My parents fearing that they shall lose me too after losing two boys before me stood before a Chinese deity asking that I be saved some 61 years ago. After chanting sacred verses in Chinese and hitting his back with the blind side of a sword, inflicting red marks on his naked back and shoulders, the medium wrote out several Chinese characters with red ink on yellow rice paper, burned it, and collected its ashes in a glass of water. I was given the magical potion to drink. I was asked to be given in adoption to him. Thus, I was spared my life that day.
The astrologers predicted that I shall meet a Kandam or face a life-threatening situation that hinted to death by drowning. As a young intern from an engineering college, I was placed on an island for two weeks in the seventies to have practical experience and learn further. As the piling team and I were returning from making some purchases on the mainland on the stroke of midnight I stepped onto the shallow boat berth at the wooden jetty that served the 300 odd villagers of the island to go about their daily life crossing the waters for essentials, etc. My foot slipped and I fell into the water. The worker's quick response and action in reaching out to my extended arms and pulling me up spared my life that day.
Having my parents introduce me to Sariyai, I had a yearning to know more about religion. I read a lot. I picked up home puja and performed it at dawn and dusk besides visiting the temple daily. Many questions arose as I saw contradictions between the written word and what was happening around me to my friends and others. The Divine who was described to us as being the most compassionate was beginning to appear and was shown to me as the one orchestrating the events and inflicting all the pain and suffering in their lives. I could not accept the fact that the most compassionate divinity could do such a cruel thing. It bothered me much as I did not get answers. In the nick of time, I was saved from going cuckoo when Lord Shiva came in a dream and asked me to keep my questions to a later date. I stopped all forms of worship and further reading and discussions. It wasn't until some 14 years later that I came back to take up worship from where I left. I was spared all the mental torture. This was in the eighties.
Coming to know the late medical astrologer and Siddha physician Dr. Krishnan in the nineties he explained the reason I never had a life-saving in terms of monetary funds. The divine spared my life by converting the life-threatening dangers and circumstances in my life with expenses. I was spared my life again.
The very first mention of the word Siddhas and their written word the Nadi or Olai was made by Dr. Krishnan. Asking him if his predictions could go wrong, he explained that it would if we had earned curses. He told me to refer to the Siddhas to learn if I had wronged in the past and earned the wreath and curses of my elders and others whom I had come across in all my previous lives. It was only at the start of the new millennium that I was shown the existence of Nadi readings on our local shores. My friend who had seen the Nadi some two years prior made an appointment for me to see mine. Agathiyar confirmed what Dr. Krishnan told me and sent me on a pilgrimage to temples both in Malaysia and India to right the wrong that I had done. I was spared the dreaded arm of karma and its whippings.
Just as I stepped out of my house to the waiting taxi, my wife asked me to see if I could have my daughter's horoscope charted while in India. Raji was assigned to pick me up at Chennai Airport and take me to all the religious destinations listed by Agathiyar in the Nadi. But by a mysterious turn of events that I saw as the working of the unseen hand of Agathiyar, the poor chap took ill and was replaced by Deva all for a reason. As I had completed my remedial prayers at all the designated temples as stipulated by Agathiyar ahead of time, I had a day to spare. I asked Deva if we could see an astrologer once we arrived in Chennai before I board the plane back to Malaysia. He told me why go far when his uncle was an astrologer staying some eight kilometers away from our hotel in Tiruvannamalai. We headed out to his village of Nachaananthal. His uncle Supramania Swami was to become my very first guru in physical form. Supramania Swami who never missed the Girivalam or circumambulation of the Holy Hill of Tiruvannamalai was taken ill the night before and had to stay indoors. Coincidently (or was it planned by Agathiyar too), I arrived to see him on the pretext of charting my daughter's horoscope. Again I saw the unseen hand of Agathiyar work wonders in bringing guru and student together.
Agathiyar again played his game in introducing me to Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal of Kallar ashram while he was in Malaysia to officiate a local chapter of his Agathiyar Gnana Peedham in Batu Caves. For one who never subscribed to the Tamil dailies, I had my neighbor pass me a copy of the surplus papers that he distributed every day. I kept seeing daily the advertisement informing the public of the said opening. I called the number advertised and asked to see Tavayogi. The reason this advert caught my attention was that I had received a leaflet some three years back from the Nadi reader after my very first Nadi reading, that carried the name Thai Veedu Thangarasan M.A who had the intent to build a temple/ ashram for Agathiyar in Kallar. I wanted to verify if Tavayogi Thangarasan Adigal of Kallar ashram and Thai Veedu Thangarasan M.A were the same. Hence, I came face to face with my second guru who was on the path of the Siddhas. Again I saw the mysterious unseen hands of Agathiyar at play.
If Supramania Swami introduced me to the ideal guru-sisya relationship, Tavayogi introduced me to the worship of the Siddhas officially. After taking up Agathiyar's call in the Nadi to come to his path, and given a long list of names of the Siddhas to be recited by the Nadi reader, I searched for more information about them. The existing organizations at that time each had an agenda and could not satisfy my yearning and hunger. That is when Agathiyar sent Tavayogi to our shores. He initiated me and my wife into the path and asked me to frequent his branch here in his absence and upon his return to India. But Agathiyar switched the deal having me see Tavayogi again for another initiation and erased the earlier Nadi reading. He instead brought me under the direct tutorship of Tavayogi and had me visit his ashram in India and journey with him to the abodes of the Siddhas. Again we saw Agathiyar's hand at play.
And so my journey was laid before me. Tavayogi volunteered to take me along to all the Siddha abodes in India. Agathiyar was shown to me in his myriad forms as sight, smell, sound, touch, form, and breath during this visit and over the years of tutorship under Tavayogi.
Teaching me the basics Tavayogi stepped aside to give me space to grow, learn and experience. He gave me the freedom to experiment, change and modify the Kriyai and Yogam lessons that he taught. Agathiyar in turn with the other Siddhas groomed us further, initially through the Nadi, then through Tavayogi, and in his physical absence, has come to direct us through others.