Nana Bhattacharya, his wife Phyllis and daughter Swasti meet with Bodhinatha. Mr. Bhattacharyya worked for Mahatma Gandhi in the 1940′s in his Education Program in Maharashtra. His wife was from Japan and traveled to India as a registered nurse to help at the Gandhi’s Sevagram Hospital. Swasti is an Assistant Professor in Religion at Buena Vista University in Iowa.

Mr. Bhattacharya’s been a lifelong subscriber to Hinduism Today.

Nana gives handwoven cloth art work to Bodhinatha.

Another gift for Bodhinatha.

Meeting with Palaniswami, Nana Bhattacharya shares his early days.

As a young man, Mr. Bhattacharya worked as a helper to Mahatma Gandhi. One of our monks asked him what would be the one thing he would say about Gandhi.

Mr. Bhattacharya shared, “Gandhi was not important because he was the one to make India free. That is a consequence. Gandhi’s importance came from his relentless and sincere pursuit of Truth. Everything else resulted from it, and that is what you felt when you were in his presence.”

Balambagai Rasanayagam, from UK, and her daughter Vasuhi from Deleware. Balambagai met Yogaswami at Nallur Temple when she was a young girl and received his blessings at his ashram in Columbuturai. The met with the swamis and talked with Sivakatirswami about ways to get Yogaswami’s Natchintanai over to the next generation.

Balambagai suggested reaching out to music teacher and those in charge of Sangeetam classes, programs and contests. She says currently they use Thevaram and Thiruvasagam primarily, but there is no reason that Yogaswami’s Natchintanai could not be included in the syllabus of songs to be learned. Young people could chose a Natchintanai if they wanted to, to sing in their annual presentations.

One great value of Yogaswami’s songs is that they contain all the teachings of Saivite Hinduism and the current Natchintanai book released by the aadheenam has an accurate translation of 72 songs along side the Tamil Script and roman transliteration. This is perfect for classes where English may be the first language of some of the young children of Hindu parentage but who are born in America, Canada, UK or Australia.

Any music teachers who may be interested in incorporating Natchintanai into the programs can please contact swami at studyhall@hindu.org to coordinate. One of the important points will be to use the same ragam and melody universally for the different songs, so that children in the UK are learning the same tune as children in USA and Australia.

See this site for more information http://www.himalayanacademy.com/natchintanai/

Suprika Kakkar, her husband and two boys, Jahan and Roshan. Bodhinatha cut one lock of hair from each of the boys

Jahan’s first haircut. Bodhinatha has cut a lock of his hair.

Dad receives a Ganesha coin from Bodhinatha on Jahan’s behalf.

The cruise ship is in port today. A special tour group of 200 Hindus was on board. Half of them came to the temple this morning. They showered their affection and appreciation on the temple and Gurudeva as they left.

The Gujarati Patel community is noted for their generosity toward sadhus. Our own monks have sat in meditation at Rameshwaran only to come back to the conscious mind to find coins placed before them by the North Indians on pilgrimage to the south. Today they continued that tradition by giving “bhiksha” (alms to monks) to Gurudeva.

For many years, Satya Palani molded clay Ganesh murtis for the Golden Gate Mission’s celebration of Ganesha Chathurthi. He passed the tradition on to Kartikeya Katir, who has expanded production a bit. Here are his murtis distributed to the Sri Venkateshwara Temple Youth Camp in Pennsylvania.

More went to the Hindu-Jain temple and the Sri Venkateshwara Temple shop in Pittsburgh.