CHAPTER 14 Technical Acumen

There was much that needed to be undertaken by His Holiness. After His anointment as pontiff, without delay, He clearly envisioned and spelt out how the permanent structure at the samādhi of His Guru should be and set the ball rolling for its construction. His Guru had toured little and for the final 14 years had not travelled at all. Naturally, devotees all over were eagerly looking forward to His Holiness gracing their places. Earlier, comprehending His Holiness’s love of tapas, His Guru had indicated to devotees that His beloved disciple would undertake a tour only after satiating Himself with His tapas. The time was nearing when the persistent and pressing requests of devotees could no longer be set aside. The Maṭha’s administration, which was then being managed by the Mysore Government as His Guru had often been in a state of seclusion, needed betterment and so did the Maṭha’s poor financial condition. Facilities for the stay of devotees at Sringeri were woefully inadequate and extensive renovations were imperative. These and many other problems awaited His Holiness’s attention and He set about solving them in His characteristic and inimitable style.

He was well aware that so long as the reins of control vested with the government, He would not have full freedom to effect improvements at Sringeri. His foresight, however, made it clear to Him that it would only be a matter of time before the management would be in His hands. Hence, He decided to defer His developmental schemes. To Him, the call of devotees merited a higher priority and so He set out in 1956 on His first tour of South India. City by city, town by town and village by village, He went and graced devotees by the thousands. Conveniences for His stay constituted a highly variable factor but He did not mind. Relentlessly, He drove Himself to the verge of exhaustion to inculcate dharma and spirituality in the hearts of those who saw or heard Him. Apart from being an inspiring and impactful teacher, He was a quick and eager learner and keen observer too. He happily took walks in and studied fields, gardens and groves during his camps. He sought to know all that He could about these from His farm-owning disciples, agriculturists and horticulturists; for their part, they enthusiastically shared with Him what they knew. Production units and technical centres drew Him and so deep was what He absorbed about them that were He not a saṁnyāsin, He would, indubitably, have made an exceptional engineer.

Right from His early teens, He was inclined to examine gadgets and ascertain how they worked. About a fortnight after His saṁnyāsa, a devotee brought an ornate golden clock and requested Him to accept it. His Holiness took it, gave it back to him and told him to use it himself. When the devotee repeatedly pleaded with Him to mention something that he could submit in lieu of the clock and which He would use, He said, “Since you are so particular, you could give me a toolkit.” The devotee was nonplussed but said that he would definitely bring one with him on his next visit. Six months later, he did so. That afternoon, His Holiness took a functioning wall clock to His room. Since the clock required to be regularly wound up with a key, He had conjectured that it must have a coiled spring as its source of energy. Putting the submitted toolkit to use, He opened the clock. He located the mainspring and identified what prevented the spring from unwinding abruptly. Having a careful look at the system of meshed gears, He formed an idea of how the slowly unwinding mainspring moved, via the gears, the minute and hour hands. To have a closer look at the parts, He carefully disassembled the clock. He did not try to pull out the mainspring, as He rightly concluded that it could be harmful. Thereafter, recalling how He had dismantled the clock, He reassembled it. He then put the clock back where He had taken it from. I learnt of this from His Holiness in 1976.

At that time, He also told me, “Some years later, I noticed that a timepiece that my Guru sometimes looked at to note the time had stopped working and was lying unused. I asked Him whether I could take it for a while to my room. He just nodded. I opened and partially dismantled it. I found that its mainspring was broken and that a gear was damaged. A little later, my Guru came to my room and saw the clock in pieces. With a smile, He remarked, ‘Oh, so you are demonstrating that whatever is a combination of parts will disintegrate some day!’ and left. Realizing that a new mainspring and a gear would be needed and that these could not be got in Sringeri, I reassembled the clock and put it back.” His Holiness opened, examined and understood on His own the working of several mechanical devices.

Samādhi of Śrī Candraśekhara Bhāratī Mahāsvāmin

Apart from being an inspiring and impactful teacher, He was a quick and eager learner and keen observer too.

Right from His early teens, He was inclined to examine gadgets and ascertain how they worked.

His Holiness at Mighty Scale Co., Kochi

At the Enfield Motorcycles Factory, Chennai

At Integral Coach Factory, Chennai

Inside a Rail Coach at ICF, Chennai

At Integral Coach Factory, Chennai

Examining a computer print-out

Watching IBM card-punch Machine

At a Transformer winding factory in Bengaluru

In 1959, while He was still on His first tour, the government handed over the reins of administration to Him. He straightaway started formulating plans for the betterment of the Maṭha. He initiated the construction of a new guesthouse at Sringeri. To make best use of the available land in the temple complex, He gave instructions for the repositioning of the temples of Brahmā and Rāma. A ‘vimāna’ over Bhagavatpāda’s shrine and a ‘gopura’ (ornamental gateway) for the Śāradāmbā Temple were part of His schemes. He directed the renovation of the shrines of Goddess Bhavānī and Stambha-Gaṇapati in the Malahānikareśvara Temple. Though on tour, He kept Himself fully posted of the progress of the works and ensured that what He had envisioned was coming up. The new guest house, with several spacious rooms, each with an attached bathroom, was completed shortly after His return to Sringeri (on 9^th July, 1962). Jayachamaraja Wodeyar, the former Maharaja and the then Governor of Mysore declared it open on 18^th October, 1962; His Holiness named the building ‘Shankara Krupa’. He supervised the renovation of the shrines in the temple complex and the construction in granite of His Guru’s samādhi in Narasimhavana. Such was His Holiness’s plan that the sanctum sanctorum of His Guru was akin to that of the 33^rd pontiff and, like the latter, had a room in front of it. Between the two samādhis, He provided a big room, where all the articles of worship could be comfortably stored and which could be accessed from either side. The overall structure, with a large frontage in the east and wide corridors on the north, west and south, gave the impression of being unitary construction and belied the fact that a significant part of it was built decades earlier than the rest. His Holiness consecrated the renovated shrines in the Malahānikareśvara Temple in February, 1963 and performed the other consecrations, inclusive of that of His Guru’s samādhi, in March.

