DR ANANDA S TOUR DIARY: APRIL-MAY 2009 PONDICHERRY TO SYDNEY: 9th April Winding up my duties as Programme coordinator of ACYTER at JIPMER and getting back from the National Yoga Conference at Nagpur had kept me busy right up to the day of my departure for my tour Down Under, yet it was with excitation that I embarked upon my first trip as an adult to the southern hemisphere. Imagine a place where water runs down the drains the opposite way to that in the hemisphere I have lived my entire life! Was eager to experience the energies of such a place and meet the people who lived there. My three trips abroad in the past few years had prepared me for travel quite well and it has surely become easier with each passing trip. Hats off to the Singapore airport, which gets my vote for the best airport of the more than two dozen I have seen to date. Amazing planning has gone into the airport with all facilities readily available to the weary traveler. It is also the most user friendly airport I have seen. SYDNEY: 10th and 11th April Yogacharya Muralidharan, the prime force behind my tour was there at Sydney to pick me up. Customs and immigration was much easier than I had visualized after hearing the horror stories of Indian cricketers being deprived of their shoes by the customs officers in Australia and New Zealand. A drive down the harbour over the Sydney Bridge and a warm Indian dinner at Sibis brought the night to a pleasant close. The next day we had breakfast with the Danckwerts family. This family has been supporting Yognat by sponsoring the Michael Danckwerts Yoga and Cultural Award and Scholarship for the past many years in memory of their beloved son Michael. To meet the family after many years and share experiences was lovely and of course the breakfast was lovely too! Murali and I then rushed off the airport to catch our flight to Melbourne for the first major part of the tour-the retreat at Geelong. Had a view of Sydney harbour in daylight and saw the opera house shining white against the turquoise waters. BARWON AND GEELONG: 11th to 15th April Yogacharini Niraimathi, the International Secretary of Gitananda Yoga Association of Australia and her loving student-friend Bernadette were waiting for us at the Melbourne airport. Though they found us in time they forgot where they had parked their car in the multistoried car park! Well, they had not really forgotten but as someone had painted pillars of the car park yellow up to a point and blue for the rest, they were confused as they had parked in the yellow pillar area but we were in the blue pillar area! If you are confused by reading this, imagine Murali and me running around trying to find a car that we had never seen! We did finally find the car and off we went to Barwon Heads, a lovely village by the sea in Victoria. Niraimathi and her student-friend Bernadette had organized a lovely retreat at the Monastery in Geelong where two dozen Yoga enthusiasts gathered for my
first yoga programme down under. Three lovely days with classes from 6 am to 5 pm everyday kept us all busy and delighted. We worked on the Hatha Yoga, Pranayama as well as Mantra and Bhajana with a lot of fun and frolic. A special pre-birthday celebration was held on the 15th with a lovely cake in attendance for us to enjoy too. The food was wonderful and the atmosphere of the venue well suited for the Yoga. The three day retreat came to a grand conclusion with a special musical evening where I performed in the old Chapel for the group who had by then become a grand Bhajana troupe with all our Bhajana and Mantra classes paying rich dividend. Murali, Niraimathi, Bernadette and Susana then accompanied me on my journey to Melbourne on the morning of the 16th, my 37th birthday. MELBOURNE: 16th and 17th April Sri Bala, founder of Vibrational breath therapy organized an intensive seminar at the Augustine Centre in Melbourne in collaboration with the National Institute of Integrative medicine headed by Dr Avni Sali. The two day programme had a combination of talks and workshops by me as well as a special workshop on Chakra Healing by Sri Bala. His session on the 16th was an excellent birthday present and I thoroughly enjoyed the manner as well as the content of his presentation. Sri Bala has played an important role in my life and to be with him on my birthday was truly