By Harihar Tripathy
The city was loud, filled with the grinding sounds of machinery and the dust of “progress.” Nanda Baba sat wearily under the sprawling shade of an old banyan tree, right next to a massive pile of construction debris and rubble. His monastery, his matha, which had been his entire world for fifty years, had been demolished for a government project. He was now homeless, a refugee of development.
“It is all Hari’s will,” he whispered, closing his eyes to shut out the sight of the broken bricks that used to be his sanctuary.
A small movement nearby caught his eye. Two young children, their clothes dusty but their faces bright, were huddled together, intensely focused on something. Curious, Nanda Baba adjusted his glasses and leaned forward.
His heart skipped a beat. There, in their tiny hands, was a broken clay statue of Lord Krishna. It was the same statue that had sat atop the main gate of his monastery for decades. The children had used a tube of cheap glue to reattach Krishna’s broken arm. They had cleared a small patch of earth under the tree and seated the Lord there. They were now busy decorating Him with wild marigolds and jasmine they had found nearby.
Then, one of the children opened a small, dented tiffin box and took out a piece of peda (a sweet). With the most tender expression, the child held the sweet to the statue’s lips and whispered, “Eat it, Kanha… You have suffered so much pain today. You must be hungry.”
Nanda Baba was stunned. He had lived with that statue for fifty years. He had walked past it thousands of times while carrying out the grand rituals of the Salagrama, managing the monastery’s accounts, and dealing with the endless chores of the institution. In all those years of “serving” God, he realized he had never truly looked at this Krishna. He had been so busy building a house for the Divine that he had forgotten to see the Divine.
Today, stripped of his walls and his titles, Nanda Baba finally saw Him.
In the middle of the garbage and broken stones, through the innocent love of the children, the statue seemed to come alive. Krishna was smiling—a smile so radiant, so enchanting, it seemed to fill the entire dusty street with light.
It was as if the Lord was speaking directly to his soul: “You were so worried about my temple, weren’t you, Baba? Now do you understand? Did I need that temple, or did you? I am wherever you choose to see Me. I can sit on a golden throne, and I can sit in the dirt. I can smile through the ruins just as easily as I smiled through the incense smoke. I am free, Baba. Are you?”
At that moment, under a canopy of leaves and seated on a bed of wild flowers arranged by tiny hands, Nanda Baba felt a surge of peace he had never known inside the stone walls of his monastery. He realized that the monastery hadn’t been destroyed; it had merely been expanded to include the whole world.
Nanda Baba bowed his head, not in grief, but in gratitude. He had lost a building, but he had finally found his God.
