SVYM’s founding was based on the inspirational message of ‘Tyaga’ (Sacrifice) and ‘Seva’ (Service) propounded by Swami Vivekananda. All the work of our last 34 years is based on these foundational principles and our activities are driven by the undercurrent philosophy of‘Seeing God in man’. This is best reflected in the Palliative Care Program that SVYM has been running from 2009. Started in a small way, the program today covers close to 200 patients across the city of Mysuru and its suburbs and is striving to help people who are terminally sick, live their last days in dignity.
While the services offered at the doorsteps of needy people costs us around INR 16000 annually, we are constantly looking to finding donors and volunteers who can helps us in expanding this program. Ensuring acute medical care in an Institutional setting to terminally ill patients is also a critical component of Palliative Care and we thought of adding a Hospice facility at Mysuru. Our team was undeterred by the fact that this would require huge resources and they decided to mobilize it through our annual fund raising musical event. This event called ‘Swaranubhuti’ has already seen two earlier editions and helped mobilize the resources needed for home based palliative care. Creating a Hospice meant much more than what our earlier programs had generated and the team decided to request the renowned singer, Mr S P Balasubramaniam (popularly known as SPB) to support the initiative. Ramakrishna Mudre met and apprised him of our activities and what we do and he agreed to sing at this event. A singer of SPB’s repute must be getting innumerable requests to sing for charitable causes and he agreeing to do this for us without a moment’s hesitation left me much more than impressed. Swaranubhuti-2018 was thus planned and it was decided to hold the event in Bengaluru on the 4th of March 2018.
This day will now remain a day that will be permanently etched in my memory. Not merely for listening to a musical legend but for something that I find it difficult to describe in mere words. Here was a man who has sung more than 40,000 songs in 15 different Indian languages in his lifetime – and not for a moment did he allow any of the adulation or the recognition get in the way of the larger purpose of participating in a program that wanted to help people live & die in dignity. He was clear on why he was doing what he was doing. The thought of participating as a family member along with several other committed people wanting to help other fellow human beings was so evident in everything he spoke and did.
As I watched and listened to him, I realized that he was not merely a singer who has achieved the status of a ‘legend’. This was truly an intensely spiritual man in the pursuit of a higher purpose – that of actually seeing god in every person that he interacted with. Whether it was the fellow musicians on stage or the young compere – he only had good things to say about each of them. He was constantly looking to bring out the best in everyone present – whether it was himself, or the attending musicians and even the audience. For someone who teaches leadership in different places around the world, this was possibly the best class in leadership that I have attended. The qualities of compassion, seeing only the positive, constantly demanding perfection of oneself and those around you, being disciplined, never allowing one to become the work at the center, staying focused on the larger purpose and never allowing one’s ego come in the way of one’s existence – all this and more was there for me to see and learn from this great person.
And more than anything else, this was not a mere show that he was presenting to the audience. It was more than evident that this was the way he lived, and it was his natural and authentic self. For someone who has reached such a high stature to be so simple; for someone who has the world at his feet to be so humble is something that is unbelievable. But SPB is all this and more. He is a true humanist, a spiritual seeker and one who oozes divinity in his singing and in his very existence. We at SVYM were not just privileged to have someone like him support our work; I think he gives us the living inspiration of Swami Vivekananda’s message. And I consider myself truly fortunate that I was treated to not just a auditory feast, but to be in the presence of a spiritual giant who made himself so ordinary by making everyone around him become extraordinary. Sir, we salute you and thank you for being with us, for inspiring us to do more and for your message of never forgetting that we are mere instruments in the hands of God…
-Balu
