Raajyogi Raja

 Author’s note – My father , Late Dr RK Popli ,was lovingly called Swami ji by the close family members as he was an ardent spiritual seeker , a true bhakta.  A leading Physicist of his times and a mentor to generations of scientists and researchers , his life was nonetheless defined by his spiritual journey . Had he been alive he would have entered his 80th year on 3rd December . But he was snatched away by jaws of destiny in 1993 when I was just 11 . This memoir of the most important man in my life was written 20 years back by the second most important person in my life – my Tata ji (father’s elder brother) Late Prof Dharmendra Kumar. Its not hagiographic or sacchrine sweet – nor is it an emotional outpouring as my own blog perhaps is- its a brutally honest  chronicle of my father’s life and spiritual journey – that is worth reading. Any mistakes or errors are mine . 

Raaja was born as a doubly prized baby, prized as a longed for addition to the family after a gap of nearly eight years and prized as the reincarnation of the most luminous ancestor. Even before the newborn child could be handed over to the attending nurse, our maternal grandmother hurried to look for a mark on his head and was delighted to find it. It identified him as her late father reborn. She was tipped off about the impending rebirth in a dream she had some time between her father’s death in August and Raaja’s birth in December 1943.Our father wanted to give the baby a name that rhymed with the one I was given by the ancestor he was believed to be a reincarnation of. He could not have been thinking of naming him after the national leader Dr. Rajendra Prasad whose health he was to supervise years later. He was possibly unaware then that their birth anniversaries fall on the same day. Almost everyone who ever knew Raaja closely knew him as Raaja rather than as Raajendra Kumar.

The doubly prized baby became a super prized child as the family heard with bated breath the knocks of death a couple of years later during a short spell of brain fever coupled with delirium. He was virtually reborn. Fortunately, there were no tell -tale signs of what he had been through, what was manifest was a blessed make up. Neither his virtual rebirth nor the meaning of his name made him a demanding child. The status he owed to his rebirth however, was transitory. It was virtually lost to the countervailing effect of the threat his younger brother’s life repeatedly faced.

My memory of Raaja’s early childhood has just two dots of medical attention apart from that traumatic patch. Both of them are of successful topical treatment over period, one following a head injury caused by falling from a table and the other following the appearance of an eye ulcer during the course of conjunctivitis. Raaja was neither robust nor sickly as a child or later. For over three years after his virtual rebirth, he did not encounter any serious health problem as far as I know. He took interest in physical exercise as he grew up. He learnt swimming and something of hathyoga at Pilani. Later, he bought a mechanical system for rather strenuous exercises which he combined with aasana exercises. Strange as it may sound he took interest in naturopathy, rather than in Aayurveda which our father practiced with distinction. He once showed me an injury which had not responded to his naturopathic treatment. Its modern dressing as suggested however succeeded. At some stage he came to know of urine therapy. That was years before a practitioner of it became the Prime Minister of India.

Raaja was always cheerful rather than morose or melancholy. His liveliness however, was subject to the limitation of his absorption and introversion. He was too engrossed in thought to know his need for his feed or to remember to pick his glass of milk or his Tiffin. And he was reserved rather than outgoing. The number of individuals he called on once in a while or often was rather small. Even fairly close relatives calling on him could find the conversation rather labored. But he was not disposed to shun all fun. In his childhood he was thrilled more easily than other children of his age. He remained somewhat childlike throughout his life in certain ways. He could heartily laugh and regale us with mimicry or even with utterly unsophisticated humour of Kaakaa Haathrasee.

He was docile and considerate rather than boisterous, adventurous or assertive even in his childhood. Rather than disturb anyone’s sleep or flex his muscles he quietly vacated the bed one night for the sneaking kitten. He was generally soft spoken all his life. He could not be a yes man or a flatterer. But he generally shunned harshness. Raakesha’s mother- in- law was possibly the only one of his relatives ,outside the family, with whom he had a harsh word. Even in official matters, he did not mind expressing dissent, which was however, expressed without offending. In his later teens he proved to be adventours enough to trek all the way from Rishikesha to Badreenatha,  without preparation and without  much money. I was rather surprised to see him assert himself to get Kalikaa admitted to B. A. (Hons) course in Mathematics in the face of her mother’s caution and other considerations. He was presumably relying on his disposition to help her in her studies and actually did so before he was incapacitated by illness.

Raaja was born bhakta  . The story of his reincarnation I had heard in my childhood turned out to be more than a cock and bull story as he grew out of his childhood. He had inherited from Bhagat jee –as our maternal great grand father Pushaka Daasa was generally known- the make up of a bhakta  alongside inheriting his appearance and voice and even his mission to nudge humanity around to drink from the fountain of divinity. The most distinctive and durable feature of his life after his childhood was his communion with the divine rather than  excellence as a researcher, or , of a teacher. His spiritual pursuit unlike Bhagat jee’s however remained veiled by his academic pursuit. It was invisible to the folks around although almost everybody who came close to him knew him as a bhakta and almost everybody he made friends with was a bhakta of some grade. He had also inherited Bhagatjee’s equanimity which was visible even in his childhood and glaring in the  last year of his life.  There can be no surrender to the divine without equanimity. But one may well be blessed with equanimity without being a bhakta  . Our father and his father were also known   for equanimity although none could be said to be a bhakta.