A substantial portion of Narasimhavana was then a higgledy-piggledy jungle. The neighbouring Kage Hindlu, as the Kannada name implies, was basically a haunt for crows. It was a bamboo forest with thorny bushes and undulating surfaces with pits deep enough to render elephants invisible. His Holiness surveyed the area and decided that it could be converted into cultivable land. Even the thought seemed preposterous to many but then, as the Tamil saint Tiruvalluvar put it in his Tirukkural, “The great are those who accomplish the unachievable. The petty are those who cannot.” His Holiness gave detailed instructions to the then mestry (supervisor) Katte Srikantiah and also arranged, on a contract basis, for fencing and the removal of the bamboo forest. Though His Holiness had, in response to the earnest call of devotees, to set out again on a tour in 1964, He kept Himself fully posted of the works in progress and frequently sent His suggestions and orders. Gradually, His dream became a reality and green fields sprang up.

Sri Shankara Krupa

Narasimhapura, situated to the south of Kage Hindlu, contained acres of land belonging to the Maṭha on which expenditure regularly exceeded income. Years earlier, Srikanta Sastry (who died in 1951) had tried to develop the place and had sought to establish a diesel pump there but unfortunately, in spite of his great capacity for planning and execution, his schemes fell flat. His Holiness cogitated over what could be done there and decided that fencing and clearance of worthless, thorny bushes would have to be done first. He began to make regular visits to the place and Himself supervised the operations, unmindful of heat, cold or rain. Never did He hesitate to enter thorny areas and those believed to be infested with snakes. As had happened when some portions of Narasimhavana were being developed, the supervisor at Narasimhapura and the workers readily followed Him and put forth their best.

Some ill-intentioned ones gave Him misleading advices and this led to some minor setbacks. For instance, repeated rotation of crops was suggested and it was made out that the region was thoroughly unsuitable for developing coconut groves. His Holiness was quick to see through their game. He had picked up too much knowledge of agriculture and horticulture during His tour to be misled any longer. He had already determined that the bane of the region was the haphazard policy of the earlier planners who cultivated a crop and whimsically replaced it with another, hoping that the new crop would fetch enhanced dividends. Examining the soil and keeping the climatic conditions in mind, His Holiness decided what crops it would sustain. He had acquired much knowledge about fertilizers and pesticides, both natural and synthetic, and about how best to attend to various crops and groves. In the face of extreme scepticism, He ordered the planting of coconut saplings. His instructions were carried out to the letter and lo and behold, Sringeri soon got its first coconut grove. Parts of Narasimhavana and Narasimhapura became, in time, beautified by coconut trees, laden with many coconuts. He also directed the development of areca palm groves and gardens in the Maṭha and the cultivation of fields. Taking into consideration the inputs from the supervisors, He took a call on what agricultural implements were to be purchased.

Coconut Grove

He did not keep His deep knowledge of agriculture and horticulture to Himself; He suitably trained the supervisors. The supervisors He appointed were not people who were agriculturists with years of experience. Indeed, the limited resources of the Maṭha at that time made the job far from financially lucrative. Hence, His Holiness selected His own staff and trained them for the posts. For instance, Ramappaiah, who did the spadework in Narasimhapura, was earlier His cook, while Shankaranarayana Maiyya and Malnad Venkatesha, who later served, one after the other, as the supervisors there, were His attendants. Ganeshayya, the supervisor of Narasimhavana in the 1980s, worked in the kitchen earlier. When I interviewed him, he said, “I knew nothing when I came to this job. Whatever I know today is solely because of His Holiness. He is my inspiration. I have sometimes hesitated to tackle a particularly difficult piece of land but on seeing Him go there, I have followed and so have my workers.” {Similar sentiments were expressed to me by the other supervisors whom I spoke with, such as Srikantaiah, Ramappaiah, Maiyya and Venkatesha.}

His Holiness was opposed to wasting materials, be it a nail, a sheet of paper or the vestiges of a structural alteration or demolition. One day, He noticed a nail in the inner quadrangle of Sacchidananda Vilas. He had it carefully placed on a window sill. Some days later, He asked the attendant who had been asked to place the nail on the window sill to fetch it. A wooden carton with material was to be sent to the branch Maṭha at Kotekar, near Mangaluru. His Holiness used the nail to complete the nailing in of the top of that wooden box.

