As this is the centenary celebration year of Sri Swamiji, I would like to mention an incident that influenced me deeply. This happened outside the Rikhia ashram, where I had volunteered for the Silver Lining Jubilee celebrations in 2014. I would walk every morning from the ashram accommodation to the samadhi sthal area of Sri Swamiji. On the way, I would notice a few locals sitting outside selling malas.
As I wanted to gift some family members some malas, I entered into conversation with one seller sitting right next to the ashram wall one day. He started reminiscing about the time when Sri Swamiji was giving satsangs in Rikhia. Many foreign visitors would throng to these satsangs. On multiple occasions, Sri Swamiji would deliberately speak about the benefits of the malas being sold outside by the locals. His speech would move the listeners (with economic significant clout) to purchase those malas once they would stream out after the satsang! The local sellers would have a day’s earnings, enough to feed their families and therefore, they had (and continue to express) an abiding sense of gratitude for this large-hearted and brilliant sadhu who had made a nest in their desperately poor region.
This part of the story touched me deeply, as I have researched redistribution programs by governments and other elements of society, none of which reach the intended beneficiary with such unerring accuracy. However, the location choice of the sellers challenged the economic theory I had learnt from textbooks and research papers. All the sellers, on the day that I was purchasing the malas, were sitting next to each other, huddled against the ashram wall. As all of them were selling similar items, the closeness of their location to each other could only result in intense price competition among each other. This would wipe out any additional mark-up over and above the cost price of the items sold, if traditional theory is to be believed. Ideally, they should have located a significant distance from each other on the entire road leading to the ashram, so that the pressure of competition was reduced.
I opined this to the sellers sitting there, using the weight of my professional degrees and experience as an economist. A set of sellers became interested in my curiosity about their location choice and they told me the reason for this location choice. What they told me was a lesson I shall never forget. Without any bookish erudition but with absolute confidence, I was informed that closeness to the gates of the ashram ‘certified’ them as authentic sellers and any location choice further away from the ashram gates would outweigh any potential benefits of reduced competition (as the buyers would not believe them to be selling ‘genuine’ items)!
Upon my return home from the ashram, I researched this kind of location choice and found mention of this kind of ‘certification’ based location only in some obscure journal articles on industrial organization. I took away a deeper lesson from this experience: that closeness, nearness and adherence to the teachings and guidance of the Guru can alone identify me as someone who is ‘genuine’ and not a ‘fake’! I salute the life and deeds of Sri Swami Satyananda, with a sincere promise to make a ‘genuine’ effort to walk on the guidance that comes to me through my Guru, Swami Niranjanananda.