God loves fun. This is a funny story of how I got into an Art of Living Program that introduced fun back in my life. Must read for all Art of Living people.

Before coming to Art of living, I was skeptic about what the organization does.Sri Sri was another dadiwale baba who would preach about moh and maya. While I was at NIIT a classmate joined YES+ program and asked me to do the same. I rejected and told him “yeh baba log ke lootne ka naya business hai. Saans andar bahar lena bhi ab baba se sikhu!” But once gurudev decides he will get you in the program he will get you in there. No matter how funny it gets.

Next year when I got admission in IMS and moved to Indore. IMS was fun and even funnier was hostel. We had “Introduction Sessions” at both the places. Some of us cried while others laughed through it. I came from a technical community where things where far more shitty than this, so I found it easy peasy. The only thing that I hated was the hostel food(I still do.) I could challenge Bear Gyrlls to eat it and he would fail. There is a reason why they call the eatery a mess because it is MESS. You need to have supernatural powers to digest that thing on your platter. I missed home. The very smell of ghee that tickled my taste buds. (Spoiler alert: This ghee is the real hero.)

One day I got late for dinner. As I entered the mess my nasal cavity detected the aroma of pure desi ghee. I zoomed in to find out the source. On the other end of the table a large guy had a small jar of ghee which he was hiding from others. My hands wanted to snatch the jar but i thought this jar will end and may be this huge gorilla-in-a-man would try to eat me. So lets leave the jar and get the guy.(Fundamentals of Managment: A good partner is far more worthy then a million bucks) From that very moment I stalked him. What his name was? Was he a senior or a batchmate. Fast enough I found his room and tried to talk to him. He was a senior so I wished him every now and then. But he would not talk. He was too shy to talk. So I did something nasty. By that time people knew me for the technical aspect and would call me every glitch that would occur to them. So I went ahead and disconnected his LAN cable from the network switch. In the evening, he was outside my room. I went with him and enacted some abracadabra and connected his cables. We became friends. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Everything was fine about him except that he used to do some kind of exercise before we went for dinner. Firstly I thought it was seasonal or temporal, but then I realized he would not give up. Here is a piece from our conversation:

Sir yeh aap roz roz kya karte ho?

Abhijeet isko Sudarshan Kriya bolte hai_._

Toh roz karna padta hai kya?

ha.

Mujhe bhi sikha do. Aap toh karte rehte hoo, mujhe bhuk lagti hai. Aur aapke bina mein khana khane jaunga nahi.

Haha…. Main nahi sikha sakta. I am not a teacher. Yeh tumko AOL ke center se hi sikhna padega.

So now I started looking for AOL teacher.I knew that my classmate Devanshi was into this. I asked her. She told me the next YES+ will begin from Tuesday and the contribution will be 1250. 1250! That was the cost of a PlayStation game plus a joystick.But being a bnaiya has its own benefits. I did some maths

Cost of the program = 1250

Amount of ghee I eat in a month = 500gms

Price of 500gm ghee jar =210

Number of months I had to stay in the hostel = 9

Now total cost that I may get 210*9 = 1890

Savings with free ghee. = 1890-1250 = 640

Immediately I called Devanshi (She is an AOL teacher now. One of the sweetest souls I know.) and told her that I am doing this course.

After that, I did an advance course at the Bengaluru Ashram and pushed a number of people to do the course from family and friends namely Shruti Agrawal and Ashok Singh. AOL became so dear to me that this summer I have applied for the AOL internship and I am sure that will be fun again. It’s neither about moh maya nor about the gyan. AOL is super simple and easy. Its how to be happy. Gurudev got me by a spoon of ghee. You may find it funny, but it happened with me.

On his birthday, an account of him being with me. Of the promise that he has made to all his disciples. Jai Gurudev. #theworldbelongstome #teramay

For all those looking to join the Art Of Living, you can visit the site at www.artofliving.org. Start with happiness.