David Godman: The story of Narikutti Swamis life that is linked to in this post is quite detailed but it omits an important story he told me in the late 1970s. He said that he went to see The Razors Edge in a cinema in Melbourne in 1958. It moved him so much, he left the cinema in tears and decided to come to India. The Razors Edge was a film about an American engineer who came to India to stay at a South Indian ashram. Somerset Maugham, the author of the novel on which the film was based, came to Ramanasramam in 1938 and based his fictional ashram and Guru on Ramanasramam and Bhagavan. Narikutti Swami spent some years in Sri Lanka but eventually his teacher told him to go to India and live on the slopes of Arunachala since he could see that this was the place he was destined to be. He spent many years there, and was the first person to undertake reforestation on the eastern side of the hill. Many of the full-grown trees there were planted by him in the 1970s and 80s. When Narikutti Swami repaired the tirtham with funds he raised from local people, he separated the bathing and clothes-washing areas from the part of the tank where drinking water was hauled out. Prior to the avalanche there was no such distinction. After his renovation, swimmers and bathers were not allowed in the water. If you wanted to have a bath or wash your clothes, you had to pull water out of the tank (or its inner well) and then take it to a separate bathing area. It was paved with stones that drained the water down the hill, instead of back into the tirtham. Though this was initially unpopular because of the extra work involved, the merit of the arrangement was ultimately accepted by all the people on the hill who depended on the tirtham for their water. The water in the tirtham was traditionally reserved for sadhus who lived on the hill. However, during a drought in the early 1980s people from town started to come up the hill to take water there. Since the level was low in the tirtham, this new demand on its waters made it likely that the sadhus would run out of water. A meeting of the sadhus was convened. Theresa, a French dentist who had been the dentist of the Mother of Aurobindo Ashram, attended since she had become a sadhu and had built a house next to Mango Tree Cave. She came up with a remarkable solution. Adopting her best Trust me Im a doctor persona, she said that floating dead animals would only contaminate a drinking water source for about three days, after which the harmful bacteria would die out. She told the sadhus, Everyone should take enough water for a week. Then we will put a dead dog in the tank. The people from town will come, look at the floating dog, go away, and we wont see them here again for the rest of the summer. They trusted her medical expertise and followed her plan since the alternative would have been to move off the hill when the water ran out. The plan worked. None of the sadhus got sick when they started taking water after a week, and the people of the town, having decided that the water was irretrievably contaminated, didnt come again that summer. Greta Pearson: David....What was the waterfall (small) that ran down the rocks alongside the lingham......The school children used to collect water in their pitchers from it...I remember that they gave me a taste of this cold beautiful water...Namaste....Greta David Godman: When Arunachala becomes saturated, streams and waterfalls break out all over the place. The recent reforestation, though, has slowed this down. Twenty or thirty years ago the streams would start to flow after quite small rains. Nowadays, it takes at least 6cm of rain for surface water to flow down the streams on the hill. We had 4 cm a few days ago. The next day I went up to Skandashram to see if the stream had started to flow down the rocks to Virupaksha Cave.There was barely a trickle. I am not sure which lingam you are referring to. It doesnt really matter because, so far as I know, none of the streams and waterfalls on the hill has been named. They are just seasonal overflows. I should have made it clearer in my original comment that the dead dog was not left in the tirtham all summer. It was displayed there for a couple of days to discourage people from town from using the tirtham for their water needs. It was taken out, and a few days later the sadhus began to drink the water again. I think the sadhus showed a lot of faith in Theresas medical expertise.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 06:50:13 +0000
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