I have been lucky all along, right from landing a course after school, to getting a job, and a wife, a home, two wonderful children, and now three grandchildren and many more, who came to be the Agathiyar Vanam Family (AVM) family beginning in 2013, all of which practically dropped onto my lap. Is this a coincidence?
Yes, looking back now, I did not work for it nor look for it. It just came my way. If there were many I took up, some with a little bit of persuasion, there were many that I turned down. Soon after, I began to learn to let go voluntarily, even those that I have hung on to for far too long. I learned that only in letting go of our hold in the lower rungs, be it a rope or ladder, can we move up and further. So is it with life.
Deciding what to do after I finished secondary schooling, as there was no guidance as we have now, I did the most practical thing. I saw and followed what my brother-in-law did. I took up a certificate course in Civil Engineering. After admission into college, I was told that we could apply for a government scholarship. But we were so naive in those days that I just walked into the interview empty-handed. But the selection committee approved the scholarship for the whole duration of 2 1/2 years. As I was a government scholar, the job fell into my lap. But if my friends were taken in by the Public Works Department, surprisingly, my name was left out. After meeting the officer in charge at the Public Services Department, she did not waste time investigating what had happened but instead offered a job with the Ministry of Defence. I took it up, thanking her. I saw myself at a young age, 20, begin my career at the Naval Base in Lumut in 1980. I spent the rest of my 36-year working career looking into the housing needs of the armed forces. Was this a coincidence?
Initially, I stayed with my colleagues in the quarters that were provided, and later moved out to rent a house. As I had much time on my hands, since work on the project site would wind up at 5pm, I would take up worship. Imagine worship became my pastime back then. I began to worship the deities, picking up from my parents, both at dawn and dusk, and visited the temples in the vicinity of Lumut and Sitiawan. I began to read about our culture and traditions. I made friends with the locals and came to see their faith and believes of God and equally see their sufferings and hardships. I began to question the very text that I kept reading that showed God as compassionate, loving, and kind, but on the contrary, it seemed that he did not care, and worse still, he was exposed as the conductor and coordinator of the said events. Eventually, Lord Siva came in a dream to calm me down, asking me to cool off and take a break, telling me to keep the questions for another date. I dropped everything that instant. In a timely manner, I was transferred back to the HQ in Kuala Lumpur. Was this a coincidence?
The transfer was a blessing that helped me let go further, in a new place and with new friends. Taking up a room in Kampung Baru at the heart of this costly capital city, I shared the small space with a Malay colleague, Abdul Razak Timin, for ten months before we were both transferred to Subang.
I had seen some fifteen candidates to become my wife. I never turned anyone down. But although the horoscopes matched, they would turn me down. Finally, my wife-to-be was someone we knew back in the days when my family was living in their house in Jalan Tembusu, Assam Kumbang, Taiping. Was this a coincidence? Did the Gods have a hand in deciding my life mate? Apparently, yes, as I came to know much later in 2002 from a Nadi reading by Agathiyar that we were soulmates in a past birth, too. My daughter, too, who was with us in the past birth, wanted us to parent her again in this birth, too.
After marriage, we moved into a new neighborhood in Sungai Buloh, just some 16 kilometers from my place of work at the Air Force Base in Subang. In 1991, a colleague, Roslan Ahmad Isa, made a date with me to view a new housing project in Cheras. My wife, two-year-old kid, and I turned up at the developer's site office. After waiting for him for some time, and as he did not turn up, we took up a unit with some convincing on the part of my wife. He tells me later that his wife was charmed by another house in another housing estate. This home of ours was to become Agathiyar Vanam Malaysia (AVM) some 22 years later. Was this a coincidence? Was this Agathiyar's choice?
My director at the HQ came by to ask if anyone wanted to take up a job with the Secretariat back at the HQ. It meant taking up administrative work. As I had shifted into my new house and was now driving some 90 kilometers both ways, to and fro, I volunteered. The offer was God-sent. Was this a coincidence? No, because I had to meet someone at the HQ.
I came to know Mr. Sekaran at the Secretariat, who left the service to become a monk at Paramahansa Yogananda's Ranchi Ashram in India three months later. As a parting gift, he gave me a painting of Lord Siva, a copy of Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi", and some sound advice that catapulted me as an asset to the department. Was this a coincidence? No, because reading Paramahansa Yogananda's book opened up a whole new world out there that I did not know existed until then. It was the world and realm of the Gurus. I had all these while known Gods and temples. Now I have come to know the Gurus. It was all God's and Gurus blessings.