• Personal experiences of how Neem Karoli Baba and Hanumanji entered author’s life and stayed on. Thanks tothe  producers of Hanuman Ansh for making the world know about Maharaj ji. 

Someone had asked me to write about Maharaj ji. It is Saturday. Perhaps there could not be a better day to talk about the Hanuman Ansh who entered my life.

Maharaj ji enters your life unannounced, without even letting you gauge the immensity of his presence and grace.

Before I begin, I need to say that Bhagwan Ram has always been my Ishta (personal deity). His name is always on my lips.

My journey began many years ago, long before I actually visited Kainchi Dham.

In the early 2000s, of my own volition, I started reading Aranya Kand and Sundarkand every evening. I do not know what made me do it. I was never the religious kind. I just dabbled in spirituality. Perhaps it was because my father and his fore fathers were deeply spiritual.

To cut a long story short, I started enjoying Sundarkand as if it were a repository of answers to the many upheavals that were going to turn my life upside down.

Very soon, it was coursing through my veins, and I had memorised it.

After about six months, I faced one of the most challenging periods of my life.

The universe did put me through a wringer that I would not wish upon anyone. Hard times do lead one to seek refuge in God.

I started going to a very well - known Shiva temple atop a hill in a metropolis. We lived close by, and it became a daily ritual. God is the one who really hears you.

There was a Hanuman temple in the precincts that invited me in before I went to prostrate before Mahadeva.

Heartbreak and intense suffering had made me impervious to any presence around me. One day, I suddenly felt someone standing next to me as I recited my prayer. All I could catch was a glimpse of orange robes. That presence took the aarti thali and gave the aarti to me.

I was stuck to the ground.

This happened for a number of days.

Once, while sitting in the garbhagriha of the Shiva temple and offering milk, I suddenly felt someone watching me. The wall was a marble jaali. That orange-robed presence kept looking at me from across the partition.

It held my gaze, and I could not look away. He looked like Hanuman ji. Suddenly, he smiled and raised his hand in Abhaya mudra. Then he turned into a huge man with a tika, smiling at me.

My mental turmoil was over. I knew things would be fine.

Fortunately, my husband was with me. I asked him if he had seen the man who looked like Hanuman ji.

He had not.

There was nobody.

But there was.

Enroute from the marriage temple Thirumanancheri in Tamil Nadu, saw a village celebration around this murti of Hanumanji. 

From that day onwards, things were on an uptick. Life became hopeful. I firmly believed that something larger than life had touched me.

In time, I forgot that face. It came back to me years later, at Kainchi Dham. Only then did I know who he was.

I entered Kainchi Dham without knowing its name. I left with Maharaj ji in my life.

In 2009, we went to Munsiyari. On our way back, we spent a night in Ranikhet.

That night, I dreamt of a huge Hanuman murti and of my master asking me to visit a temple on the way to Haldwani. 

Vivid dreams stay. They linger.

One day, standing on a hilltop, I got talking to a local about the festivals celebrated there. I asked if anything was happening around.

“Woh ji, neeche ek mandir hai. Wahan har saal ek bhandara lagta hai. Jao.”

I was the only one in the group drawn to such places. As we passed Kainchi Dham I did not know its name then. It seemed as if somebody had put a brake on the vehicle and a lock on my heart.

Kainchi Dham. Pic by Pratima Joshi. 

I had to go in.

I convinced everyone, and we went inside. My feet had a mind of their own. There were people, but they were beyond my visual field. The attendants took me to a Hanuman Vigraha.

I stood there, and all the forgotten shlokas lying in the recesses of my memory surfaced. I kept standing with folded hands. There was an aura that engulfed me.

I felt a cool touch on my elbow.

“Aapko Chalisa ke liye bula rahe hain.”

Just outside the temple, where Maharaj ji used to sit, I joined the Chalisa as it began. Time and the people around me simply vanished.

After it was over, I doubled over in tears, crying like a baby. I was not sad or glad. I was just overtaken.

I was in a daze.

Held by a power.

Again, somebody told me, “Please go into that hall. Mata ji is sitting there.”

I was unaware of any Mata ji. We went inside. There was this frail, divine woman in white, sitting there like a living source of compassion.

I felt so drawn towards her. I simply went and prostrated before her. She gently folded her hands and perhaps touched my head.

“Aap kahan se aayi hain?”

I told her. She smiled and said something under her breath.

She did not belong to this world.

The moment we turned around, she said, “Aap kha kar jaaiyega.”

As soon as we went out, another man came running after us.

“Mata ji aapko keh rahi hain ki aap prasad kha kar jaaiye.”

I did not know either Baba or Ma. But something had entered my life. Something

That I could not put my finger on.

A piece of divinity.

We went to the bookshop. There I saw his picture. I knew who had entered my life. It was preordained. He had summoned me there. I bought my favourite Sundarkand and some knick-knacks.

From that day onwards, his presence has always guarded me. Every book, every old bag I open seems to have his picture tucked into an inner pocket.

I came to know his name much later, when I read a book about him. It is amazing that I had missed his name before I went to the ashram and did not know how revered Siddhi Ma was.

Sometimes it helps to go in ignorance and be awestruck.

A few years ago, someone came home. The first thing he said was, “You have Baba’s presence in your home.”

He was a mystic. He had not even looked at my altar.

I live in Maharaj ji’s grace, and in the grace of my master, who visited me in a dream and asked me to go to that temple.

I live enveloped in the grace of both my anchors.

You cannot hold the ocean in a fistful of water.

That is Maharaj ji for you.

He chooses you.

दुःख में सुमिरन सब करें, सुख में करे न कोय।
जो सुख में सुमिरन करे, तो दुःख काहे को होय॥

जय महाराज जी

राम राम

A couple of years later we found ourselves in Taos (New Mexico) at baba’s temple. We cooked Bhandara and I just went and sat next to the coat and blanket in his room at the temple. I put my head on the cot. The circle was complete. Pure bliss!