My Dad

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As some of you may know, I am in London at the moment. Both my parents have been unwell. My mother, Naina Mata ji, recently had stents put in her heart. She has recovered well and is, as is her nature, taking care of everyone as if nothing happened to her.

My father is no less than a walking miracle. The doctors are shocked he’s still alive. Swami ji has pulled out the big guns for this one.

The story goes something like this:

VP, as I call him (His name is Vipul, VP is short for Vip Prabhu) is 69 years old. He is a heart patient with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol etc., the lot, who had his first major heart attack at the age of 39.

I was fourteen years old when we helplessly watched him writhe around in that pain on the living room floor while we waited for an ambulance. After seeing him in Intensive Care for the first time, my brother and I were taken aside to a family room where a kind nurse drew a diagram and gently explained to us exactly what had happened to him. Approximately 30% of his heart was damaged.

A year later, I tried to take my own life for the first time, and I moved out of the family home as soon as I turned 16. I blamed VP for everything. I’ve written about the whys and hows in my Confessions of a Merry Monk series.

When he was approximately 47 years old, VP had an open heart, triple bypass operation at Harefield, a coronary specialist hospital in West London. Although I was not on speaking terms with him at the time and I had two children, I stayed with my mother in the family accommodation rooms adjoining the hospital and we both helped to take care of him until he was discharged.

Around 10 years after that, he had his second heart attack, where, as luck would have it, he was at a hospital anyway for a routine appointment. He lost consciousness in the waiting room and slumped onto my mother’s shoulder. The medical staff caught it in time and sent him straight to Harefield where he was treated with stents.

I was divorced by this point and living independently. VP and I had had sporadic contact over the years. None of it very pleasant. Some violent. Some police involvement. But I had to be there for my mother.

After some careful monitoring over the years, an ICD was fitted to prevent VP’s further weakened heart from going into cardiac arrest.

In January 2017, after my second stint in solitude (which I will write about at a later date), I felt so much love and forgiveness in my heart, I flew from Kenya to London and surprised my family. They hadn’t seen or heard from me much for a long while. I’d been living in Mumbai for a few years by then, and the last time they’d seen me, it ended badly between my father and me (as it usually did), and I left abruptly without them knowing exactly where I was going. They knew about Swami ji and had come to visit the ashram in November 2016, out of curiosity. But I wasn’t there. I was in solitude in Kenya.

Almost a year and a half after they’d last seen me, when I rang the doorbell, my brother answered and was shouting in surprise and joy. My sister-in-law and mother joined in with hugs and tears. The noise and commotion caused VP to come out of his room. He made it halfway down the stairs, but his legs buckled at the sight of me, and he sat down in shock and cried. I walked up to him and kissed him on his head, and told him, “I’ve come here for you.”

I’d love to say it was all rosy after that. The truth is, the hard work had only just begun. My relationship with VP was and is the biggest test of peace for me. I’d come from an incredibly divine experience in solitude and crash-landed into family life where not much had changed. My experience in solitude was just that, it seemed, a fleeting experience. It gave me more faith in God, but I still had a long way to go. I was still full of expectation. Just because I had found Om Swami ji, my guru, and so much had already changed in my life, it didn’t mean others would automatically change. It certainly didn’t mean VP had somehow miraculously transformed.

The good part though, was that, seeing that I was making an effort, VP was open to hearing more about Swami ji, and I read to my parents every evening a few pages of If Truth Be Told, and Om Swami: As We Know Him.

In April of the same year, Naina Mata ji and I went to the ashram for a meeting with Swami ji, then I went off to the desert of Kutch in Gujarat to continue my spiritual practices alone. And in November, although we were still not at peace with each other, VP came along with Naina Mata ji to the ashram and offered me to Swami ji for initiation. I was ordained into the first step of monkhood, the white robes, in April 2018.

Was I expecting that after ordination, all would be well and my family would be sweet and kind to me? Probably. Did that happen? No. The lessons continued. I, full of hope, kept going back to visit them, expecting that ‘this time’ it would be different. It wasn’t. In fact, the lessons only got harder.

When God gives you the lesson of zero expectation, God means ZERO – a big fat one.

It was heartbreaking to accept; the only way to be at absolute peace is to have ZERO expectation from anyone, ever. Yes, even from your own parents.

It’s easy to do this when everything is going well, though, right? When everyone is behaving amicably.

Didn’t everything work out in the end? Wasn’t there a happy ending?

If you read my Confessions of a Merry Monk series during the time of the Covid lockdowns, you would have read that VP and I became closer than ever. He read each chapter as I was posting it on os.me and we had beautiful conversations over video call. I heard the things I’d longed to hear my whole life from him. I wrote a hearts and flowers post about him and how he had changed, and how amazing life was.

But, my luvvies, the story continued, as did life, and I clearly still hadn’t learnt my lesson.

Because, as life so often reminds me:

The test of spiritual progress is not when everything is going well but when the poop hits the fan. Can I then keep my white robes pristine?

For a while, I’ve felt it’s important for me to write an update after the last post about VP because I don’t want to send out the wrong message to anyone: that you’ll walk the spiritual path and everything in your life will be smooth sailing. Well, it can be, but the biggest lesson I have learned is, how smooth it is depends entirely on you. Take it as a given that others around you will not transform. You must transform yourself. And this requires time and effort.

I’ve cried a river over no man like I’ve cried over my own dad. His actions hurt me the most. If I were to transform myself completely to a level of divinity, this was the core issue in my life I had to overcome.