One morning, when His Holiness had just completed distributing tīrtha-prasāda in the front hall of Saccidananda Vilas, a person in his late teens or early twenties approached Him with a folder in his hand. When he reached His Holiness, the folder slipped from his hand and two A4 sheets of paper fell on His Holiness’s lap and three settled on the ground. As he stood flustered, His Holiness asked him to relax, gave him the sheets that had landed on Him and waited for him to pick up the remaining ones from the floor. A line or two was written in the Devanagari script on each of the sheets. The young man had a look at the contents of the sheets, selected one sheet and submitted it to His Holiness saying, “I do not know much Sanskrit and this is my first attempt at writing a verse in it. The verse is on Goddess Śāradāmbā.” His Holiness read it and nodded. He then asked him, “What is in the other sheets? I noticed a part of this verse in the sheets that I returned to you.” He replied, “They contain portions of this verse. I inadvertently left behind in my room the sheet on which I had neatly written the verse to submit to Your Holiness. I tried to write it down from memory after coming here. I made some mistakes before I managed to pen what I had originally composed.” His Holiness said, “Why did you not correct what you had written on the first sheet instead of using another sheet?” “How could I submit something with corrections?” he responded. His Holiness said, “I would not have minded that at all. Anyway, if you were averse to showing me something with corrections, you could have written on the back of that sheet. Why did you not do that instead of using another sheet?” The young man replied, “Your Holiness would have come across the unfinished portion if Your Holiness had turned the sheet. I did not want that to happen.” Clearly amused, His Holiness said, “You have written just a line on top of the first sheet. If you did not want anything with corrections or incompleteness to be visible to me, you could have neatly cut off just that portion and written in the remaining empty sheet. Why waste paper?” No counter was forthcoming to this clincher.

Chandramoulishwara Thotti was an old stone construction where dignitaries such as the Maharaja of Mysore were formerly housed and which served as a residence for the 34^th pontiff when He stayed on the northern bank of the Tuṅgā. The construction was archaic in style and, though massive, effective space utilisation was poor. His Holiness humorously remarked, “This building was singular in a sense; in summer, it let in sunshine and in the monsoon, rain.” He decided to remodel the structure by removing certain irrelevant sub-structures. None of the granite stones, decorative and ordinary, that were removed was wasted. They were partly used in the upper portion of the structure housing the samādhis of the 33^rd and 34^th pontiffs. The remaining cut and dressed stones were employed to rebuild the Kālabhairava Temple, which had become in dire need of repair. The stone structure housing the idol of Kālabhairava was the outcome of this exercise.

Chandramoulishwara Thotti

Kālabhairava Temple

The following information relating to the renovation of Chandramoulishwara Thotti was provided in 1990 by T. M. Nagarajan, a close disciple of His Holiness.

While renovating Chandramoulishwara Thotti, His Holiness told the building contractor, a devotee, “My Guru had instructed that girders should be used in the roof of Chandramoulishwara Thotti.” The contractor tried procuring the girders but was unsuccessful. He suggested that RCC be used for the roof. His Holiness did not accept this proposal.

He asked Nagarajan, who was then working in a branch of the UCO Bank in Bengaluru and had come to Sringeri for darśana, “This is an old stone building. Using RCC roofing would not be appropriate. We should use girders only. Can you try to locate steel girders for this building using your contacts?” Nagarajan collected the requisite measurements from His Holiness and returned to Bengaluru. A steel trading firm that was a distributor of Tata Steel held an account in the branch where he worked. In response to his enquiry, the firm’s owner told him, “The girders with the specifications that you mention are not available these days. We could try looking for some unused girders at the Mysore Palace. The other option would be the Bangalore (Bengaluru) Railway Station. The Railways are currently renovating it and if some old girders meeting your specifications are available, I will try to get them for you.” Nagarajan realised that procuring the girders was not going to be an easy task.

The firm had borrowed money from the bank and sometime later Nagarajan went with the owner for stock verification. While they were taking stock of the materials, they saw layers of steel plates stacked in a corner. When the steel plates were lifted, they found twelve girders below. The owner exclaimed, “Oh my God! These must have been procured during my father’s time. I had completely forgotten about their existence.” He voluntarily offered to sell them to the Sringeri Math at a discounted price. Out of the 12 girders, 10 of them completely conformed to the specifications given by His Holiness. Nagarajan had them loaded onto a truck and sent them to Sringeri. When His Holiness saw the girders, He exclaimed in happiness to Nagarajan, “My Guru’s words are infallible. There has never been an instance of His utterances not coming true. You have now fulfilled His wish that girders be used when renovating Chandramoulishwara Thotti.”

As in the case of materials, His Holiness was against wastage of water and electricity. One day, He came across a leak at the outlet of a water tank in Narasimhavana. Immediately, He tore His handkerchief to get a piece of cloth of the right size to plug the leak and, with it, stopped the wastage of water. It was only after that that He passed on instructions to the supervisor to repair the outlet. The fact that because of the perennial river, Tuṅgā, bounding it, Narasimhavana has no dearth of water did not weigh with Him.

In November 1977, His Holiness’s ‘ṣaṣṭyabda-pūrti (completion of 60 years)’ was celebrated on a grand scale at Chennai; the various religious and public functions were primarily organized by Dharmātmā Vaidyasubramanya Iyer. On 10^th November, the concluding day, it was past 11:00 p.m. before His Holiness’s pūjā ended. After that, the huge crowd dispersed. Vaidyasubramanya Iyer’s second son, V. Jayaraman, noticed a little later that lights in the corridors of the building were being switched off one by one. He was astonished to see that it was His Holiness who was personally going around the corridors of the building switching off all the lights. He approached His Holiness, prostrated before Him and offered to do the job of switching off the lights, so that His Holiness could go in and rest. His Holiness said, “These lights were unnecessarily being kept on. Why waste electricity?” and continued to walk down the corridor, switching off more lights.

