I remember Guru Nithya Chaidanya Yati’s feet well. When I started watching him, he had started walking slowly due to old age. Because of the cold in Ooty, he would always wear socks and sandals.
However, he would sit on the bed with his feet bare at night. The inmates of the Gurukula would light a fire underneath to warm his feet. Even at that odd time, students used to gather around him in that small space to listen to his words. I would listen to his feet while he was talking. Soft feet. I only had the opportunity to touch those feet and serve them.
I can always see Nithya’s hands. In contrast to his feet, they are very active. He would rise before I awoke, bathe, change into his clothes, and then sit in front of the computer to write. He learned to type well at a young age. Learning to type in the 1940s was a rare professional quality. His fingers would move swiftly on the keyboard. I used to imagine that the sound of his typing would be like rain.
I have seen those fingers drawing from nearby. They think, hesitate, decide, change colors, and wait for the next color change. They would collect small pebbles and put them in a jar. They would take them out from time to time, examine them, and put them in another jar. At that time they were the fingers of a five-year-old boy. Upon observing me, he would stand up, smile, and remark, “Every pebble is an individual. No one looks like the other.” The boundless creativity of nature excited him, and he was living in that wonder every day.
There was never a day when he didn’t write letters. He would write up to fifty letters a day. He was in constant contact with the world. His interactions ranged from the most ordinary people to the world’s leading thinkers. When I started watching, he would write them himself in blue envelopes. Then he would dictate and sign them with his own ink, “Nitya.” Towards the end of his life, computers arrived. He had also started sending emails. His American students consistently kept him abreast of the latest technological advancements.
I would stand at the other end while Nitya signed the letters. Before signing, he would read the letter quickly once. A smile bloomed on his face, which is exclusively for the recipient of that letter. I imagine the beautiful signature on the paper like a kiss. In that mountaintop Gurukula, he kept kissing hundreds of people every day.
His feet kissed the earth every day.There are a lot of Malabar whistling thrush birds at Gurukula. I used to imagine he was one among them. He welcomed this world with a melodic voice every day. He left, like the vanishing song of that bird, while the sun was setting down.
