Somewhere, lost in time, is truth. Sometime, lost in time, is a soul.
Between six-o-clock in the evening of January 19 and the morning of January 20, 2009, Ananthakrishnan passed away. Brutally murdered.
As far as I knew him, he was just like us. Human; flawed, bright, cunning, mean, spiritual, drunkard, liar, and more. He was like a guru to me… Then, there were things about him that I never knew about. I, now, will never know about: his past, his nakshatra, his gotram, his relatives, etc. He said, his native place was Srirangam at Thiruchirapalli.
What amazes me more than his own prediction of his death (sometime in 2005, I think, he had first predicted his own death in the year 2009) is the fact that he had the grace to die in Thiruvannamalai, near the foothill of Lord Arunachala. I am sure, if all that the Tripura Rahasya says is true, then, he would have attained awareness.
If we had not gone to Thiruvannalamalai to see his dead body, we would not have been graced by Lord Arunachala… Shiva works in mysterious ways: we met and made awesome friends in Gerry & Gabs and Prasad & Devaraj. Each of them with a story of their own… each of them very colorful and spiritual in their own way. We also met Dwaraknath Reddy, a celebrated spiritual author, and had coffee with him in the morning.
I love Prasad singing and playing the flute… and Devaraj telling us his stories. What a storyteller he is! Gabs’ silence and Gerry conspiracy theories made us think and ponder and laugh… Prasad, staying over at your humble home was a very humbling experience. This was the first time, when we both just did not want to leave Thiruvannamalai.
Then, listening to Gerry and Swamiji, Prasad’s neighbour, debate and discuss for more than three hours was awesome.
Shiva took away one soul and made us meet four instead. That too, in Thiruvannamalai… AK had once said, if you meet and bond with strangers in Thiruvannamalai, you are related to them somewhere, sometime in a previous birth.
I believe in it: Prasad, Devaraj, Gerry, and Gabs. All you wandering souls, we are all related… The way we met and bonded… Man, like Gerry says: “There are no coincidences. We are all same, same but different!”
I know, I shall miss talking to AK about various things under the sun and over the moon in my sad, broken Tamil… My questions, his answers… but I sit back and wonder how Shiva almost always had an interpreter for us!
