with Sri Ganesh

INTRODUCTION

When land was to be purchased for Auroville by the Sri Aurobindo Society, of which the Mother was the President, in the mid-1960s, a land-owner residing in Koot Road, Thiruchitambalam, put one particular condition to the sales of his large acreage, next to the Main Road to Tindivanam and to the secondary road leading to Edayachavadi and the Auroville site, which would do well for agriculture and orchards: at the North-West corner of that large piece of land was located a very small shrine dedicated to Lord Ganesh, which he had had built according to all the traditional rules and rituals, upon the advice of a sage, in order to ease some personal difficulty; he wanted the assurance that this small temple would be continuously looked after. (It seems that the shrine was erected, and the 2’ high stone carving of Lord Ganesh installed inside it, as per the guidance given by the then Shankaracharya of Kancheepuram, the highest Hindu authority in the South of India) However odd a request it was, considering that the project of Auroville professed to shun all religions except as an object of study, and to spring boldly towards future realizations, this was communicated to the Mother, who accepted the condition. Another version told me much later by Sushilla was that people had assumed that the Mother would not consider such a condition but, upon hearing them, She had exclaimed that, on the contrary, She wanted Ganesha, who was “a good friend” and “a good boy” – in French, un bon garçon -. A more complete record states thus. “It was in 1962 that Sri Balasubramania Iyer installed the idol of Lord Ganesh in a temple that he had built. Prior to this Sri Iyer was suffering from acute headaches accompanied by vomiting of blood. He consulted doctors in Thanjavur who advised him to go for brain surgery even though they could not guarantee a definite, hundred per cent cure for the problem. It was then that his wife suggested they seek the guidance of Sri Chandrasekharendra Swamigal, the then Shankaracharya of Kancheepuram. When asked, the Swamigal advised against the brain surgery but informed Sri Iyer that his problem would be cured if he were to build a temple for “pillayar” (Sri Ganesh).

5