Cowshed built by His Holiness

His Holiness renovated the pāṭhaśālā at Sringeri and provided numerous conveniences for the teachers and students. The old cowshed was unimpressive and difficult to access. He built a big, easily accessible cowshed in Narasimhavana capable of accommodating, with comfort, scores of cows and calves and, in a separate section, bulls. He also built fine sheds for the elephants. To ensure and enhance approachability, His Holiness personally decided where and what type of roads and pathways were to be laid in the Maṭha and guided their construction.

A hexagonal wooden structure housed the samādhi of Śureśvarācārya. His Holiness replaced it with a stone structure with marble flooring. A vimāna over the samādhi, a room for keeping articles for worship and a maṇḍapa in front of the sanctum sanctorum and the adjacent room were some of the features of the new structure. His Holiness performed the consecration here on 6^th May, 1970. A seminar was held from the 6^th to the 10^th of May in which traditional scholars as also delegates from Universities participated. The Governor of Karnataka, Dharmaveera, inaugurated the seminar. Delivering His benedictory address, His Holiness observed, “Wisdom is what differentiates humans from animals. Knowledge helps one to sift the good from the bad and to pursue the former and to even free oneself from the cycle of births and deaths. A part of one’s karma of the past births’ is responsible for one’s present birth and lot more of it remains to fructify. The Vedas alone impart the knowledge of the means by which one can secure happiness not only here but also in the hereafter and also the knowledge that results in liberation. When the Vedic teaching was being lost sight of, Bhagavatpāda incarnated to present the true import of the scripture and to lead the people step by step to the right path. The purpose of this seminar is to investigate the methods of Bhagavatpāda.”

There was no temple for Lord Subrahmaṇya in Sringeri. His Holiness demolished an old, dilapidated building on the river front and built in its place a beautiful temple in stone for Lord Balasubrahmaṇya. He consecrated it on 17^th April, 1978.

Kumbhābhiṣeka of the Samādhi of Śrī Śureśvarācārya.

Kumbhābhiṣeka of Śrī Bālasubraḥmaṇya Temple (above) and Malahānikareśvara Temple (below)

Lord Malahānikareśvara

Goddess Bhavānī

Temple View

In the 1980s, His Holiness took up the reconstruction of the Malahānikareśvara Temple. He conceived of a new stone structure and had it built through expert sthapatis from Tamil Nadu. He personally supervised every stage of the construction. The cost of the construction was met by contributions from the Government of Andhra Pradesh and disciples. His Holiness and His successor-designate and present pontiff (Jagadguru Śrī Bhāratī-tīrtha Mahāsvāmin) performed the kumbhābhiṣeka of the shrines of Lord Malahānikareśvara and Goddess Bhavanī on 11^th February, 1985. With His keen sense of topography, His Holiness recognized that it would be a boon to the state of Karnataka if the town of Shivamogga (formerly Shimoga) in the north were to be connected to the coastal city of Mangaluru (formerly Mangalore) in the south by a motorable road on which even buses could ply; the road through the steep Agumbe ghat cannot, to this day, be used by big buses. Knowing that there was already a good road from Shivamogga to Sringeri via Koppa and there was a fine road from Mangaluru to Karkala, He opined that what was needed was to connect Sringeri to Karkala via Nemmaru and Kerekatte. He persistently prompted the officials and ministers who came to meet Him over the years to consider and execute this project. Finally, the road began to take shape in the 1980s and even as it did, He started to use it and see the progress. This is now a part of National Highway 169 and a great number of cars and buses ply on it every day.

While it is true that Sringeri has heavy rainfall in the monsoon season, artificial irrigation does have to be resorted to at other times. His Holiness paid special attention to it. In later years, He introduced drip irrigation in Sringeri. A votary of afforestation, He planted many saplings and developed a forest on the hill with the Kālabhairava Temple. Being aware that two to three feet high plants are tempting to cattle and sheep and larger trees to greedy men, He did not mind the expenses of elaborate fencing. Having a vast knowledge about trees, He was particular about what to plant and where. His choice of the trees to be planted near the fences was different from His selection for the interior regions. It was His planning that resulted in the optimal demarcation in the Maṭha of regions for coconut groves, areca palm groves, fields and gardens.

A. R. Viswanathan, a disciple of His Holiness, developed and maintained a beautiful garden with various types of flowering plants and trees in the compound of his house in Bengaluru. Whenever His Holiness camped in Bengaluru and paid a visit to his house, He viewed and enjoyed the garden. On several occasions, He discussed gardening with him. Once, when Viswanathan went to Sringeri with his friend to have darśana, His Holiness met them in private and conversed for over an hour about gardens, various plants and some of the difficulties in maintaining and nurturing them. Viswanathan’s friend was amazed at His Holiness’s keen interest in and deep knowledge of horticulture and concluded that His Holiness must be a specialist in botany. His Holiness found it amusing when he told Him so.

T-bud grafting

One afternoon, in May 1976, when I was walking from Sacchidananda Vilas towards the samādhis of the 33^rd and 34^th pontiffs, I was surprised to see His Holiness working alone in the garden in front of the samādhis. He was wearing gloves and was holding a pair of shears; near Him was a knife, a can of water and some tape. He noticed me and gestured to me to come to Him.

He told me that He was about to graft roses and that He would be using a method called “T-bud”; having said this, He jokingly commented, “By ‘T’, I did not mean the tea that people drink.” He then proceeded with the grafting; as He did so, He explained the steps. He mentioned that before I had come, He had sterilized the shears and the knife to avoid causing infection. Such was His love for the plants that before cutting, He addressed the rosebushes saying, “Forgive me for causing you pain. I will take good care of you. You will recover soon and be more beautiful than you are now.” I saw tears in His eyes as He said so. He worked quickly but gently and soon the work was complete.

