportunity of an interview, by not only playing out the entire scene of the interview for me in my dream, but also curing me of my illness.
Another incident that comes to my mind demonstrates the Divine guardianship of Sai. One evening, a senior devotee of Swami was going to address the staff and their family in the hospital. My father was given the responsibility to set up the hall for the talk. As the day proceeded, my father got engrossed in his work and completely forgot about the talk. In the evening, just about five minutes before the scheduled time for the talk, a colleague came to my father and informed him that everyone had gathered in front of the hall for the talk and that the hall was locked. It then struck my father that he had forgotten to collect the keys of the hall from the respective people. He just informed a colleague to get the keys from the person-in-charge, who stayed a bit far away.
Meanwhile he went down toward the hall. As he was going, he just prayed to Swami to help as he did not want to delay the event. As he approached the hall door, he just made a silent prayer to Swami and took out a bunch of keys from his pocket and used the first key from the bunch to open the door. He was sure that it was not the key for the door.
But to his surprise, the door opened with the key and the event went on as scheduled without any delay. The next day, my father went and tried to open the same door using the same key, but this time the door would not open. My father was very thankful to Swami for saving him from any embarrassment he could have faced. Swami, the Divine teacher that He is, also takes interest in guiding and correcting us, to take care of even the small things that we might consider insignificant or too small for Swami to notice and respond to.
A personal incident happened to me that demonstrates this very aspect. In my ninth standard, during a family interview I had offered a letter to Swami. In a hurry, I had literally scribbled a few words on paper. Swami, on opening the letter looked at me and said, “Improve your handwriting. Your handwriting should always be clean, clear, and beautiful. In exams if your handwriting is good, you will automatically get good marks because the examiner will feel like looking and correcting your paper. Good handwriting will make the person reading the paper feel happy”.
The Lord, who runs this entire universe, showed that even small things that we generally tend to ignore actually matter a lot. The number of miracles and incidents experienced by each one of us are many, but the point to be taken from these ‘Calling Cards’ as Bhagavan refers to them is that if there is sincerity in our prayer, He responds immediately to our prayer. As the saying goes, ‘Prayer is man’s only strength and God’s only weakness’. We must ensure that our prayers are sincere and selfless. Sai is always there to guide and guard and it is only up to us to realize this fact.
Source: Sai Nandana 2015 (90th Birthday Offering)
