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Ram and Vijaya have been fortunate to be the disciples of Sri Viswayogi Viswamji Maharaj of Guntur, for the last 25 years. Swamiji himself has been a devotee of Bhagawan Sri Satya Sai Baba since the very beginning, so Ram and Vijaya were very naturally drawn to Him.

Ram  actually met Sri Viswamji for the first time, back in 1988, during one of his visits to India. As soon as Ram entered His abode named Viswamandiram, Sri Viswamji gave him a very warm welcome and said "God is walking on this earth today, in the form of Bhagawan Sri Satya Sai Baba". On hearing this, Ram was pleasantly surprised because he never mentioned to anybody there that he was Sri Satya Sai's devotee or that he had come there directly from Puttaparthi, after having Bhagawan's Darshan! Thus Ram was totally won over by Sri Viswamji's love, grace and omniscience and accepted Him as his Guru, right away.

The Guru-Shishya bond that got formed on that day had continued to strengthen year by year, until today. Ram and Vijaya had the fortune of hosting Swamiji in their house in Dallas, during every Divine March that Swamiji had undertaken in the U.S.A from 1997 to 2009. Ram was also blessed to be the coordinator for Swamiji's Divine March in the Texas region, during all those years. Ram and Vijaya worked along with many other ardent devotees of Sri Viswamji, to organize many Paada pujas, Homams and public functions to help spread His message of Love and Universal Integration all over Texas.
Over the years, Swamiji had showered many blessings on our family, protecting us every time we were faced with severe challenges in life. He had also taken the time to come and attend our first daughter Anasuya's wedding in Hyderabad, back in 1995 and again to participate in our second daughter Lalitha's wedding in Dallas, Texas in 2007. We will be forever indebted to Him for all the grace He had shown us all these years!

Once we moved to India, settling down in Guntur became an unbelievable blessing! Sri Viswamji resides in Viswamandiram within Guntur and His Ashram in Viswanagar is also within 15 km of our town. So during His stay in India (which is almost six months every year), we now have the opportunity to have His divine Darshan and receive His guidance every so often and also attend special Pujas on auspicious days like Sankranti, Ugadi, SriRamaNavami, Maha Shivaratri and so on. The highlight of all is the opportunity to participate in the colorful functions and pujas that are held in Viswanagar every year, to celebrate Sri Viswamji's birthday (from Mar 1st to 5th)!

Among all the experiences we have had with Sri Viswamji in India, the most precious was the time when we had the opportunity to travel with Him, on a pilgrimage to Kalkota and Gauhati during Feb 2010.

We, along with Swamiji and a number of His other devotees, first flew from Chennai to Kolkata. There we stayed at a nice hotel named Mayur residency. On day 1 we visited Kalighat, on day 2 we visited Dakhineswar, Victoria Memorial, the main office of Missionaries Of Charity and the Birla Mandir. Swamiji performed special pujas at each of the temples and then gave blessings and Prasadams to all of us. During the city tours, Swamiji used to sit in the front seat of our luxury coach, converse lovingly with us and also enjoy our Bhajans while we drove :)

On day 3, Swamiji took us to the Diamond harbor and Gangasagar. Swamiji performed a special puja on the beach for Shiva Lingam, at the spot where the sacred Ganga river merged with the Ocean. The divine vibrations during this puja were totally out of this world!
At Kolkata, we also got to witness a amazing divine incident. When we first landed at Kolkata airport, one Mr.Chatarjee came to receive Swamiji there. He also took Swamiji to his house and performed Paada puja along with his wife and daughter. Later Swamiji came with us to Dakshineswar. While we were busy at that temple, Swamiji got an emergency phone call from Mrs. Chatarjee. Apparently after Swamiji left,  their family started to celebrate their daughter's b'day. Then she cut the b'day cake and everybody started enjoying the cake when suddenly, Mr.Chatarjee choked on his cake and could not breathe at all! He started to turn blue and they had to rush him to a hospital urgently. That's when
his wife called Swamiji and He immediately gave His blessings and assured that Mr.Chatarjee will recover soon.

In the mean time at Dakhineswar, we saw Swamiji meditating specially, to save Mr.Chatarjee. When we returned from that temple, Swamiji rushed to the hospital and offered special prayers again, on Mr.Chatarjee's bed side. Slowly because of the divine grace, his condition improved and the doctors declared him to be out of danger. The Chatarjee family were deeply moved by Swamiji's protection and help during this unforeseen crisis. When we came to know about all this, we felt fortunate to be right there to witness such a divine miracle! From Kalkota, we all flew to Gauhati, Assam to visit the famous Kamakhya temple. We also visited the majestic Brahmaputra river there and the Ashram of sage Agastya, in Swamiji's divine company.

Soon after we announced our move to India, one of our aunts Ms. Annapurna Devi from Phoenix called us with a special request.

Her father-in-law Madhavapeddi Kalidas garu was a very eminent lawyer during the first part of the twentieth century, in a small town near Guntur, named Bapatla. He was Vijaya's grandfather and also happened to be Ram's uncle. He was the first devotee of Sri Shirdi Sai in our extended family and was also active in pre-independence Indian politics. In addition, he was a great supporter and donor of the Congress Party in those days and was on personal terms even with top national leaders like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. In short, he was exemplary in many ways and was the pride of our
Madhavapeddi/Gunturi family!