T. M. Nagarajan, who helped in getting the girders for Chandramoulishwara Thotti, had many varieties of rose plants in the terrace of his house in Bengaluru. When he left Bengaluru on transfer to another branch of the UCO Bank, he took all his plants to Sringeri and submitted them to His Holiness. When he went to Sringeri later for darśana, His Holiness showed him a splendid rosebush with roses of three colours and told him that this was the plant with yellow roses that he had given Him. His Holiness had Himself done the grafting that resulted in the rosebush with yellow roses becoming lovelier with roses of two other colours too.

His Holiness planting a sapling and watering the plant

His Holiness saw and appreciated manure-based biogas plants in the course of His tours and decided to set one up in Sringeri. He located it near the cowshed, which housed over 50 cows and from which manure was available in plenty. This biogas plant, the first of its kind in Sringeri and the neighbouring areas, supplied gas to the Maṭha’s kitchens in Narasimhavana and to the private houses situated therein. During His tours, at a place, He saw a simple cement stove, with firewood as fuel, in which the smoke passed in its entirety into an attached chimney. Impressed, His Holiness studied it carefully and implemented a similar but somewhat modified design in some of the buildings in Narasimhavana for heating water for bathing.

Such was His love for the plants that before cutting, He addressed the rosebushes saying, “Forgive me for causing you pain. I will take good care of you. You will recover soon and be more beautiful than you are now.” I saw tears in His eyes as He said so.

While planning a building, His Holiness gave importance to user-convenience, good ventilation, non-wastage of space, fulfilment of multiple objectives, provision for expansion and cost minimisation.

Inauguration of the Girls’ School

The new building of the School (Sri Jagadguru Abhinava Vidyatheertha High School)

While planning a building, His Holiness gave importance to user-convenience, good ventilation, non-wastage of space, fulfilment of multiple objectives, provision for expansion and cost minimisation. The ‘Sri Shankar Niketan’ and ‘Jai Shankar Niketan’ constructed in the 1970s bear testimony to this. They were designed to function as guesthouses – each with several rooms for the stay of individuals or families and a hall for collectively accommodating tourists arriving in buses for a short stay – and also as kalyāṇa-maṇḍapas, with halls, kitchens and rooms meeting the needs of those wanting to conduct functions such as a marriage or an upanayana. The ‘Sharada Niketan’, a big building with numerous rooms, was so planned by His Holiness that though initially meant to be a guest house, it subsequently housed, and that too without the need for changes, the Maṭha’s girls’ school. His Holiness started this school on 12^th July, 1972 at a time when there was no school for girls in Sringeri. It was located till July 1986 in a building near the Jai Shankar Niketan. When that building needed to be repaired, His Holiness allocated the far bigger Sharada Niketan for the school, which to this day is functioning there; in 2006, the school started admitting boys too and, in spite of the additional intake, Sharada Niketan has proved adequate. His Holiness took into consideration the severe lashing of rains for days on end due to the Southwest monsoon. He preferred to employ tiled roofs in His constructions as He felt that they better suited the climatic conditions of Sringeri than flat RCC roofs. He has said, “I have no formal engineering education but am ever ready to learn by questioning, observation and practice. Initially, I made some mistakes that I had to undo by making small modifications in the buildings; the consequence was some extra cost. However, I learnt from my mistakes and there are no such problems now.”

Bhairava Krupa

“I have no formal engineering education but am ever ready to learn by questioning, observation and practice. Initially, I made some mistakes that I had to undo by making small modifications in the buildings; the consequence was some extra cost. However, I learnt from my mistakes and there are no such problems now.”

• His Holiness

His Holiness planned and proceeded to construct a building in Narasimhavana at a scenic spot that is halfway up the hill on which the Kālabhairava Temple is situated and from where one can have a breath-taking wide view in the western direction. Water supply to this building, however, posed a problem. Underground water is available in Narasimhavana at the level of the river. None of the pumps available had a total head sufficient to lift water from that level to this high-level building, which His Holiness named ‘Bhairava Krupa’. He came up with a simple and yet elegant solution involving two pumps and a water-tank. He had a pump installed at a low level to supply water to a tank that was positioned near the cowshed, roughly midway between Sacchidananda Vilas and Bhairava Krupa. A second pump was installed between Bhairava Krupa and the tank. This two-stage arrangement ensured a copious supply of water to Bhairava Krupa. A long tub was built adjacent to the tank. It was readily fillable with water from the tank and cows quenched their thirst here when grazing freely. The water in the tank and tub served several other purposes too.

On an occasion, there was an urgent need to transcribe the contents of an audio tape contained in a seven-inch-diameter spool. The recording had been done at a speed of 1 7/8 inches per second. The Maṭha’s tape recorder that could accommodate a seven-inch spool was capable of playing back only at a speed of 3 ¾ inches per second. A second tape recorder was available that could play at the required speed of 1 7/8 inches per second but, being small, could accommodate only a five-inch spool. The task of transcribing had been allocated to me and I was at a loss as to how I should proceed. His Holiness came to my rescue and told me, “Why do you not use to advantage the principle that the receiving spool merely collects the tape that is moved by the spindle? I will show you what I have in mind.” He placed the bigger tape recorder behind the smaller one and used some packing material to ensure that the deck-levels of the two recorders lay in the same horizontal plane. He then fitted the sending and receiving spools on the larger of the two recorders. Instead of taking the tape in front of the head assembly of that recorder, He passed it in front of the head assembly of the smaller recorder. The recorders were turned on. The tape speed was decided by the spindle rotation of the smaller recorder and as such was 1 7/8 inches per second. The larger machine merely sent and collected the tape. Since the head of the smaller recorder was in contact with the tape, its amplifier and speaker units provided the audio output.

