Our Day in Mumbai

Wonderful day here, full of remarkably useful meetings. We met with filmmaker Vasant Nath, whose short films have been winning awards here and abroad. Then another filmmaker, Anant Krishnan came, eager to lend his burgeoning cinematic skills to Gurudeva's work (he reads everything we produce). Anant is a fine storyteller and will be doing a small script for us soon. The Indra Sharma family came, Charan, Veena, Pratik and his uncle. They brought food for the traveling monks, and lots of love and welcoming. It was as though all of India were saying welcome home. The entire family is deeply immersed in art, which you would expect from seeing the masterpieces their father Indra did of Gurudeva back in the late 1990s. Young Pratik is being sought out by Audi and others in the auto industry, who love his creative depictions of automobiles, a love of his.

Veena is working on a piece showing Pradosha Siva and several of Gurudeva's visions, and she brought the canvas for us to explore together. Charan's magical canvas of Sadasiva recently sent as a gift to the monastery is destined to appear on the next cover of Hinduism Today, after the Bali issue, that is.

More Meetings in Mumbai

Later in the afternoon, we had a long and fruitful meeting with Prof. Prashant Dave (driving all the way from Ahmenabad to see us) who has been working for over a year with Dr. Rameshbai Trivedi on the Gujarati translation of Dancing with Siva. He brought with him a philosopher and scholar who will join the team to work next on Merging with Siva. There was a great sharing of their inspirations, of the history of Saivism in Gujarat (where there is today a strong Pasupati mutt and a number of ancient temples). We gifted them both with special rudraksha malas made on Kauai. They have a profound sense of the place of Gurudeva's teachings, and of the need to share his wisdom with all who speak Gujarati.

As the sun began to sink in the smoggy sky, Deepal Daas arrived. He is a thirty-something film animator working for TATA, one of India's (and the world's) most adept animation studios. He has offered to help us create a short video for the web, a simple but meaningful overview of who we are and what we do.

Off at dawn to Bengaluru and then a three-hour drive to Suttur Mutt in Mysore. Stay tuned for the further adventures of Sadasivanathaswami and Sadhaka Satyanatha.

New Plants for Himalayan Acres

Some news from our nursery department with recent plant acquisitions and improvements. These new plants will be planted in the ground shortly and allowed to grow into large clumps for sale.

And on the practical side, we created a prototype of a nursery bench to solve two problems: both metal and wood benches rot out in a few years in Hawaii, and we have 1,500 feet of used 4" PVC pipe with no other use.... Having the pots up on the benches is both better for the plant and easier on the gardener who doesn't have to stoop to care for them.

On the first day of our retreat we had the monthly Gurudeva Chitra Pada Puja. We thought you might enjoy seeing this a slideshow with large detailed images (be sure to click the pop-out or full screen icons)

Kulapati Deva Rajan has stayed on after the Ardra Puja, pushing the Siva Darshanam Vanam display site forward with Acharya Kumarnathaswami. They complete the frames and installed several panels of the artwork.