 Raaja needed minimal environmental support for his bhakti to sprout. Our father was a dedicated social worker rather than a bhakta. Only occasionally, he engaged in worship in any form, even for a while although he meditated for  few minutes quite often. Our mother had turned her back on her parental Vaishnava background .Our maternal grandmother who lived with us however, gave him a glimpse of Vallabha Vaishnava ways. The process of his spiritual unfolding was probably facilitated by his teachers of Sanskrit and accelerated during his stay at Pilani. He was soon enough soaked in Bhakti which percolated down to his senses. He found Carnatic music more appealing than Hindustani music . Its association with bhakti in his mind, outweighed his unfamiliarity with South Indian languages . He also wanted his intellect to be occupied with the divine. It was philosophy rather than physics or mathematics that he wanted to study after dropping the idea of studying engineering. He had to be disillusioned about the concerns and courses of philosophy in his days. but his intellect could not be weaned away from the Divine. He kept turning to writings which made metaphysical capital out of modern physical research.

Raaja – as our father called him sometimes- was a raajyogee. His bhakti; like Ramana’s was meditation rather than prayer or pilgrimage in essence. He was irresistibly drawn to Ramans’s aashrama or to Aravinda’s(Aurobindo’s) rather than places of traditional pilgrimage. He revered the Raamkrishna-Aravinda( Aurobindo)-Ramana trinity of spiritual giants and even much less known yogee Swami Nityaananda rather than a famous bhakta like Tulseedaasa .His music teacher had an inkling of his bent of mind and introduced him to the notes of Bhairava Thata straight after those of Bilaavala Thata.  

Keertana or Satsanga  or traditional pilgrimage was of course a gratifying shower. But it was no substitute for the dip of shutting out the senses in meditation. His bhakti took him to Buddhist system of Godless meditation( Vipassana) in his forties some time. he had possibly landed on a plateau and taken a turn to see if that improved the prospects of progress. Neither did bhakti keep Bhagata jee  within the confines of his Vaishnava tradition. he revered and preached Naanaka. Of course Raaja knew pretty little of his ancestor to be able to follow his example.

I often wondered whether a born  raajyogee was born  to be a yogeeraaja. He was still in his teens or barely out of his teens when I started calling him Swami ji. He could immerse himself in meditation more easily than many who had practiced it for years. He had a crucial role in Ravi’s spiritual initiation. But, he was himself, virtually self initiated. His spiritual pursuit was endogenous unfolding rather than grafted scaffolding, there were no cravings or distractions to wrestle with. I once took him to a coffee house. After sipping hot coffee he wondered how anybody could relish something so bitter. I made him see two feature films Upkaara  sometime before him marriage and Guide after his marriage. He did not dislike either. But the one in which he evinced interest was on Aadi Shankaraachaarya.

The pilgrim’s progress, the pace of the spiritual journey depended on the time his situation permitted for meditation , the reinforcement and guidance to maintain and boost the momentum. Raajaa could not have taken his research obligations lightly, any more than his teaching obligations. A university job with research obligations might have left him with half as much times as his college job allowed for meditation. The guidance an accomplished yogee could provide at the crucial points had no substitute. few words are so haunting or set in tune enchanting as : Guru bina jnaana naa pawe. The guidance initially provided by Swamee Shivananda or published works did not seem to me to make further guidance dispensable. The limiting factor hardly figured in Raaja’s calculations. I never asked him anything about his spiritual journey , and he never thought of sharing with me anything relating to it. I was not a fellow traveler and even made some irreverent references to certain things Aadi Shankaraachaarya and Shivananda had said in their missionary zeal. But I had occasion to stress the role of continued guidance in yoga. Around the time of Rashmi’s marriage in 1972, I urged him to think about marriage ,if he had not thought already. I did not want flimsy grounds or sheer dilly-dallying to delay anyone’s marriage. And I did not want Raaja’s thinking about marriage to be vitiated by the break-up of my marriage. He said that he contemplated the life of a spiritual seeker  rather than marital life. Marriage could of course marginalize his spiritual pursuits for many years. Bhagat jee could not get his guru’s permission for taking sanyaaasa  because he had already landed in a mesh of family obligations. I asked him whether he had found a satisfying guru. I suggested setting a time limit for finding a satisfying guru or reorienting the primacy he wanted his spiritual pursuits to have. By the summer of 1973, I heard of moves to find a match for him.

His marriage was a blessing for the parents.

