... Ananda Marga ...

Urappakkam is a small village 2 hours from Chennai in Tamil Nadu - India. It is a master unit that preserve a wonderful spiritual vibration.

When I see something broken that can be adjusted and used again, I can’t restrain myself; I fix it and give life again. It can be an object like a door or a necklace. It could be a plant or an animal if I had the skills for it. It could be for a human being especially in the medical side. The same tendency is also valid considering a problem in the collective body of society.

India is a good playground for this type of fixing itch. After two days of struggle I rescued a “rudraksa mala” that is a particular type of necklace with wooden rugged beads. The peculiarity of these type of beads is that the smaller are they, the highest is the market value.
The necklace was missing 20 big beads and had to be threaded again. In the end I paid four times the cost of a new one. Was it worth?

Alpana in Urappakkam

Since I lost all my belongings stolen in the train from Ranchi to Delhi, it was my foremost desire to get again a “rudraksa mala”. Two hours from Chennai in South India there is a rural project of Ananda Marga Seva Dharma Mission called Urapakkam from the name of the village area. It has a nice building, 60 coconut trees, plenty mangos, guavas and lemon trees. Dada Ramanujananda is taking care of the project since ten years and he guided me around the 8 acres of fertile land. He is trying to complete the boundary walls that are regularly trespassed by the local people, cows, goats and thieves. Difficult to develop anything else until security is not provided, he told me out of all these years of experience. 300 feet of boundary wall still missing is a tough job in this village area.
It is in the kitchen of the house where Dada was preparing a delicious “Sambar” dish that I found the abandoned “rudraksa mala”.

In the village of Urapakkam they speak Tamil, a very musical language in which the sound la dominated above all at the end of the sentences. It is told that this particular la sound has no other meaning besides creating an attraction for the listener. It is like an incantation. Going around in the village asking for beads and a thread, showing a sample of what I wanted, I shared the grace of that communication that has no business value, only pure human love.

Eventually I found the thread and a big needle. I started the reconstruction work. Coming back to Chennai I ventured in T Nagar market. A couple of stores were carrying rudraksa malas but I wanted the 20 beads, not a new one. Finally a maybe forgotten box came out from one of those stores. I hand picked 20 beads among a bunch of loose ones and I bargained for the price. Next was to find a person who could help me put the whole mala together. In a corner street a man was working threading gold necklaces. He completed the work and charged a gold price. The rudraksa mala was completed and I sat in meditation in a content state of mind.

Will it be possible to complete the Urappakkam project as it happened for the rudraksa mala? Somehow I compared the 20 beads to the 300 feet of missing boundary wall and offered the pledge to complete the work. For help and assistance prs.nys@gmail.com

Dada Ramanujananda