Among the Not So Great

His Work

His first work was to learn by teaching (in our School). I was never in his class, so cannot say first-hand anything about his “teacher-ship”. He didn’t teach for too long. Soon the Mother, maybe on Ravindra-ji’s suggestion, had other ideas for him.

The Dining Room washing section was in a disarray. Sitaram was eased out of the School and put in charge of the washing section. Mother used to call him “Big Head”. (Why? I am not aware.) He stepped in there (the washing section) and left the organising of it only on the day of his passing. That would work out to five decades or so in one place! Many of us have worked five decades in one place — but the similarity in most cases ends there. We will soon try to gauge the man by his works and more importantly by the ways of the works.

Sitaram was a true gentleman, as gentle as they come. To look at, he was just ordinary. He had a good compact figure with good enough features. Gentle eyes, an aquiline nose and a faint smile made up the face. As far as I can go back in my recollections, he was bespectacled. The eyes grew worse with time and the spectacles grew thicker. Perhaps he was an intellectual by temperament. But here, in the Ashram, he joined the Physical Education in khaki group with Biren-da as captain. He joined us in the Bodybuilding Gymnasium. We were his co-builders — Sailesh (late), Parna Kumar, myself and others. He built up a good, well-muscled upper body. He couldn’t do much for his legs which was a pity, for, when lifting weights, he could haul up the weight to his shoulders, but could not hold it there long enough. The legs started to shake (akin to a good building with weak foundation). He tottered around and had to put the weight down sooner than the rules required.

He also took to a bit of running. He joined the 3000m and the 5000m runs — maybe for 2-4 years.

These, the classes, weight-lifting, running were but episodes on the Way. His path was fixed through the washing section and then came another Divine Dictum. It came about like this: Amrita-da was publishing a Tamil magazine —Vaikarai (meaning ‘Advent’). Amrita-da had too much work and could not cope up with its publishing. The Mother (or Amrita-da) suggested Sitaram’s name. He was called by the Mother to take up Vaikarai. He now found himself with three handfuls of work. That was when he was released from the School work.

These were his works — now for his ways.