Anyway, our aunt's request was this: During his life time, her father-in-law expressed a wish to construct a Sri Shirdi Sai temple in Bapatla, within the compound of his house. But somehow this never got materialized and the elderly gentleman passed away in 1953. After his demise, the house was sold but an outhouse in the compound was still kept by his children, earmarked for this temple. After all these years, our aunt wanted Ram and Vijaya to help fulfill this wish! This project was complicated because the location is quite far from Guntur, where we decided to settle down. Secondly, we didn't have any  family in Bapatla who could help us locally on this project. So we had to coordinate the whole effort remotely.

But still, because this was a sacred request, we agreed to take it up, with utmost devotion. The required funds were arranged by our aunt and her son. Once we got started on this temple project, we started realizing that if we take one step towards Him, Sai takes a hundred steps towards us! The first challenge we had to face was to get the outhouse vacated by the person who was leasing it for running a Pharmacy. In the past our aunt and her family tried to get him vacated, but each time he was giving them a lot of trouble by holding on to the property against their wish. So as a first step, we traveled to Bapatla one fine morning and visited the ancient house on the street which is now named after the famous lawyer as the "Kalidas street".

As we stood on the street in front of the ancient house that day, we were filled with emotion. Even though we were too young to have known this eminent grandfather personally, we all grew up listening to so many stories about him, his many virtues  and his positive influence over the extended family. It was painful to see that house which had such a distinguished past but was now taken over by multiple businesses and being run in a very commercial way. And we also noticed there was that Pharmacy occupying the outhouse in question :)

At that point, it was past noon. We were carrying our lunch in the car but were not sure where to eat it. So we were standing in the middle of that street trying to figure out what to do. Exactly at that instant, a gentleman came out of the opposite house and greeted us. We turned towards him and we noticed pictures of Sri Shirdi Sai and Sri Satya Sai on either side of their gateway. When he asked us about what we were looking for, we briefly explained our background and why we were there. The gentleman's name was Mr. Hariprasad. Turned out he and his wife were ardent devotees of Sai since many many years. Apparently, they were also active members of the local Sri Satya Sai organization.

As soon as he heard our plan to help build a Sai temple in their neighborhood, he was overjoyed. He invited us into his house, welcomed us  to have our lunch there in their dining hall and then relax there comfortably. During the course of conversation, he expressed a lot of interest in our project and also offered any kind of help that we might need locally.
Thus the problem of distance was solved at least partially. Next we told him about the problem of the pharmacist not vacating the outhouse. He said he knew the pharmacist very well, his name was Rajesh and he was their close family friend. He offered to talk to him on our behalf!

So we returned to Guntur that afternoon thanking Lord Sai for helping us resolve the issues one by one. Afew days later, we went back to Bapatla again, upon receiving a call from Mr.Hariprasad that he was able to convince Rajesh to cooperate with us. To our amazement, Rajesh was very cordial and friendly during the meeting and he surrendered the property without any problems! We thanked Bhagwan Sai for showing us this beautiful miracle! Once the outhouse was handed over to us, we started the remodeling of the structure to give it the form of a temple. Mr. Hariprasad helped us by supervising the work locally. Our aunt's daughter got a beautiful marble idol of Sri Shirdi Sai made in Hyderabad and sent it over. We checked with the priest in Guntur and came up with a sacred muhurtam for the temple inauguration in June 2011.

Before that special day, Ram and Vijaya traveled to Puttaparthi for Sri Rama Navami and there we went to the Ashram book store to purchase life size pictures of Sri Shirdi Sai and Sri Satya Sai. The idea was to get them framed and set them up on either side of the idol, in the temple. So we looked for pictures of both the Sai forms showing Abhaya Hastam. We found such a picture of Sri Shirdi Sai right away, but for Sri Satya Sai, the picture they had with Abhaya Hastam did not have a proper background. There were some random furniture pieces visible behind Swami. So we skipped that picture and selected a different one where Swami was not showing Abhaya Hastam but was just standing
in front of students sitting in rows at a distance and smiling. We were a little disappointed about this but we went back to Guntur after placing an order at the book store in Parthi. After a few days, the package was delivered. When we opened it, to our surprise, we found both the Sai pictures showing Abhaya Hastam! And in the Satya Sai picture, the random furniture pieces in the background were no longer visible in the print that we received!

We were totally stunned at this unexpected Leela!  We got both the pictures framed and took them to Bapatla during our next trip and got them installed there. Another issue that we had faced was with the property tax for the outhouse that was not paid by the pharmacist (nor the owners) for many many years. An accumulated tax amount of Rs 50000 was due along with a fine which was almost equal to that base tax amount. We didn't have funds to pay such a huge amount, after getting the temple done. While we were wondering about what to do, Ram received a call from Mr. HariPrasad one day. He said that there was news on TV that the government had just offered a waiver on the fine for those who pay the base amount before a certain date! So Ram rushed to Bapatla with the base tax amount of Rs50000. The tax commissioner not only took care of the tax payment but he also granted a tax-free status to the temple for ever!

On the day of inauguration, our aunt's daughter Rajyalakshmi and her husband came down to Bapatla and together, we four participated in the day long rituals of consecration. Close friends and relatives attended this holy event and received Sai's blessings. With the help of Mr.Hariprasad, we were able to appoint a priest and to this day, the temple has been running smoothly, providing a place of worship and a center for spiritual upliftment for all the people living around that area. Thus our grandfather's long standing wish came true in flying colors. And we felt grateful to be instruments in this entire effort!

More Photos can be viewed at Photogallery Page