So,
Why yet another attempt at translating the Gajanan Vijay?
Around one and a half years back, Gajanan came into my life. I was, and am still going through a nasty personal crisis. Suicide was not yet on the cards, but yet was a serious option. I mostly had the strength to go through it, but my parents didn't. I was and am still callous enough to ignore their pain.
That was the time I turned a bit more seriously towards spirituality and religion. If not, I would have been a raving lunatic by now. I needed a miracle to get my life back into order. I am born a Hindu, or as the more learned persons call it, into the Sanatana Dharma. Pressure was strong on me to convert into Christianity - for is not Christ and Christianity the stockist of Miracles?
Searching on Google for miracles was next. I stumbled upon this - Yogi Gajanan Maharaj's Chamatkar's. I felt the miracles were sufficiently authentic, and also sufficiently mundane. Gajanan was not doling out mukti to everyone who wanted it, but was helping out people in their daily grind, helping them help themselves. The incident of Ms Sujata Naik (Nasik / Seattle) and the sick dog particularly impressed me. Here the prayer by Sujata was for the sick street dog, not for herself, and Gajanan did hear her prayers. I needed to know more about this gentleman.
I read all his miracles that I could access and came to know of Gajanan Vijay. Being a non Marathi, reading the original was out of question. I searched for an English translation and came upon this - English Pothi. I read it end to end and was impressed.
However, the Pothi was pretty inconvenient. The only structure it had was that it was organized into chapters. Otherwise it was more or less a single block of text, with no separation between Dasaganu's personal prayers, his thoughts, and the narration of the miracles. Reading the book offline was also next to impossible.
The English in certain parts was antiquated. I have had a pretty good education, and I've read some of the English classics, including some works of Shakespeare unabridged. The difficulty in following the English Pothi was similar.
Having time in my hand, I imported the whole work into a word processor and started editing it. First it was for myself, but then I realised that maybe the issues I faced were being faced by others as well. Hence this work.
The chapters have been carefully structured into the invocation prayers, the individual incidents and the closing statements. I've simplified and moderised some of the passages which were really difficult to follow. Apart from that, the work has been left as is.
Please do read, and mail me at shanmukha.kinkarra[at]gmail.com with feedback on the mistakes and your suggestions on how to improve this book.
28'th of March 2015, Rama Navami
Also, the birthday of Swami Samarth Ramdas.