special. We had a small birthday party at the Augustine centre and Rev Paul Sanders gave me such an excellent blessing along with an aboriginal candle stand that helped me connect with the true representatives of the land. He also presented me a very valuable Aboriginal artifact that humbled me as the same pieces had been given to heads of the commonwealth many years ago. Kanchana and Dr Ranjit hosted me at their lovely home and it was such a joy to meet their lovely little children who are of the same age of Dhivya and Anandraj and equally naughty!! To have home made Indian food was great and also to have an Italian pizza on Lygon Street with Ranjit and Murali was fun. Ranjit gave me a glimpse of an Australian Hospital and also took us around town with a special visit to the holy pilgrimage site of all cricketers-the MCG! I can still remember when Sunil Gavaskar my cricketing idol and his team won the Benson and Hedges World Championship at MCG. To be at that same place brought back lovely memories of my time as a cricketer with my school and Dindigul district team. We had a nice visit to the National Institute of Integrative medicine and met with Dr Avni Sali who has a grand integrative vision and wonderful medical wisdom that he shared with us so freely. His views are very close to my heart and I hope that more work will be done with him and his institute in collaboration with both ICYER and ACYTER. Thanks to Sri Bala for this wonderful connection that has sown the seeds for a lot to come. I also enjoyed my concert at the Augustine centre with Ravichandran on the Mridungam and Narmadha on the violin. They are a great team and we had a lovely time with our music for the receptive audience. Murali had gone to a lot of trouble to get my Mridungam into Australia but it all seemed worthwhile as Ravi and I launched into a great duet together with the reverberations of the drums bouncing off the walls of the Augustine centre. It was amazing to find out later that Narmadha had been a student of my Bharatanatyam Guru Adyar K Lakshmanan and studied with him at the same time I was studying with him.
She of course later remembered me as the young boy who used to love climb trees around Lakshmanan Sir s dance hall!! Having completed our engagements in Melbourne and after having a grand Sri Lankan meal with Sri Bala s daughter Lucky and her family we set off to Sydney for the next part of the adventure. SYDNEY: 18th to 21st April Gitanjali Anwar Joseph has been very close to Swamiji and Amma since many decades and I have grown up thinking of her as one of my Yoga Aunts! She has been part of so many experiences in my life and here I was finally with her and staying in her home! Meeting her lovely husband Anwar and son Riaz made my picture of her life complete for though I have been witness to so many of her photos I had never met them in person before. Gita and Murali came for the One Day workshop at the IYTA and we had a lot of fun with the forty Yoga teachers who had gathered at the Anderledy Lodge in North Sydney. I have grown up seeing the IYTA magazine pass by Swamiji and Amma s desk and to be invited by them was very nice indeed. I was surprised to however see the title of the workshop, The wisdom of Dr Ananda for I personally feel that wisdom is universal and it is just our interpretation that manifests. I was however happy that so many showed up and to top it all got an invite to come back next year for the IYTA convention! It meant that I had not messed things up to bad if they wanted me back! Would be fun for Swamiji had been invited to one of the conventions many decades ago and to have a similar experience would be something very special for me. Thanks to Murali s master scheduling and driving talents, I had a very nice dinner with Dr Jonn Mumford (Swami Anandakapila) at the Govinda restaurant in Sydney that has really great Indian vegetarian food. Dr Jonn has been instrumental in my developing a great love for Yantra and has given me a glimpse of my father and his amazing energy in his younger days. Both Dr Jonn and I came to the conclusion that Swamiji must have had some connection to the Divine Akashik record for nothing else can explain his truly amazing teachings and greatness of being. Murali and I had a lovely trip to the magnificent aquarium at Sydney s Darling