The World of Sai

Over the years,with bad press and embassies putting out discreet warnings to visitors on the possibility of misdemeanours,the draw of Sai Baba somewhat diminished around the world. Still,Sai Baba remained one of the most popular Indian gurus sought out by westerners. Nearly 15 to 20 per cent of the 2,000 residents at Prashanti Nilayam,Sai Baba’s ashram at Puttaparthi,are from abroad,from the Balkans to Japan.

“There is a 25-year-old school in Zambia built by African devotees,” says Isaac Burton Tigrett,64,a Sai Baba devotee of nearly 40 years who has been living at the ashram for four years now.

Founder of the Hard Rock Cafe chain and one of his most famous international devotees,Tigrett donated nearly Rs 100 crore to Sai Baba—part of the $108 million proceeds from the sale of the Hard Rock Cafe business—for a super specialty hospital at Puttaparthi in the early 1990s.

Tigrett’s Sai Baba story,told and retold many times,is one of a spiritual hunt around India as a 27-year-old done in by the habits that went with the hippie high and the music of the times.

An American by birth,Tigrett grew roots in the United Kingdom as a teenager around the time seminal changes were taking place in the music world with the emergence of a new rock and roll and hard rock sound. There are stories of a troubled teenage life and the separation of his parents.

“I grew up a Christian among five generations of ministers and missionaries,” says Tigrett who visited Sai Baba in the mid-1970s and was drawn in after Sai Baba personally addressed him during a public darshan. Though he lingered on the fringe for sometime,Tigrett moved closer to Sai Baba after a car crash a few years later in the US.

Over the years,Tigrett rubbed shoulders with the who’s who of rock and roll and blues,including Paul McCartney and David Gilmour. In 1989,he married Maureen Cox Starkey,ex-wife of Beatles’ Ringo Starr,with whom he has a 24-year-old daughter Augusta King Tigrett. Maureen died of leukemia in 1994.

In all these years,Tigrett says his association with Sai Baba continued to grow. His offer to help fulfill Sai Baba’s wish to build a hospital in Puttaparthi in the early 1990s made him an integral part of Prashanti Nilayam. Tigrett refuses to discuss the exact amount he donated for the Puttaparthi hospital but says “it is a fraction of what it would have cost in the US”.

An intermittent traveller between Puttaparthi and his homes abroad,Tigrett has been living permanently at Prashanti Nilayam for the last four years,converting the apartment given to him by Sai Baba into a psychedelic extension of his personality,complete with upholstery and curtains in red,silver and gold. His daughter who runs a business in the US visits him and has been visiting Prashanti Nilayam since she was two weeks old,he says.

“I made my first half a million dollars when I was 17 (with an auto business) and then went public three times. I raised a million dollars for my projects,the Hard Rock Cafe (1971) and the House of Blues (1992),and lived an extraordinary life full of everything that people would want. And yet,what I found here was peace of mind,” says Tigrett.

“Swami asked me to stay here until I die and so I left everything I had in the West and came here. I am working on two projects for him for the future. It is a sort of secret right now,” he says. One of the projects is believed to be a concept hotel in India.

Bridget Bacrot,54,came to Prashanti Nilayam from France some 15 years ago. She saw a few photographs of Sai Baba at a friend and yoga master’s house in Paris and that drew her attention to the Indian guru. With a yen for the spiritual,she had already tried Zen,transcendental meditation and yoga in her quest to add meaning to her life as an artist—“writer,not very famous,” she says.

It was a book in French of Sai Baba’s teachings that first landed a real hook in her. “I started reading the book and I thought I would give up after a few pages but I could not stop reading,” she says,walking around barefoot in the ashram.

The book experience,she says,triggered a visit to Sai Baba’s ashram at Whitefield in Bangalore in 1996. She was,however,ready to head back to Paris when at a darshan,Sai Baba spoke a few words to her in a language she knew.

“He said to me in French,‘merci beaucoup’ (thank you very much). That changed my life and I decided to stay on. Since then,I spend 90 per cent of my time here at the ashram and 10 per cent back home in France where I have elderly parents,” says Bacrot,who turned vegetarian after she first visited the ashram.

Bacrot used the money she had saved to make that first trip to India. When she returned home and told her parents of her decision to move into Sai Baba’s ashram,they were very supportive. “My mother said if you have found peace,we will send you the money to stay,” says Bacrot.

Over the last few years,her parents have been sending her money to look after herself at Puttaparthi. “I don’t need much. I don’t spend a lot of the money that they send because everything I need is here. There is a western canteen for food. I may spend money once a month to eat at a restaurant. In the summer,I go to the Kodaikanal ashram for 10 days,” she says.

Bacrot doesn’t plan to leave the ashram or India after Sai Baba’s death but wants to explore “spiritual India” a little more. “I would like to rent my room out for a year and head out to the northern parts of India to meditate at places there,” she says.

It was the experiences of a girlfriend who returned from a visit to India some 23 years ago that set 50-year-old German paediatrician Dr Thomas Lawrenz on the trail of Sai Baba.

“This girlfriend I was with 23 years ago came back after a visit to Sai Baba with a diamond ring he had given her. Despite knowing no English when she visited India,she came back completely changed. Earlier,she was wayward and indisciplined. I wanted to meet this person who could change a person,so I came to visit Sai Baba too,” says Lawrenz.

