Where is Prem Sai Baba?

By John Fox

If you think Sathya Sai Baba did not perform miracles like Shirdi Sai Baba, think again. Yesterday’s Sathya Sai Baba was the day before yesterday’s Shirdi Sai Baba, and the last avatar in the Sai trilogy is yet to come.

Today, Shirdi will be flooded with devotees, Puttaparthi too. Shirdi Sai’s white marble samadhi site will be decked with garlands and Sathya Sai’s ashram will continue its worship of its beloved deity. In India we make Gurus into Gods and insert them in temples; Rama was a Guru, Krishna was a Guru, and they reside not only temples but in our hearts too. It will not be long before temples are dedicated to Sathya Sai Baba, whose service to the world was unprecedented. Both had different eclectic styles of working miracles, one choosing to heal with sacred ash from fire or dhuni and the other producing ash form thin air. They had used the elements to advantage but what both of them insisted on was love for all. They were self-realized souls.

Devotees, like people, vary. Each devotee has his or her own view of each spiritual master; some are in favor of both while some like only one. Who says they are not entitled to choose? It is the same story with self-proclaimed rationalists wielding so-called intellectual trishuls, who despise both! My grandfather, a grammarian of English, had photographs of these Gurus in his altar. My earliest memories of Shirdi Sai came from his house. The cool smell of sacred ash from a small pot in front of a painted picture of Shirdi Sai with his right leg crossed, an old cloth-bound copy of a Sai Satcharitra on his desk; the walls echo all the items of worship he had used in reverence of his master. Sathya Sai’s photograph had hung above, his charismatic presence (he was living then) hovering over dead gurus. As a teacher, he had not uttered a word on his guru-faith even once to his students. He had performed his morning ritual of spiritual practice by lighting an incense stick and lamp, whispering prayers under his breath. As an ‘educated’ person, of outstanding repute, he had believed in both Gurus. Since I had never heard him speak about them, I do not know why, I do know how, but I know he had believed. I recall his belief as silence and wonder and ask myself, do we need to verbalize our most intimate beliefs?

While the absence of airplanes did not hinder the many people who flocked to Shirdi to secure Baba’s grace, the presence of airplanes has made it easier for people to access Gurus in India’s teeming spiritual landscape. Yesterday’s Sathya Sai Baba was the day before yesterday’s Shirdi Sai Baba; transnational movements have spurred the evolution of spiritual organizations because globalization has broken down barriers between nations. The ancient spiritual is replaced by the ancient spiritual within transglobal modernity.

Technology is medicine and poison; documentaries, televised debates, loud anchors reading louder news, cheap articles you could throw up into, and very little of ‘going out into the field’ has made journalism a sorry state of affairs, easier though. I do not need to go to Puttaparthi and see for myself a dying organization, I merely speak. Or write. The media seem to control our minds rather than our minds controlling the media – as journalists and viewers of deliberately false, edited spillage.

Prem Sai, the last avatar who is supposed to have been born in Karnataka, is playing hide but no seek to devotees of both the Sai Babas of colonial and post-colonial India. Says Latha, a devotee at a local Shirdi Sai temple, “Some say He (honorific) is in Kerala. Most are skeptical. It will take a real miracle of gigantic proportions to awaken devotees to the new avatar of descent. But when He arrives, He will arrive big. All the devotees of all the three will merge in one institution of devotion.” She opines that a fair-skinned portrait of Prem Sai, soft like Jesus, did the roundabouts when Sai Baba was alive, but “we can’t say when the last avatar will appear.”

Today Prem Sai lurks in media literature as various avatars, genuine or fraudulent. But there has not been a word from Prem Sai himself, and the halo will not disappear from any of the charismatic figures. By virtue of millions of devotees’ accumulated mental tendencies of interocular histories which are playing out in the presence of Prem Sai Baba desire (“When will He come down?”), The Love Guru will not need an Amar Chitra Katha, for His story will be told, by another Hemadpant.