Harbour. To see the giant sting rays and sharks from beneath the water in which they swam opened up a new area in my brain creating a new perspective altogether. It made me realize that they were not swimming in the water as we think when we see them from above, but on the contrary were actually flying in the water. They looked like huge birds flying and the giant sting rays must have been the inspiration for all the special effect graphics done in the Sci-Fi movies for they look like giant space ships. One of them had a nice conversation with me as it passed over the glass tunnel and I could see its face and mouth move as if to say pass on my greetings to my relatives in India. The world looks so different from down in the deep and seemed so much more peaceful. The three nights in Sydney had recharged my batteries and off we went to New Zealand to see the Kiwis. NEW ZEALAND: 22nd to 25th April
Kiwi land has always been a fascination for me as I celebrated one of my first birthdays down there many decades ago. To return as an adult and witness the paradise was a heartening experience with the fresh greenery, mountains and streams so near everywhere. The feeling of freshness that engulfs the entire area is very relaxing for the body and mind, but the cold is another matter altogether! Eric and Cathryn were there to pick us up at the Wellington airport and we got to meet their lovely son, the little Ananda. Cathryn is to Eric what Amma has been to Swamiji and has been the Shakti behind the wonderful work they are doing in spreading the message of classical Yoga in New Zealand. Little Ananda has a great role to play in the future and is been moulded beautifully for his role in taking their work to the next generation. The lotus centre has a peaceful atmosphere and we got a special traditional Mori welcome with the rubbing of noses too! The group of a dozen enthusiastic students and teachers made sure that we felt welcome and it seemed that we spent a lot of time eating as the food was so good. A beautiful sanctuary has been built on the grounds and it is similar to the octagonal Patanjali Kutir in the Ashram but is made of wood and glass. Amazing vibrations were bouncing off the walls of the sanctuary as we chanted Mantras and sang Bhajans in the afternoons. A pond with visiting birds added to the serene atmosphere that stimulated me to sing the Shanthi Nilava Vendum song as we made seven Pradakshina circumbulations around it on the final day. A visit to the beach and a walk along it with Eric was special as Eric has walked the entire length of New Zealand on two occasions. Of course we had to make sure he didn t take us on one of those long walks as we had to get back in time for the class schedule! Eric has a great sense of humour that is infectious and we all had a lot of laughs in and out of class as we went through the morning Hatha Yoga and mid morning Pranayama sessions and the evening Satsanghas. The final evening had me singing a concert in tune with two wonderful Indian Thampuras played by friends of Eric. I have never sung to the tune of two Thampuras at a time and it transported me into another meditative plane that evening. Kalayana and Ishwaran and their daughter Sahita made it for the final day and that added to my nostalgic rendition of Swamiji s favorite Anandamey Paramanandamey. Eric and Cathryn drove us to the Wellington airport on the 25th morning and it was a lovely drive with lots of conversation and pleasant memories of a great time in Kiwi land. I didn t get to eat any Kiwi fruit (they are imported now-adays) nor see any Kiwi birds (they are nocturnal-but that is my sleep time) but did meet some lovely Kiwi people! Will get back and correct those anomalies on my next trip. SYDNEY: 26th April Murali had organized an intensive seminar at the YWCA with a nice group of interested seekers and we had an enjoyable day. Sri Bala conducted his workshop on Chakra healing that uses the Pranava in an enjoyable manner to energize and harmonize all three levels of our existence. In the evening we had a wonderful musical session led by Smt. Bhattacharyya who is Murali s singing teacher. She is a lovely lady and led her group of students in a few Bhajans with me accompanying them on my Mridungam. I followed it with a selection of Carnatic vocals and then a short Mridungam solo.