Divyaa was born seven years after his marriage. The divine delay had a silver lining. Raja could find more time for meditation. The vacations were sometimes used to combine  sight-seeing with spiritual pilgrimage. It presumably made it easier for  Ranee,  to adapt to the deficits in the domain of entertainment and social interaction. The family was completed with Chirantan’s birth within two years after Divyaa’s.

Raaja was a dedicated teacher, who studied to make his teaching superb, as attested by his brilliant pupils who later worked with some of the leading physicists of the world. But he found time to take the kids out , chat with them and even scout for fancy illuminations for them or to fabricate them. He found their postures and expressions fascinating enough to inspire him to click the camera ,which little else did. His children were however unusually undemanding when not faced with health problems. there was little difficulty in finding a satisfying school for them. They needed little vigilance in any domain and little help or motivation to cope with their studies.

 Meditation survived the bliss of being blessed with children and concomitant requirement of sparing time for them.  The joint family made it easier than harder. The spells were presumably shorter. They were possibly even skipped now and then  under transient stress. The ground he could cover while the children were growing up was part of what determined his chance of becoming a yogreeraaja.

My life came to be intertwined with the lives of his children as I lived with them. my incorporation into the joint family coincided with his marriage. He was instrumental in my return to Delhi after fourteen years. But for his insistence and assistance I would have missed the interview ,which clinched the Delhi University job. Living with him had an impact on my academic pursuit, which brought an unthought-of of bonus. A visit to an astrologer with an order for making some birth charts a few years after his marriage lead him to look up the sidereal system of making  birth charts. He made many birth charts but his astrological counseling remained virtually confined to matrimonial matching. He found Krishnamoorty’s system more appealing than the traditional system and looked to Prashna maarga  to bypass uncertainty of birth time. He was put off by the system’s answer to his test question. While he was instantly weaned away from Indian astrology, my interest in it was resurrected after decades. He often made fun of my plea for auspicious time for non- routine worship. He remained unmoved by the fact brought to his notice, that in its earlier phase Indian astrology was concerned solely or primarily with determining auspicious moments or periods for a yajna.

Homeopathy claimed him even before astrology took leave of him. The classics of homeopathy  he brought home prompted me to review my summary dismissal of homeopathy as tukkapathy(guess pathy). Some understanding of some homeopathic medicines emerged as a by product as I tried to make out the general features of the system and therewith its leverage and limitations. Homeopathy did after his departure what astrology had done earlier. It added an increment to the modest base of my interaction with the near and dear ones.

It was homeopathy rather than meditation or physics or anything else that dominated his life in his forties. He seemed to think of homeopathy as the sweet alternative to Aayurveda  as he recovered from jaundice. I thought homeopathy could be a helpful complement to the health-care provided by our ageing father. What began as a modest benign pursuit ,however , turned malignant in the course of time.

Without the success of his homeopathic prescriptions his pursuit would have been frozen. But he was not equipped to absorb the impact of his success. Divyaa’s malaria gave his success in 1989 the critical mass to blow away the critical lid. His instinct for survival was paralyzed. Nothing short of  a dramatic crisis could make him step aside. Repeated failure was a part of the game. He never ceased to think that he had only to read or reflect a little more to hit upon the right remedy for Ranee’s headaches. He amassed a couple of hundred volumes of homeopathic literature and a similar number of medicines. A couple of years after Divyaa’s malaria, I pointedly asked him whether he contemplated his life activity being substantially different in his fifties when none of his children would be under ten. He said he was possibly considering the voluntary retirement option, to divide his time almost entirely between meditation and homeopathy.

His life was cut short by cancer which stole a march in the shade of confidence in his medical judgment . I could not help telling him in the spring of 1992, that persistence of his vocal affliction called for proper examination. It was not a matter of patience. One had to be either innocent or callous to be a mute witness. But he was offended rather than amused or inquisitive. He had come a long way from the days when he could heed any counsel on matters of health. He dismissed as imaginary my assessment of our mother’s condition. He was on the verge of being bed ridden when he went for a check up in May 1993.  The needle prick for cellular examination was however resisted for weeks thereafter,CT scan for months. I refrained from pressing him for any examination but I countered his innocent denial of the possibility of cancer by reminding him of Raamkrishna and Ramana. His kin and friends plunged into the struggle for his recovery despite the nagging feeling that precious time was being lost to whims. He reluctantly agreed to consult two eminent homeopaths ,who suggested some modern examinations. He said they had no faith in their own system. Their faithlessness drove him to consult one he had himself  known to be reckless. He was given a high potency (10M) dose strictly forbidden in cancer. It became difficult to swallow anything. The homeopathic  disaster threw him in the lap of naturopathy. He fasted living on coconut water for several days. He was emaciated even dehydrated. But he had dramatic amelioration one day in August after several difficult days. It was transient. There was a set back after one month .

In the meantime, there was mental transformation that was durable. The flawed judgments, the fundamentalist  streak passed into history. What was left of his make up was pure gold. Speech deprived ,tube-fed ,multiply afflicted Raajaa was till the end a picture of cheerful resignation.