In the 1970s, I had an occasion to design and construct for His Holiness an inverter, working with a 6 volt D.C. secondary storage battery as the source, to supply a power of 20 watts at 230 volts A.C. I was having some problems with the transformer that I was employing in a parallel-inverter circuit. His Holiness asked me how the work was progressing and I explained my difficulty. He said, “I was given some transformers and they are lying upstairs, unused. You can use one if it suits you.” I decided to go upstairs to see if any one of the available transformers would match my specifications but His Holiness told me to wait. He called His attendant and told him to go upstairs and fetch a particular transformer. “I have a particular specification in my mind. Hence, may I go and select one?” I queried. His Holiness smiled and said, “Wait and see if the one that is brought suits you. If not, you can select another one.” To my surprise, the transformer that was brought completely met my requirements. Apparently, His Holiness had intuitively arrived at the specifications I had in my mind.

Once, a devotee wished to project before His Holiness a personal film with the footage of some of the big temples of Tamil Nadu. His Holiness consented and, after the requisite arrangements for the screening were made, the 16mm projector was turned on. His Holiness stood up and gazed at the machine. “The film is being projected on the screen. Your Holiness is facing the wrong direction,” said the devotee, politely. His Holiness responded, “The working of the projector interests me and so I am observing it. As for the contents of the film, I have personally been to most of the temples in South India.” After a few minutes of studying the working of the projector, His Holiness sat down, watched the film and expressed His appreciation of it to the devotee.

The following was narrated by Professor Mahadevan of IIT-Kharagpur and pertains to His Holiness’s visit to Kharagpur in April 1977.

“I took His Holiness to the various departments at IIT-Kharagpur. In each department, He posed pointed questions about the activities of that department. At the department of Naval Architecture, He was particularly interested in gathering details on the different methods of boat navigation during strong under currents. He watched the demonstrations performed there with full attention. When He visited the department of Chemical Engineering, He enquired about the research projects on pollution control. After learning the details, He said, ‘Whatever is done should be done well and the public should reap the benefits.’

“The working of the projector interests me and so I am observing it. As for the contents of the film, I have personally been to most of the temples in South India.” - His Holiness

“Whatever is done should be done well and the public should reap the benefits.”

• His Holiness

“His Holiness then visited the Railway Workshop. S. S. Narayanan, the Divisional Manager, escorted Him around. With avid interest, His Holiness posed several questions, such as, ‘With the facility here, how many locomotives can be attended to at a time? What kind of repair works are done here?’ To Narayanan, it was indeed a different kind of experience, for the entire ‘showing around’ was not a routine activity he was expecting akin to the visits by most of the dignitaries.

“A visit to the Air force station was next on the agenda. I had my own doubts as to whether His Holiness, a staunch practitioner of ahiṁsā, would be interested in visiting a place associated with warfare. His Holiness asked me, ‘What is the next place of visit?’ Hesitantly, I said, ‘There is an Air Force station here. Will His Holiness visit such places where warfare training and drills are conducted?’ Thoroughly amused at my question, His Holiness responded, ‘Why not?! What is wrong in my visiting it?!’ Duraiswami, the Officer-in-command, and other officers reverentially welcomed His Holiness. He evinced keen interest in the fighter aircrafts. Climbing the cockpit ladder and reaching the pilot seat, His Holiness surveyed the interiors and learnt about several control devices and instruments in the cockpit from Duraiswami.”

Climbing the cockpit ladder and reaching the pilot seat, His Holiness surveyed the interiors and learnt about several control devices and instruments in the cockpit.

During His visit to Coimbatore in the 1960s, His Holiness sent word to G. D. Naidu, an industrialist, teacher and inventor, who has been referred to as the Edision of India, that He would like to visit Naidu’s industrial exhibition. Naidu welcomed Him and, though His visit was meant to be for a few minutes, He spent, as Naidu said in a talk (on 10^th March, 1969), a few hours observing everything in the exhibition minutely. So impressed was Naidu with His Holiness’s interest, grasp and knowledge and, as reported by him, His Holiness’s “many constructional works” that he named the training institute that he subsequently started, “Sringeri Jagadguru Sankaracharya Vidyatheertha Training Institute.” He later named after His Holiness a hall that he built as also one of the two big bore wells that he set up to supply water to more than 1500 families. Such was the impact that His Holiness had on Naidu, an atheist. Interestingly, Naidu had the institute named after His Holiness inaugurated by ‘Periyar’ E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker, the well-known social reformer and diehard atheist of Tamil Nadu. His Holiness, for His part, inaugurated, on 23^rd April, 1971, the “E. V. R. Periyar Hall” constructed by Naidu. Naidu said in a speech on 10^th March, 1969, “One may be tempted to ask as to what connection is there between Periyar and Swamiji, who are poles apart in religious matters. I am a Sishya of Periyar and at the same time I am also a Sishya of the Swamiji.”

