Architecture is a rough field, one has to deal with labour and contractors day-in-and-day-out. If you are not tough, you cannot survive, and as a woman the chances are even slighter. As an architect and in the process of dealing with crude men, I too became one of them – short-tempered and impatient. The softness in my voice was displaced by swearing and cursing. I would lose my temper on the slightest of things. A colleague then introduced me to Dhyan Foundation and I started with the practice of Sanatan Kriya under Yogi Ashwini. The process of transformation began as I started feeling a change within. What is on the inside makes itself visible on the outside. I did not go around telling people that I have changed, it was they who walked up to me to say there was a change. I became a softer, much better person. My bitterness disappeared and my work flourished. Then the uncanny happened.
It was late at night. I was coming back after a dinner outing. My brother was driving the car, while I was in the rear seat. Five minutes from the IIT flyover, I told my brother to stop the car. As soon as he stopped the car, I got out and sat on the front seat and told him to start driving again. Even I didn’t know why I said or did what I did. Minutes later as we reached the crossing under the flyover, an Audi came charging at high speed towards us, and before we could take stock of the situation, it rammed into our car. Nothing was left of the rear of the car, the front two seats with me and brother intact. Chill ran down my spine, and instantly I knew why I had changed seats.
It struck me how it does not matter what you say or do, it is futile to spend yourself in arguments or stressing over things not working out, because what has to happen, happens. You and I can do nothing to change it; it is controlled by something else. A force which is much higher than all this, a force, access to which is possible only through a Guru. It is that something else that made me change my seats that day. I didn’t do it.