Since that first visit,Lawrenz has been an annual visitor to the ashram. Over the last of couple years,the visits have increased to twice or more a year. His family also comes along with him and their stay at the ashram usually lasts for up to two months.

During these annual visits,Lawrenz volunteers as a paediatrician at the Sri Sathya Sai General Hospital. The general hospital,in conjunction with a super specialty hospital at Puttaparthi,provides free medical checks and treatment for patients who come from all parts of India.

“The thing about the volunteer work at the hospital is that this kind of experience cannot be obtained anywhere else,” says Lawrenz,who belongs to Bremen region in Germany.

Following Sai Baba’s death on April 24,Lawrenz rushed to India and Puttaparthi for two days to attend the last rites. Lawrenz says he and his family will continue to visit the ashram and offer volunteer services the way they have been doing over the years.

“There is a need for hospitals like the ones at Puttaparthi in every state in India,” he says.

In Croatia,a Catholic country, “it is something freaky” if you are a follower of an Indian guru. Many people—heads of institutions and leaders—prefer not to be identified in public with Indian gurus,says 42-year-old Marko Lucic,an annual pilgrim to the Sai Baba ashram at Puttaparthi since 2002,and the founding editor of qLife,a magazine in Croatian on management and leadership.

It was a book he read on Sai Baba that first led Lucic to him. A masters degree holder in management,Lucic says it was his association with Sai Baba that made his plan for qLife—become reality.

“There is a sizable following for Sai Baba in Croatia,around 5,000 people,which is big for a country like Croatia. People are drifting away from the church to eastern philosophies because there are no inspiring leaders. The leaders are less than ordinary,’’ says Lucic.

Despite the absence of Sai Baba,Lucic says he plans to keep coming to Puttaparthi.

“Don’t ask me how I am. I am always fine. I am a mahatma,” says 39-year-old Alexander Mizin,as he walks around Prashanti Nilayam in a checked shirt and saffron dhoti.

Mizin,of Russian origin,an award winning ad filmmaker who runs an outdoor advertising business in the Republic of Moldova,has been coming to the ashram regularly since 2007. He was in the ashram on a two-month visit when Sai Baba died.

A former Naval officer,Mizin says he was drawn to Sai Baba through a film he saw on him. Though he runs a successful business,wealth has not been his primary goal in life,says Mizin who has done small films on religion and spirituality. “Karma,dharma and enlightenment are the targets,” he says.

“When I am here,I feel I am a Hindu incarnate. That’s why I have been coming for two months every year,” he says.

And like other Sai Baba’s disciples,he too says he will continue to visit and stay at the ashram.

A village and its transformation

In a corner of what is now Puttaparthi town,stands Puttaparthi village. The village still houses the home where Sai Baba was born as Satyanarayana Raju in 1926. Now a temple,it is not much of an attraction,living in the shadow of the Prashanti Nilayam ashram located up the hill,where Sai Baba as a 14-year-old is said to have announced his higher calling.

A temple was built for Sai Baba on the hill first in 1944. In 1950,when he was 24,work began on creating what is now the Prashanti Nilayam. In 1957,a general hospital with free services was inaugurated at Puttaparthi.

Though people in the village still tend to their land,poultry and cattle and live a hardy life,the economy of a large part of the new town is built around spiritual tourism. Hotels,restaurants,apartment blocks,shops and stores have all flourished around the spiritual empire of Sai Baba. There are at least a hundred apartment blocks, built and under construction,to cater to an expected demand for permanent or temporary housing in the town.

Over the three days of mourning following Sai Baba’s death on April 24,the town saw an outpouring of lakhs of devotees,unmatched by the numbers at previous gatherings at Sai Baba’s birthday celebrations. The worry among businessmen in Puttaparthi now is whether the town after the death of Sai Baba will fail to attract the numbers it earlier did.

What next?

The Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust manages the affairs of Sai Baba’s spiritual empire and is the holder of assets estimated to be in the region of Rs 40,000 crore. Sai Baba himself was the chairman of the Trust. With his death,a new chairman is likely to be anointed when the Trust meets again in about 15 days time.

Currently,the Trust has as its members former Chief Justice of India P N Bhagwati; Indulal Shah,a chartered accountant associated with the Trust for over 40 years; former Central Vigilance Commissioner S V Giri; former CII president V Srinivasan and R J Ratnakar,Sai Baba’s nephew.

A council of management oversees the functioning of the Trust. The members of this council are J V Shetty,former Canara Bank chairman; T K K Bhagavat,former Indian Overseas Bank chairman; and K Chakravarthi,a retired IAS officer who was district collector at Anantapur when Sai Baba’s mission was being built.

At present,the powers of financial transactions are vested with Chakravarthi. Sai Baba’s nephew Ratnakar,who has been on the Trust for about five years,is the only representative from Sai Baba’s family. Ratnakar is said to be keen to have a greater say in the Trust,against the wishes of other members.

Satyajit,a former student and close aide of Sai Baba,was reportedly identified by the godman to play a greater role in the Trust,but Trust members say that’s not the case.