Baba of Mukteshwardham

The author Shri Mahanand D. Chhugani came to be christened as “Mahanand” as per the Vachan which came from “Granth Sahib” to Sardar Takhatsing, founder of Sikh kanya Mahavidayalaya in Ferozpur. Shri Chugani’s father Shri Daulatram was Headmaster in that institution where he migrated from his native Sind.

Shri Daulataram, father of Shri Chugani,took up the teaching job in preference to a job in the Revenue Department of the Government of Sind because of his strong nationalist feelings.

Shri Daulatram passed away in 1917 at the age of 27 when Shri Chhugani was only 3 ½. He was brought up by his mother Morbai and grandparents.

After graduating in Mechanical Engineering in 1938 Shri Chhugani was appointed as a Gazetted Governement Officer in Sind. After Partition, Shri Chhugani was offered a Government post in Patna, where he came under the influence of the BABA OF Mukteshwardham.

Shri Chhugani hails from a pious and god-fearing fmily and he therefore took to the BABA of Mukteshwardham with such devotion as he found in him the embodiment of what a real saint should be. As a humble tribute to this great sage Shri Chhugani has published this book detailing his experiences with the BABA and with the hope that it will serve as a beacon light to other aspirants of spiritual life.

The Manuscript of this book was written by me at the Mukteshwar Dham itself in Ranchi in June 1979 where I got all the help from Kumari Kalyaneshwari Devi who gave me the names of various small tamples—more than twenty of them – dedicated to various Gods which were constructed by BABA in front of the four main temples: (i) Lord Mukteshwar, (ii) Mother Durga, (iii) Kali Ma and (iv) Goddess Laxmi. It gave one the impression as if the gods in the smaller temples were oining the whole Universe in doing “Aarati” to Mukteshwar, Lord Shiva, the Lord of the Universe. She also enlightened me about the major Pujas perforemed in the Dham.

Ajit Kumar Shinha, one of the orphaned children of a disciple of the BABA whom the latter brought up, educated upto the college level and saved their property from the clutches of their own uncle, helped me in various ways, But the maximum help, I got, was from my friend Shri Chandra Bhan Chhikara, Director, Harayana Agricultural University, Hissar.

Since I am not a writer I was feeling very diffident and wanted someone competent to go through the Manuscript and put it in shape. But on one came to my rescue.

The Yeas were rolling out and I Began to fear, lest my end may come and the book may remain unpublished. Restive to push it through, I wrote to Chhikara who asked me to come to Hissar. I was much relieved, but train reservations to Hissar for any class were not available in April-May 1988 due to summer vacation.

In the meantime, I knocked at other doors in Bombay, and ultimately came to Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan who undertook to publish the book and sell it through their different centres.

These are my heart’s pouring for a noble soul and I wanted to share them with the public at large. As my humble offering to the great BABA, I have earmarked whatever benefits accruing to me by the publication of this book, to the Dham. I hope people will ignore my shortcomings and derive inspiration from the life of this great soul.

May his blessings be on me.

Any donations my kindly be sent in favour of Kumari Kalayani Davi only at Mukteshwar Dham, Kokar, Ranchi, pin: 834 001.

The urge for writing something about the BABA has been with me nor for quite some years. Every time the thought came up, I dropped it, looking to my own incompetence for doing the job. Moreover, BABA did not tell us what he was, where he was born, what part of the country he came from, what was his parentage, what school or other education he had, where he roamed about in his early years, who was his Guru – the guide and question like that. He would only say that when one become a ‘Sadhu’, a Sanyasi, he has to give up everything of the past, even his name. Sometimes, from his tray musings, we could infer he was the son of a ‘Rajah’ hailing from Karnataka or Bengal. He spoke in Bengali and his writings were also in Bengali. The Pujas are in Bengali and take place according to Bengali calendar. He could, however, converse freely in Hindi as well. Considering all this, one could only surmise that he came from Bengal or Orissa side. There was no one who could throw light on his early life.

These handicaps added to my difficulty to write about such an august personality, as I am not endowed with literary flair. I was an engineer who had dealt with solid materials all through life. So to write a biography or even a rough pencil sketch of this noble personality was difficult for me. This diffidence made me postpone writing the biography every time the thought came up.

But time was passing and the old guard was disappearing one by one. Also with the ‘Nirvana’ of BABA at the time of Durga Puja in 1967, the platform of gathering together of the old followers of BABA, where we could exchange information, had greatly narrowed. The memories of events were also getting fedd. Therefore the urge to write atleast my personal experiences with BABA became all the more persistent.

Not tht it matters anything to the great ones whether or not someone writes about them; they are much too above that and that is why they are great. But it is or my own satisfaction that I write to bring to light as much as I can the greatness that BABA was, as I saw it. The true biography of such inspired souls can only be on the spiritual plane which no one can only be on the spiritual lane which no one can write except they themselves. But this is what is never done by them. Even on the limited physical plane also, however, how can a blind man like me describe the beauties of a Rising sun who has passed the zenith and set; or how can a non-swimmer collecting pebbles on the shore know the depth of the ocean. These saints and Mahatmas are bigger than the oceans. To know them even a little requires a swimmer atleast. I am not even that.

In this venture that I have taken upon myself I entirely depend on the grace of BABA. May he fulfil the task on hand. My request to the readers would be to show their magnanimity in forgiving any looseness they find in the narrations or any anachronism in the writing. I also seek the pardon of the BABA and the readers for the discrepancies noticed in the narrations. I can assure them that they, if any, are inadvertent and I shall feel it a favour if the same are pointed out to me, so that they may be corrected in the subsequent editions.