At the request of Raja Venkata Rao Limbekar, whose devotion to His Holiness was deep, His Holiness camped at his bungalow in Secunderabad for a part of May, 1960. A rotund jug filled with water and a tumbler were kept for His use in His private room. Sometimes, without even His attendant being aware of this and just for the fun of it, He wrapped a piece of cloth around the neck of the jug and secured it to a window such that the jug hung freely from the window. He then placed the tumbler upside down on the jug in such a manner that its rim covered the mouth of the jug. When He required water, He tapped the lower part of the rotund jug, causing it to swing and tilt; this, in turn, caused the tumbler to fall. In one swift and smooth motion, He dexterously caught the tumbler and collected the water that poured out from the jug before the jug swung back to its vertical position. When He wanted less water, He tapped the jug with less force and this resulted in jug tilting to a small extent; when He wanted more water, He tapped the jug harder. Such was His grasp of the dynamics of the jug and the flow of water that He was able to ensure that His requirement of water was exactly met through a single tap and such was His manual dexterity that not a single drop fell to the ground. {These details were provided by V. Rajagopal Sharma who happened to witness His Holiness’s setup and playful collection of water.}

With G. D. Naidu

At G. D. Naidu’s Industrial Exhibition

His Holiness established branch Maṭhas at various places and consecrated many a temple. These branch Maṭhas are intended to aid dhārmika activities and serve to establish close contact between the devotees and the Sringeri Math. Some of the branch Maṭhas also contain facilities for devotees to stay. Kalyāṇa-maṇḍapas, libraries and research centres have also been founded by Him.

Sringeri and the nearby regions did not have any hospital. Hence, K. S. Natarajan mooted to His Holiness the idea of establishing a hospital and Vaidyasubramanya Iyer threw in his full support. A hill belonging to the Maṭha at the entrance to Sringeri was made available by His Holiness for the hospital. Apart from providing land, His Holiness donated many lakhs of rupees and, in His time, the medical facility grew from a small out-patient unit to a full-fledged hospital in the early 1980s, with sophisticated medical equipment and a full-fledged lab. Dr. V. Parameshvara, a leading cardiologist of Bengaluru, served as the hospital’s Chairman. K. S. Natarajan functioned as its secretary and rendered yeoman service to the hospital’s cause by his multi-faceted role. His Holiness frequently visited the hospital and cheered and blessed the sick ones. With full knowledge of the role of His Holiness, Natarajan reported, “His Holiness is indeed everything to the hospital, and it is nothing without Him.” A scientific Research Academy with His Holiness as its trustee engaged in the conduct of medical research.

Inauguration of hospital

Laying of foundation stone for the Maternity Block

His Holiness with doctors and other devotees

The hospital as it stands now In the 1970s, His Holiness set up in Narasimhavana a new gate leading to the river. The old gate was about 50 metres to the west. The route through it and the temporary wooden bridge beyond it to Goddess Śāradāmba’s temple was circuitous. The path through the new bridge would have been significantly shorter. However, the problem was that the river beyond it was deep and putting up a temporary wooden bridge here (supported by short wooden poles resting on the river bed) was unfeasible. The common view was that the new gate was useless and several people even told His Holiness this. However, during the floods that year, a huge deposit of sand filled that location. This had never happened before. The post-flood depth there became comparable to that in the portion of the river opposite to the old gate. To this day, decades later, the situation remains unchanged. It was almost as if the river acted promptly to ensure that the gate put up by His Holiness became optimally positioned. It was easy thereafter to put up a temporary wooden bridge every year near the new gate; during the rainy season, as in the case of the old bridge, it had to be removed and crossing of the river had to be done by boat.

Since people were put to inconvenience in the rainy season and since there occurred an unfortunate event of boat capsize, His Holiness decided in the early 1980s to put up a permanent bridge there. He meticulously collected details of various bridges in India and abroad. He entrusted the construction of the bridge He envisioned to Gammon India. When T. N. Subba Rao, the Managing Director of the company, visited His Holiness, he was surprised to find Him speaking knowledgeably about various bridges, such as the Laxman Jhula in Rishikesh, Howrah Bridge in Kolkata, Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney and Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He exclaimed to H. S. Nageswaran, a disciple of His Holiness who had accompanied him (and who reported this in a talk), “I think He has travelled all over the world!” His Holiness expressed His preference to avoid columns in the middle of the river because, as He put it, He did not want the fishes in the river to be disturbed by the construction work. Finally, after taking various factors into consideration, He approved of Gammon India’s proposal to build a bridge with one column in the middle of the river. He regularly watched over the construction.

According to Nageswaran, a superstitious consultant objected, “Connecting north to south by a bridge is not a good idea.” His Holiness responded, “If you want to connect east and west, it cannot happen here.” He added, “The Maṭha’s cowshed is in a certain place. You may say that as some cow or calf has died here, this is not the right location for a cowshed. I may accept your advice and build another cowshed at the place specified by you. If, after I shift the cows to the new place, a cow or calf dies, what should I do?” Turning to Nageswaran, He remarked that in such matters one should be pragmatic, not superstitious.

View of the bridge across the river

The Arches on both the sides of the Bridge

Not only was His Holiness not superstitious, He was acutely discerning and logical. When He was around 21 years of age, a magician came to Sringeri and had His darśana. He then demonstrated to Him in private what he called, “My power of indrajāla.” He showed His Holiness the front and back of his open palm. He then quickly waved his hand and closed his fist. When he opened his fist, His Holiness saw a golden ring there. The magician went on to demonstrate several such tricks. Finally, he prepared a paper cone, showed it to be empty and then poured some water into it. After a few moments, he jerked the cone as if he were about to throw the water on His Holiness. But what fell near Him was a variety of small flowers. He liked the performance and told the man so. He, however, did not ask the magician how exactly he had performed the tricks because He felt, “Let me not embarrass him with questions about the secrets of his trade.”

