Agathiyar came into my life through a Nadi reading. I listened to him. He brought me to where I am today. My family is with me in this worship. Soon he brought a young gentleman over to join in our prayers. He too had a Nadi reading. I was mentioned in it. He brought his friends into this worship. He soon gathered them together to form a group Thondu Seivom, that collected funds among themselves and did service to those in need. In need of a name to identify my home for those seeking directions, I called it Agathiyar Vanam Malaysia (AVM). With the coming together of more devotees of Agathiyar in prayer, we took up service/ charity to the Homes. Hence Amudha Surabhi (AS) was formed to accept and manage the donations that came in for this noble acts of feeding and charity. Soon AVM served the poor on the streets taking the cue from Sri Krishna and his Agathiyar Universal Mission (AUM).
Today we stand humbled that we have been given an opportunity to serve our fellow children of Erai. Although the necessity of carrying out these charitable work was first mooted by Agathiyar in each of our individual Nadi readings, with Agathiyar telling us that it would go a long way towards clearing the backlog of karma that we had carried through several births, the thought of doing it to clear our karma has long since been lost in these service and charity and replaced by joy and fulfillment in giving and sharing. It is interesting how Agathiyar educates us.
I did not have a good impression of street astrologers back then in the 80's asking if they could predict someone's life, promising a bright future, saying rosy and sweet things, why then are they squatting on the 5 foot way? Why are not their lives better? Then there came a time when I took up learning astrologer from the books, the exact reason for picking it up is lost and gone from memory. During the early 90's when the internet was just in its infant stage and there were no online websites or programmes and softwares on astrology, I bought "past year" almanacs and read on how to draft the horoscope from scratch. Only then did I realize the extent of calculations and understanding needed to draw up the chart. Once you have drawn up the chart, you need to have a sound knowledge of this science and all the possibilities and effects or gochara palan of the constellations, stars and planets in constant movement, and an equally good memory. I began to respect the astrologers.
I did not have a good impression of street astrologers back then in the 80's asking if they could predict someone's life, promising a bright future, saying rosy and sweet things, why then are they squatting on the 5 foot way? Why are not their lives better? Then there came a time when I took up learning astrologer from the books, the exact reason for picking it up is lost and gone from memory. During the early 90's when the internet was just in its infant stage and there were no online websites or programmes and softwares on astrology, I bought "past year" almanacs and read on how to draft the horoscope from scratch. Only then did I realize the extent of calculations and understanding needed to draw up the chart. Once you have drawn up the chart, you need to have a sound knowledge of this science and all the possibilities and effects or gochara palan of the constellations, stars and planets in constant movement, and an equally good memory. I began to respect the astrologers.
I did not have a good impression of temple priests after seeing a couple of incidents back then in the 80's, and took to doing prayers myself in my home. After a cooling off period of 14 years, I was abruptly awakened to perform and adhere to certain regimes, prayers and rituals at the turn of this century. Agathiyar came into my life, and so did two wonderful Gurus. My life turned Topsy turvy from living a self centered life to that of opening up my life and home to others, moving away from what I thought was important to giving importance to unexpected things that were assigned by the threesome. Bringing me into worship and rituals, although conducting them only once a day, and once a week, I began to realize how it was with the temple priest who did it daily and over several times a day. I began to respect the astrologers.
I was a movie buff and enjoyed listening to songs back then as a youngster. Never did I dream that I would be involved in making an album.
My niece who was a devotee of Sri Raghavendra called to inform me from Kallar ashram that she had just seen the Jeeva Nadi. Agathiyar and Tavayogi had wanted her to produce an audio album carrying songs of praise to Agathiyar. I saw it as a desire and wish from my Gurus.
On returning to Malaysia, she got the composer with whom she had worked in earlier albums under several labels, to work on this album too. The divine work officially started on 29 July. Pre-production began. While the composer got into making the music arrangements, defining artist identity, and preparing the files with tempo/midi, we met up at AVM on 11 August to define the vision and intention, deciding the song list, and a theme for the album. On 12 August I posted news about this forthcoming album and asking for funding, in this blog and our Whatsapp group.
On 3 September, my niece was back at Kallar ashram with the tune for the first track. Amidst the preparation and marketing to be done for the annadhanam during the Pournami Puja on 5 September, Tavayogi took time to come out with the lyrics for the first track. The day she left Kallar ashram with joy in her hearts, another devotee of Agathiyar from AVM arrived at Kallar ashram with her family. The following day as it was a Wednesday, Agathiyar surprised us by revealing in the Jeeva Nadi of the devotee that he was happy with the composition of the song and was glad that my niece had begun the task given to her.
On 20 September my niece met up with us at AVM with the tune for the second track, a lullaby. Thinking and feeling apprehensive whether it would be appropriate to view Agathiyar as a child and sing a lullaby to him, the day after composing the lyrics for this tune, a devotee who participated in the composing, sends me a video clip, mentioning that he had not seen the Tamil movie earlier but the clip was there waiting to be viewed on his computer. To our surprise, in that particular clip, Mother Goddess says to a devotee of hers that she is tired of devotees seeing her as Goddess and wanted to be seen as a child too! So we took it that Agathiyar approved of the song. Amazing. Watch the clip at
Going through the phase of creating a song, writing its lyrics based on a theme and a tune, I began to admire and appreciate more and more the lyricist in the entertainment world. I began to admired the many saints and their devotional works given to mankind so that they too would take the cue and begin their journey towards the Kingdom of Erai.