Today is the memorial day for Swami Ananyananda ji. I may have more things to say later but today let me say something personal. Caution : There will be lots of 'my's and 'me's.
Swami Ananyananda was a father figure to me.
My earlthly father died some years back and now my community-father has gone.
He was my joining 'Mahanta'. So was he to many other brothers too at our Advaita Ashrama. Those were the days when many novices joined the monastic community through Advaita Ashrama. The Ananyananda (President) and Satyavratananda (Manager) combine attracted many newcomers. It is most likely that he thought rather poorly of me especially during the last twenty years. But all along he was fond of me, for sure. He was well known for his meticulousness in his every day affairs. Though he must have seen enough of the world to be too shocked at seeing my day to day affairs, I remember, in the early years, maybe during the first week of my monastic life, he came to my room and saw me lying in the bed covering myself with a warm sheet and keeping the fan running. He asked me what many think to be the obvious question: would it not do just to put off the fan and remove the cover too? I replied to the effect 'no, the way I am doing it is how it suits me'. He didn't pursue the matter and let it drop. Years later when he came to my room and found a layer of cobweb just under the tube-light he asked me the question (obvious for him again) : 'Won't I clean the cobweb?' to which I replied matter of fact, I had left the cobweb on purpose, to catch mosquitos. After some years I heard from another brother that he had never heard before in his life that somebody would sort-of 'farm' spiders to catch mosquitos. And again, some three years back, when I was leaving our room after helping him brush his teeth, he asked me where I am going. I said, I don't know, which was the fact, for my every day programme is genrally very flexible. He was utterly surprised and asked, how is that, how can I be so irregular and then he asked me, how will I face it when Mahamaya puts temptations in my way, if I don't have regular habbits?
That was the man. His life went like clock work. It sometimes used to irritate me when I see it but inspires when you think of it all - his gentle smile, his courtsey, even his scolding covered with, not grace, but say, proper grammar and style, his deference to every vestige of authority, even in its pettiest form, etc..
I don't know if he had read it, but some might say he would have taken it as a compliment if anybody had said that the poem The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden covers him well.
But I don't know that for sure because Swami Ananyananda sometimes did things a bit out of the ordinary, like recommending me to be initiated into the full membership of the Ramakrishna Order as an ordained monk.
Hari Om Ramakrishna
Swami Sampurnananda
Offered in fond memory of Swami Ananyananda ji Maharaj on the occassion of the 13th day of his passing away
For official obituary go here :
For official obituary go here :
Swami Ananyanandaji (Govinda Maharaj) passed away on 6 February at 11.05 am at Seva Pratishthan hospital, Kolkata. He was 92 and had been suffering from various old‑age ailments for some years. Initiated by Swami Virajanandaji, he joined the Order in 1938 at Chennai Math and had Sannyasa from his Guru in 1947. Besides his joining centre, he served at Karachi (later closed down), Institute of Culture (Kolkata), London (later moved to Bourne End), Chennai Students’ Home, Nattarampalli, Mysore and Ulsoor centres as an assistant, and Mayavati, Shillong (for a short period) and Hyderabad centres as head. He was the editor of Prabuddha Bharata for about three years. He also participated in the refugee relief operations at Kurukshetra in 1947-48. He had been living a retired life at Hyderabad centre and Belur Math since April 1997. Simple, austere and forbearing, he quietly bore his physical sufferings till the end. He was an avid reader and author of a few books, and was well known for his loving and affable nature, gentle disposition and polite manners. In him the Order has lost a model from among the older generation of monks who acted as sources of inspiration to the younger generation.
