Search:
Bhakti List Archives

Re: 10 days with Azhagiya Singar and Malolan

From the Bhakti List Archives

M K Sudarshan • April 10, 1997 


Sri.Bharadwaj's nice little account of his sojourn with "Azhagiya-singar"
truly transports one to Tiruvellore --- also to one's own little "Maanasika
Aradhanam" to our Lord Malolan !!

Thank you, Sri.BharadhwAj, for a most touching account of what certainly
must have been a most eventful and unusual "vacation". I am sure you are
richer in experience for it.  
mAlOla-priyan,
sudarshan

P.S.
you wrote:
 Around 5:30
>Nadaswaram is played.  Around the sametime a nearby mosque blares
>"Allah Ho Akbar...".  I used to enjoy this Muslim prayer when I lived
>in Nagaland where there was no temple and this was the only thing to
>remind me of God.  Here I considered it to be an interference.  Here
>I was in the company of Parama Bhagavatas, while those chanting Allah
>did not know that their Allah was only a few yards away here in the
>form of Malolan or next door in the form of Veer RAghavan.

I live in Bahrain where, as in most Islamic metropolis, there are as many
mosques as supermarkets and ladies-boutiques!

My own apartment is just a couple blocks away from a great mosque. 5 times a
day the muezzin blares out his call for prayers through the public address
and believe me, at 4.30 Am in the morning it does sound welcome to my ears
like a strange but wholesome sort of "tirupallizEchi" wake-up call ! My
thoughts go then instantly away to the cool stone-steps on
"swami-pushkaraNI" where, at around the same time in the early hours
(adjusted for time-zones), one can hear the strains of
"sahasra-nama-archana" being performed to 'tiruvEngada-mUdaiyAn' inside the
temple !

You don't know how thankful I feel then for these Muslim calls for prayer !
They promptly remind me that my own time for "sandhyAvandanam" has arrived !!

Reversing your own logic, I am sometimes tempted to believe that the same
Narayana I worship also sits invisibly inside the "holy walls" of that
mosque around my street-corner and where devout "islamic-SriVaishnavaAs"
bend their backs as deeply as their minds in deep prayer! 

Often when I drive by that spot, believe it or not, I find myself
"reflexively" doing "anjali" in that direction in the same way I would to
the Lord's "vImAna" from the step-ways of "kOnEri-theertham" !!

sudarshan