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Author: K Venkataramanan
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 22, 2007
Godman Sathya Sai Baba performed his trademark miracle of producing rings out of thin air to impress DMK stalwarts at the residence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.
And a day later, Karunanidhi, a rationalist for over 60 years, paid him an extraordinary tribute, describing Sai Baba as one equivalent to God.
Sai Baba's visit to Chennai over the weekend, his first trip to the city in 10 years, has been marked by the curious spectacle of a highly venerated godman meeting the veteran Dravidian leader, who has been disdainful of Hindu 'holy men' since his youth.
On Sunday, Karunanidhi led a galaxy of two Governors, three Chief Ministers and two Union Ministers and thousands of Chennai citizens and guests in paying homage and expressing gratitude to Sai Baba for helping in bringing water from the River Krishna to the water-starved southern metropolis by refurbishing a stretch of canal from Kandaleru in Andhra Pradesh to the city's doorsteps.
A day earlier, Sai Baba had made a rare personal visit to the residence of a dignitary, when he called on Karunanidhi at the latter's residence in Gopalapuram in central Chennai.
The Chief Minister's wife, Dayalu, touched his feet to take his blessings. Members of his family also sought his blessings. But the story did not end with that.
Union Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran, Karunanidhi's grand-nephew, revealed at the two-hour thanksgiving function on Sunday that Sai Baba had produced rings out of thin air and given one to him and another to Tamil Nadu Public Works Minister Durai Murugan.
Maran said Durai Murugan had asked Baba for a ring for the Chief Minister, but Sai Baba did not oblige. Instead, he had replied: "I have given him a place in my heart; and he, in turn, has a place for me in his heart."
Presiding over the function, Karunanidhi said: "When it comes to holy men, I know how to distinguish between the fake and the genuine ones like Arulmigu (the beneficent) Sai Baba, who works for the welfare of the people. He wants to remove the hardships of the poor, and such persons are greater than saints. Even equivalent to God."
The dignitaries present on the occasion at the Nehru Indoor Stadium here included Tamil Nadu Governor SS Barnala, Maharashtra Governor SM Krishna, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, Chief Ministers Vilas Rao Deshmukh (Maharashtra) and HD Kumaraswamy (Karnataka). All of them hailed the Baba for his compassion and benevolence.
Karunanidhi himself had more requests to make. The Sathya Sai Trust, he said, should take up the work of cleaning up the River Cooum, a highly polluted waterway in Chennai. "When I made the request on Saturday, Baba said this has been your long-standing dream, to which I replied that it has remained no more than a dream," the Chief Minister said, adding that if Sai Baba supported the Government in this, the Cooum could became as beautiful a river as any seen in any capital city in the world.
Disclosing that he admired Sai Baba's ability to execute huge infrastructure projects in record time, Karunanidhi compared his Government's unlimited freebies to the charitable work of Sai Baba's trust, which provides high quality medical treatment and education free of cost.
"People say that my freebies will drain the finance. As long as there is love, there will be enough left in the treasury to help the poor," he declared in a manner becoming of a religious leader.
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