Adopted at 4 by Shirdi Sai, man dies at 108

Chennai: An abandoned boy who started his life at the feet of Shirdi Sai Baba, he grew up to be Swami Ganeshananda Giri. After spreading the word about the saint across the country, he came back to his land at the age of 108 and breathed his last on April 29. The desire to return to his motherland made the spiritual guru undertake a journey to the south a couple of months ago as the apt place to attain 'jeeva samadhi'. Born in Suseendram in Kanyakumari in 1908, Ganeshananda was destined to take the spiritual path. A sadhu had approached his parents and requested them to allow the boy to follow the cult of Lord Murugan, but his parents refused. But fate had other plans. In 1912 during a visit to Tirupati temple, Ganeshananda was separated from his parents. A Maharashtrian family rescued the boy and took him to Shirdi Sai Baba, who adopted him along with 13 children, says S K Vasan, trustee of Shri Dattatreya Siva Sai Trust, to whom Ganeshanandan recounted his early life. He attained 'jeeva samadhi' at Shri Dattatreya Siva Sai Trust office in T Nagar. As a spiritual person and a naga sadhu he spent a quarter of his life in the Himalayas but it was the memory of Shirdi Sai Baba that he would recollect often. "When Ganeshananda was six years old he was caught stealing a sweet. Swamiji would merrily recount to us how the incident made Sai Baba angry enough to slap him.He considered the slap his biggest lesson," says V Anbalagan, another trust member. But the tales of the spiritual guru, however small, reinforced the aura of Sai Baba.