Story telling 1 Canvas (27 mei 2021)
Every change has a story...
Recently, the hunch came to hang 'darshan*' pictures of Sai Baba on the wall in the temple. We have enough portrait photos of Baba, but finding an image that suggests that Baba is walking in was not easy.
We made a request to the Sathya Sai Publications org. in India. They sent a nice photo, but it was not suitable to enlarge. An email to mr. Padnamaban of Sai Towers went unanswered. Finally I sent an email to Sai Prasanna, my Indian 'daughter', in Puttaparthi. She put us in touch with Mr. Shah Shah, a Muslim devotee, with a Baba studio on Chitravathi Road. His father had been Baba's personal photographer.
A flood of photos via the app came our way. But not what we were looking for. We thought it would be nice to convey a 'darshan' feeling! The pictures with Swami on the porch or walking among the devotees turned out to be too dark to print on canvas. We were able to watch with screenshots from Shah's computer. Even individual photos were scanned to meet our demand. 1500 photos later, according to Shah, we have received several photos via 'we transfer', of which we have selected 3.
The photo of Baba on the porch turned out to be the most difficult. The photo we picked from the internet appealed to us so much because the photo - over the heads of thousands of people with the roof of Kulwant Hall open, which rarely happened, and Swami (1.60 m) as 'point' that all eyes on to be focused - is a breathtaking sight and will be etched in our memory forever. The photo was also bright. Shah was able to blow up and photo-shop the photo, but the result was unnatural.
We are happy with these 3 photos and they have now been printed on canvas and hung on the wall in the temple.
Payment to Shah has also come a long way. I couldn't figure out google pay. Fortunately, Somu was able to transfer the money, after first asking Shah what he was doing for the Dutch people , ha, ha! Through Hrishikesh in Finland we were able to ensure that Somu in turn received the advanced amount on his account.
Interesting detail: I wrote that I was looking for a photo with Baba 'on the dice'... Sai Prasanna corrected me afterwards, after many back and forth messaging with Shah, that 'dice' means dice 🎲 and that the spelling had to be ' dais' (stage).
Last night Kannaiah and I hung the canvas.
'Jesus' has moved to the back wall, where He comes better to his right.
Our experience is that outer forms can help you make the connection... "Tat Twam Asi", which means that God and you are one and the same - "That Thou Art."
* darshan: being in contact with the divine, vice versa believer thus receives the blessing of God.