WASHINGTON, D.C., July 13, 2015 (huffingtonpost.com): One of the great joys of visiting India as an adult is how such visits make me appreciate my trips to the country when I was much younger.
I spent the summer of 1993 in India with my family, missing my friends in the Philadelphia area and feeling tortured by the constant bites of mosquitoes in monsoon-racked Mumbai and heat-soaked Trichy in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Despite my general discomfort with being in India, I enjoyed time with relatives my parents left behind decades earlier (and before I was born) and hearing from elders the oral histories of my family and the Tamil Smarta Hindu tradition in which we were raised. It helped me appreciate – at least a little bit – what sacrifices my folks, especially my father, made in leaving India.
My father’s family, particularly my paternal grandfather, were devotees of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, one of the mutts that claims lineage from the great Hindu saint and reformer Adi Shankara. I accompanied my parents and several of my dad’s relatives to Kanchipuram, about two hours drive from Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s biggest city. It was there, amidst the throngs of people trying to catch a glimpse of the beloved sage of Kanchi, Chandrashekarendra Saraswati, affectionately known as the Kanchi Periyava, we came in close proximity to a realized soul. To this day, my experience being in the presence of the Kanchi Maha Periyava is one of the few times I can remember feeling like I was being blessed by a divine soul.
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