Who Am I?

One day in 1990 I was staying at Puttaparthy and went out at 4am to walk round the mandir. The sky was black, and it began to rain heavily, but of course it was warm. As it was raining, few came out that morning and those who did stood in the embrasures of the wall facing the mandir and waited for the rain to stop. At once Baba came out of his rooms on to the platform of the mandir and looked across at us sheltering in the embrasures, and smiled. He then raised his arms to the sky and two bolts of lightning appeared from the clouds, shot down his arms and down his body to the platform and formed a ball of lightning at his feet. He then played with the ball, sending it spinning across the platform with a wave of his arm, and calling it back with another wave. When it came back to his feet, he motioned it back up his body and, raising his arms again sent it back into the sky - where it disappeared in to the dark clouds. He then turned to us again, smiled and went back into his rooms. ...

One day at Puttaparthy, when staying at C1 Sai Vadan through the kindness of Jagdish Bhavani, I was doing seva in the fields, helping to pick up a dried crop and put it in carts to be taken for storage. I had the key to the apartment's padlock in my pocket, and there were no others. Imagine my concern when at the end of the day I arrived back at the apartment and found I no longer had the key. I was wondering what on earth to do, but before I could become seriously worried, a man came running up the stairs and gave me the key. It had been found, he said, at the bottom of one of the carts. Considering I had been in the field all day and many loads had been taken in, and no one knew that I had lost the key, it was astonishing that the key had been found and that someone knew that it was been mine - and where to find me. I never saw the man again, and I believe that he might well have been sent by Baba. A real Baba lila! Puttaparthy Thunderstorm Hong Kong The Perth-London fl...

One day while being driven back from a lunch in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong in 2005, I was musing about reality and said to Baba "Baba, I know that what we see and sense is only a relative reality, but would you give me a sign to show me that this is really the case? If what I am seeing is only an illusion, will you make that man walking alongside my taxi turn and look at me?" In an instant the man - an ordinary Chinese labourer - turned and stared - really stared - through the taxi's window directly into my eyes. It was a completely deliberate act, not in anyway coincidental, and after a few seconds he turned back and continued walking. I never saw him before or since. A lovely Baba lila! Puttaparthy Thunderstorm Puttaparthy Seva The Perth-London flight Baba in the Smoke

Fishing on the River Itchen. Photo by Derek Hampshire Today - at about 2pm on Friday 21st August 2009 - I finished writing out my step-grandfather's monograph on dry fly fishing. It's here . A few minutes later I wrote on Facebook 'Herry Lawford is learning about fishing - and wished he'd taken it up years ago.....'. About two hours later a friend, (who isn't on Facebook and has no connection with it), wrote in an e-mail 'By the way are you into flyfishing – I have a beat on the Test on 21 September if you would like to join me??' It is the only invitation to a day's fishing that i have ever received. For those unversed in the lore of fishing, the Test in Hampshire is the holy of holies and generally regarded at the finest dry fly river in England. Another Baba lila...... Baba in the Smoke