SquareShooter

I remember reading ‘Mahabhaktavijaya’ in Tamil published by Lifco with stories of Saint poets of India, especially the Maharashtrian Saints Jnaneshwar, Tukaram and Namdev when I was still in school. I gave the book to my maternal grandmother one summer when I was spending my vacation and she was overjoyed read them, as much as I did. At the time I had no clue about the greatness of the work or its original author. For years, I had not heard or read anything about it. I have been living in and out of Bombay/Mumbai for the last 20 years. Have been following abhangs of the Saint poets with great interest and keep dreaming of the day I can visit Dehu, Alandi and Pandharpur and if possible walk with the Palki of Varkaris. It is by accident that I came across this book ‘Stories of Indian Saints’ by Justin E.Abbott and N.R.Godbole at the Motilal Banarasidas shop near Mahalakshmi temple in Mumbai. I read the word Mahipati for the first time. The introduction to the book made me very...

It was when I first came to Bombay in 1990 to work, I got to know of Ahilyabai Holkar. Not much beyond a simple fact she was a queen and that Churchgate junction was named after her, Ahilyabai Holkar chowk. Today there is a marble bust of hers at the junction, with a tacky modern pedestal. Later that decade I got a chance to visit Maheshwar, and I forgot all about Holkar though it was at Ahilyabai ghat that I fell in love with Narmada. Narmada overpowered me so much, that neither the ghat, nor the structures around mattered. But, Maheshwar stood in my mind and heart, as one of the places I most loved in this land. Once again I got an opportunity to visit Maheshwar, in the rainy shravan. I want to see Narmada my dad wished and so a plan was made. We stayed on the banks of Narmada at the new Madhya Pradesh Tourism lodging it was comfortble to do so. We decided to take the boat that evening to the Ahilyabai ghat from where we stayed and told our driver to come and pick u...