Although VP was no longer drinking booze, nor as reactive as he used to be, and he was treating my mother well, the Universe still found plenty of ways for him to royally tick me off. The hardest tests for me were yet to come. Primarily, putting his own financial needs at the fore. Taking what I had earned, what wasn’t his, for himself, and allowing me to believe something else for years. Not once, but twice. I could have lived far more comfortably than I have done in the last few years, and I could have paid for my own travel and not had to rely on others, but because of him, I couldn’t.

In April last year, VP’s ejection fraction, the measurement of the percentage of blood leaving the heart each time it squeezes, had gone down to 11%. I left my service in Kenya and came to be with him as we thought the end was near for him. He got better with some change in medication and no doubt Swami ji’s Grace. But, as he got better, his old habits returned. I found them difficult to accept. I couldn’t attend doctors’ appointments with him knowing he was telling them porkies.

Stupidly, I thought the best way to ‘make him change’ would be to give him an ultimatum. Change your ways – I told him that I wanted him to be truthful to the doctors about the fact that he was still smoking – or never see me again. You can guess what he chose.

It hurt like hell at first. But then I thought, this is perfect. If my dad doesn’t exist in my life, then I’m protecting my heart, right? I can practise detachment from afar. Easy peasy.  So, I shut him out and deleted him from my life and mindspace. “Ahh, this is what bliss feels like,” I could finally say to myself. Yeah right. Swami ji has a sharp sense of humour, you know, and I’m sure He had a lovely, Vishnu-like chuckle over that one.

When you think everything is going well, expect the unexpected.

In January of this year, while revelling in my pseudo-bliss at the ashram, after joyfully singing for God with my arms in the air, pretending my dad didn’t exist, I found out from Naina Mata ji that he’d had two heart attacks in one day and was in hospital. It took every ounce of my ego to not care, to not call him and ask how he was doing.

But, dammit, when Swami ji is your Guru and is the embodiment of compassion, something melts in you, and somehow, eventually, you can no longer fight His will. I spoke to VP on the phone. We kept in touch.

In March, VP had his third attack (a total of five in his life) and was admitted again. I flew to London to be with the family.

He ended up staying in hospital for forty-five days this time, being shuffled from one Intensive Care Unit to another. He had severe constipation, a blood clot in the aorta (which, apparently, is very rare and has a survival rate of 25%); he got sepsis (which has a survival rate of 30%) and was on various antibiotics for weeks. He has necrosis of the toes as there are clots in his legs, all this on top of a weak liver, weak kidneys and a very, very weak heart and blocked arteries, including the bypassed ones.

We took shifts to be with VP in hospital. Because of the medicines and because he was so unwell, he was suffering delusions and hallucinations too.  Not only had his body given up, he’d lost his mind. I practised the mudras Swami ji had taught us and called on Him every day to do what was best for VP. Nobody thought he would make it home from the hospital.

Only Swami ji knows what Swami ji has done.

How this man is still alive is beyond me and beyond any medical expert.

I posted a video on my Wildr page of VP’s homecoming. He went straight to Swami ji’s photo. It was a very touching moment.

We’ve been spending some lovely time together. Yes, he’s stopped smoking. He’s being well-fed and pampered. His mind is cooperating again. We took him out in his wheelchair to make some good memories.

Did the tests stop there?

No, they did not.

Since VP came home from the hospital, I ‘accidentally’ found out about some more things he’d hidden from me that affected my life. These secrets could have gone to the grave with him.

Am I bothered by it?

I am not.

VP and I are cool.

The bliss remains steady.

Everything in my life is a gift from Swami ji. Everything is an opportunity to grow and be closer to God.

I am thankful for every lesson. I have no resentment in my heart for anyone.

Finally.

As I sit to write this, VP and Naina Mata ji have both tested positive for Covid. Both are vaccinated. Naina Mata ji is the usual soldier that she is and is doing her best to take care of her man. They’ve been together since she was seventeen years old.

But VP’s body is struggling under the corona virus. It is so frail it’s hard to believe he will survive this. We don’t know how it will go. Whenever we think it’s the end for VP, Swami ji sweeps in and performs one miracle after another. He is truly like a cat with nine lives under Swami ji’s watch.

The last conversation we had was an emotional one. I thanked VP for being the greatest teacher in my life. I am here because of him. I wouldn’t have been able to experience what I do now without him. I told him in a lighthearted way, that I must have done God knows what to him in a life or lives gone by and I deserved whatever I got. I apologised too. I told him our karmic account is clear. We never have to go through this again.

Whatever Swami ji has planned for VP and for us, this entire experience comes with a lot of acceptance and gratitude from the whole family. He’s given us extra time together to heal and make peaceful memories. Words will never be enough.

My obeisance at Your feet, dear Swami ji.

If you take my dad, please keep him close ❤️

 

 

Update: As of May 16th, Naina Mata ji is still struggling with Covid symptoms but is slowly getting better. VP has been reffered for palliative care as there is no more they can do for his heart and kidneys. We don’t know how long he has left, we’re just grateful we have Swami ji to take him Home ❤️

Update: July 3rd. Naina Mata ji has recovered well. VP is stable. Guru Purnima is one of the most important days of the year for disciples. It’s the day for honouring our gurus. I never thought I would do this, but this year, I worshipped my parents’ feet with love, gratitude and reverence. Only Swami ji can bring about such transformation in a family such as ours. Thank You, Swami ji 🙇🏻‍♀️🙏🏼❤️