It was a happy moment for me when I had the opportunity to honour Sri Bala with a lifetime Yoga award in the form of the title, Yoga Bhishmacharya in recognition of his yeoman service for the cause of Yoga in general and Gitananda Yoga in particular. He had played an important role in helping me realize my life mission and this was a small way of my expression my heartfelt gratitude to him for his love and blessings at all stages in my life. He is an amazing man and at the age of 86 still continuing his dedicated Sadhana. I am sure that Swamiji is very proud of him. His family including his son Shanthi Kumar, daughter-in-laws and grandchildren were present on the occasion adding to the great happiness for us all. I was also happy to be hosted by Shanti Kumar and Charmaine at their home with a lovely dinner for us all with a chance to meet so many of Sri Bala s lovely family members whom I had known only by photos till then. GOLD COAST: 27 th to 30 th April A grand get together of the seniors of the Australian Gitananda Yoga family had been organized at the Gold Coast and it was a fun time for us all. Gita, Dawn, Wendy (Gowri), Maratana and Rudhra were there and Margo joined in for a day too. The new national secretary of the Gitananda Association of Australia, Devaki hosted us for a post birthday bash at her home with a nice raw food cake and also organized a nice musical evening and Pranayama session for me at different venues. Rudhra s son made it to the musical evening and it was nice to meet him as I know how much Rudhra has enjoyed seeing him grow into a nice young man. Murali and I had the opportunity to visit the Sea World and witness the wonderful dolphin show that really makes you wonder at their intelligence compared to many humans walking the planet today. We also enjoyed the lovely picnic trip with Devaki and Brendan to a nearby national park that enabled me to see the beauty of the inland area and compare it with the beauty of the beaches that had been ruined by the huge skyscraper that had been built so big and so close to the beach. When will we humans learn that these things are wrong? How many tsunamis and earthquakes do we need before we will listen to nature telling us to stop this nonsense? BRISBANE: 1 st to 3 rd May Margo Hutchison and June Greenwood had gone to great efforts to organize my three-day retreat in Brisbane at the Mercy Centre and fifty teachers and students of yoga had turned up with great enthusiasm. The venue was wonderful and the food superb and so the teachings were made easier by those two preceding factors. Shivan, Devaki and Brendan were there with Murali and so I also had a lovely back up cheer team and that was strengthened by Hema and her lovely kids who made the trip to see me on Saturday afternoon. Being parents has been great for Shivan and Hema and I was so happy to see them after quite a few years and reconnect. They had played an important role in my tour materializing and I thank them for being there in the time of need. We had a great time with all the classes and talks being well received and the evening music performance was a lovely experience. Everyone had turned up
with different musical instruments and so we had a lovely jam session with Bhajans to a grand group musical effort. The music of voices, violin, guitar, drums, cymbals, bells and so many other instruments came together in Yogic harmony. Margo and June are amazing organizers and had everything in line without a single hitch. It was surely one of the best retreats I have given and a memory to cherish. After the retreat we went out to dine at the Taj Mahal restaurant that prides itself in being the place that the Indian cricketers dine at when they play at the Gabba in Brisbane. Having a chance to chat with the husbands of Margo and June was interesting and as Margo s husband is a retired airline pilot I had quite a few questions for him having traveled by air more then 60 times in the past three years. When I asked him what the difference was in driving a car and flying an aircraft, pat came his lovely answer, there are fewer maniacs in the air! THE RETURN JOURNEY: 4 th and 5 th May I was supposed to fly out of Brisbane on a morning flight on the 4 th but when we got to the airport there was no sign of my flight! An hour of struggle and then we find out that the morning flights had been cancelled since February and my agent had not informed me that I had been rebooked to fly out the previous night instead! Luckily Singapore airlines took the responsibility of not only getting me on the afternoon flight but graciously hosted me for the night in Singapore too. Having this chance to rest and recuperate did my body good and a visit to the serene Sri Senbaga Vinayaga temple in Singapore did my mind a lot of good too. I realized that the Divine knows best and that we need to give up to HE/SHE/IT for then the reality can manifest in the best possible manner. Singapore also thus became the eighth country I have visited in the last three years. Amma and Dr Nalini were waiting at Chennai to welcome me and then we gave a small send off to Nalini who was on her journey back to Spain for some time. A non stop talk session catching up on all news and views and I reached home safe and sound early on the morning of the 6 th to have some sleep before getting back to my work at the city centre that afternoon and JIPMER the next day. Swamiji and Amma have given me so much and everyday of my life I realize with humility and great gratitude the gifts I have been given in this lifetime. I realize that the mission of my life is to take their work forward as much as I can so that Dhivya and Anandraj can then take it even further for human kind. May Swamiji continue to bless us in all our evolutionary endeavors.