In the 1980’s, one day when I went to His presence, He stretched out His right hand and told me, “Examine My palm.” I did so. “Is it not empty?” He asked. “Yes, it is,” I replied. He waved His hands swiftly and while doing so, closed His fist. Then He burst out laughing and opened His fist. It contained kuṅkuma (turmeric powder reddened by adding lime juice). Giving some to me, He said, “This kuṅkuma did not materialize from thin air. It is from Śāradāmbā’s temple.”

He then told me, “Fetch a bowl of oil without telling anyone.” When I returned with a vessel containing oil, He instructed me to heat it on a small electric heater. The oil was soon boiling. Even as I watched, He dipped His right hand into the oil and pulled it out, all smiles. It was then that He told me about the magician who had come to Him when He was around 21 years of age.

“Though I did not ask the magician how he performed his tricks, I deduced them myself on the basis of what I had seen. Just as he produced a ring, I manifested the kuṅkuma purely by sleight of hand. He who is not discerning is likely to think that articles such as rings and kuṅkuma can be so manifested only through supernatural powers. I did not get burnt when I dipped my hand in the oil because, prior to My doing so, I had wet my hand without your knowledge. Thanks to the water, the temperature on the surface of my hand was far below that of the oil. I have read that a foreigner dips his hand briefly in molten metal. Unfortunately, molten metal is not accessible to me right now or else I would have duplicated his feat for you,” elaborated His Holiness.

“Feel My pulse,” He continued. As I did so, He closed His eyes. Soon, I was unable to detect any pulse in His left wrist. A little later, the pulse was again detectable and He opened His eyes. “You might have imagined that because I went into a state of deep meditation, my pulse ceased to be detected by you. Actually, I did not meditate. Instead, it was through a strictly physical means that I briefly inhibited the blood flow to the hand. My heart continued to beat normally.”

He then closed His eyes once more and began to speak in a variety of markedly dissimilar voices. Had I merely been given a recorded version of the sounds, I am certain I would not have been able to identify them as emanating from a single source; in fact, some of the sounds clearly seemed to be those of females with high-pitched voices. He opened His eyes and said, “What passes off as possession by a spirit is normally not so. It is easy for a person to consciously speak like different people. So a deceitful man can pretend to be possessed by some divine being and earn name, fame and money. People often do not realize that their faces and, in particular, their eyes betray far more about the workings of their minds than they imagine. This and information gathered through assistants can help a fraud to pass off as a mind-reader. The behaviour of a person in the grip of hysteria may give rise to the impression that he has been possessed by some spirit.”

His Holiness was an avid lover of nature. Not just pleasant scenery, trees, flowers, and crops but also animals, birds, fishes and even insects interested Him. One day, when He was nearing 16 years of age, He beheld a wasp in the course of His walk. It was bringing a motionless grasshopper to the mouth of a hole prepared by it. His keen power of observation and knowledge of insects led Him to know that the grasshopper was not dead; it had been paralyzed by a sting of the wasp. The wasp entered the hole, emerged and then dragged the grasshopper in. Thereafter, it closed up the hole and went away. He had heard that the wasp lays an egg and provides a grasshopper as food for the larvae that emerge from the egg.

He desired to see the developments within the hole but did not want to partially uncover it. Nature, however, favoured Him. The next time He came to the spot, He found that, for reasons unknown to Him, the mud cover of the hole had a small opening. He brought His face close to it and peeped in. He saw the larvae that looked different from an adult wasp. He decided to examine the larvae and the grasshopper in greater detail. For this purpose, He required a magnifying glass but had not brought one. He did not want to put off His study to another day. Being resourceful, He picked up a dried leaf, poked a small hole into it and put a droplet of rain water on the hole He had made. Suitably holding the leaf, He used the water drop as a magnifying glass and conducted His studies.

On another occasion, He beheld a monkey sitting seemingly pensively with its hand in the small gap between two very low-lying, horizontal branches of neighbouring trees. He placed His head close to the ground to see what was in the monkey’s hand. He noticed that it held an apple which, apparently, someone had dropped there. As the monkey was unwilling to let go of the fruit, it was unable to extricate its hand and leave. “In spite of its intelligence, this simian does not choose to let go of the fruit, withdraw its hand and then pick up the same fruit by grasping it from below the gap,” thought His Holiness.

He felt pity for the monkey. With a plan to free it from the bondage of its own making, He peeled a banana and took the fruit near its mouth. The monkey leaned forward and began to eat the fruit but continued to hold on to the apple. He peeled a second fruit. This time, He kept it at some distance from the monkey. The simian had no choice but to release the apple in order to get the banana it wanted. As it was eating the banana, He pulled out the apple and presented the same back to the monkey.

His Holiness has said, “God’s creation is so fascinating. Nature reminds us of God and is, in fact, His manifestation before all. When one watches the ocean, one is overcome with peace and when one looks at the starry sky at night, one experiences tranquillity and becomes conscious of how very miniscule one is in the enormous cosmos. Sun-rays playing on the ripples in water, green fields, the pranks of monkeys, the affection of cows etc., are delightful. Even insects that many tend to spurn have so much to teach us. Nature is a free, lovely show available for all to experience.”

Frontage of Pravachana Mandiram at Sringeri

Inside Pravachana Mandiram

Private Secretary’s Office

Laying foundation stone for Sri Bharathi Vihara

Sri Bharathi Vihara