This happened on April 14, 1950. I was about 18. It was a hot summer day in Madras (present day Chennai). My parents, elder brother, younger brother, and I were sitting on our terrace. My mother had poured buckets of water in the evening, so that the terrace would cool down by dinner time. Amma had prepared a potful of curd rice for dinner.
Those days it was common in all households to sit in a circle on the terrace floor (dining tables were unheard of back then). Amma would put a ball of curd rice in our outstretched palms, by turns.
That day too this happy dinner ritual was going on, when suddenly I saw a bright dazzling light go up to the sky! The others could not see it because they had their backs to the direction from where this occurred.
When I exclaimed and pointed to what I had witnessed, my father said, “It must be some fireworks going on.” But those days, except on Deepavali and Karthika Purnima, nobody lit fireworks. We discussed this for some time but did not know what it was.
Next morning, when my father opened The Hindu, there it was in bold letters, “A meteor of unusually big size and brilliance was seen in the sky exactly at the time when Bhagwan Sri Ramana attained Videha Mukthi. The devotees gathered at Ramana Maharishi’s Ashram were thrilled by the sight of the phenomenon, and its coincidence with the sage’s passing away.”
I have read that when Saint Tyagaraja shed his mortal coils, thousands of people saw a brilliant divine Jyothi going up in the sky; he died nearly two centuries ago. This, it is believed, happens when divine souls shed their lives and merge with the Lord. I feel I was blessed to see this phenomenon.
jeyamanantharaman@gmail.com
