Yes! God!

The man has magic in him. Shivshahir Babasaheb Purandare, when speaks about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, his voice gets an unusual depth, his face gets embellished with spiritual glow, his eyes start shining, and hands go up in the air with an unknown energy! The man, who, for his lifetime, has sung the ballads of the great King of India, is now eighty nine years old.

A blessed orator, he speaks on the culture, heritage, spirit, religion, patriotism, and national character of India with authority. In strong words, he criticizes Hindu religious leadership, which has failed to instill the spirit of nationalism in its people. A studied scholar, he firmly expresses his anger over increasing casual attitude, ignorance and inaction of Hindu society and expressively laments over casteism, materialism, and lack of knowledge which are destroying the values, history, and spirit from the lives of Hindus. But, after all this time, when the man switches over to his most beloved subject – Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj – he is completely a transformed one. His ailing vocal chord forgets the pain and becomes a trumpet of the Maratha spirit. His shivering hands gain power of the lightning and rise like sunrays to raise the impact of the speech. While speaking about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Babasaheb Purandare becomes Shiv Shahir Babasaheb Purandare.

Listening him the other day, at a book-release function was a thought-provoking encounter. The speech, the energy, made me remember another similar incidence I witnessed some two years back. It was concluding function of Rashtriya Kirtan Mahotsava in Nagpur. Vidya Vachaspati Ram Shewalkar was about to speak on Lord Krishna. Shwalkar was not well that day. He appeared on stage in a wheel chair.  Introductory speeches were on, and my eyes were watching the man, in his seventies, struggling even to sit constantly in one position. Finally, he was asked to speak. Shewalkar rose from wheelchair. He adjusted the microphone, and… the rest was a great contradiction! Words started flowing as if the rains start dancing under the sky full of black clouds. Spirited was the speech. Each of his gestures, reactions, expressions, and words was just out of the world. The seven decades long knowledge-penance overpowered the ailments of body, and Shewalkar spoke for almost half an hour. It was pin drop silence during the short pauses he took. Even after he concluded, the audience stood up and clapped only when Shewalkar rested back into the wheel chair. From where, this magical energy came from?

Similar was watching Syed Haider Raza, ninety-two year legendary painter, while painting his innovation – Bindu – in Nagpur’s Jawaharlal Darda Art Gallery. Otherwise wavery, hands of Syed Haider Raza turned firm with a divine capability when they hold a brush to draw lines on canvas. Otherwise weary, eyes of Syed Haider Raza sparkled with a spiritual light when they concentrated on shiny white canvas. Otherwise busy in watching the Shlok’s painting exhibition, art-lovers turned sculptures, immobile, to store the moment into their eyes forever. And otherwise a common white paper, the canvas at Jawaharlal Darda Art Gallery, turned into a masterpiece of contemporary art when the universal ambassador of Indian style of painting filled the hues of life into it. How it happened?

From where the energy, the magic comes in Shewalkar, for Raza and for Babasaheb Purandare? What makes Sachin Tendulkar practice non stop for more than nine hours even after playing regular match for six hours? What makes Ustad Zakir Hussain continue his Riyaaz for eight hours even after being busy in worldwide concerts? What makes 86-years-old Pandit Bhimsen Joshi touch the Shuddha Shadaj in Sawai Gandharva Music Festival? What makes Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar study for twenty two hours a day? What?

Passion? Dedication? Penance? Goal? God?!

Yes God!

Here he shows his existence. When someone gives lifetime for a cause, the cause becomes God for that someone. And that someone becomes godly for others. Yes. Isn’t it a comparatively easier way to find the God?