Adhithi Devo Bhava!

Homages are due for every one of the people that died in the horrible attack in Mumbai. But I will honour just one person, and through him, all those who have been slain by the bullets and grenades of the death machines.

According to the news report in Washington Post, twelve years ago, Alan Scherr committed his life to meditation and spirituality. Now he has been here and has died.

The Scherrs were among 25 participants from the Synchronicity community who had traveled to Mumbai on a pilgrimage to visit several ashrams, Now he and his 13 year old daughter have died, and four others pilgrims have been injured.

"Alan committed most of his adult life to meditation, spirituality and conscious living," the statement from Synchronicity, the spiritual group to which Scherr belonged, said. "He was a passionate Vedic astrologer and meditation teacher who inspired many people to begin a journey of self-awareness and meditation. He was committed to making a positive difference in the world and devoted himself to the community he lived in."

The Synchronicity statement described Naomi as "a bright and lively young woman who loved spending time with people and living life to the fullest. She was passionate, if not a little mischievous, and will be fondly remembered by many of us for colorful hair styles and radiant energy."

According to The News & Advance, "Scherr came to the organization in 1996 when his daughter was just two months old. She was home-schooled, finished the eighth grade a year early, scored 92 percent on her SSAT and had planned to apply to the Emma Willard Academy in Troy, N.Y., to attend high school." Now the little child is dead.

"In India, Naomi had been working on an essay to accompany her application to the boarding school, had gotten her nose pierced, obtained shawls and Indian garb, scheduled some massages and was enjoying her pilgrimage". Her life has been snuffed away by the rank breath of a stale and sterile ideology, smothered by the claustrophobic fumes of hatred.

The spokesman for the group to which Scherr belongs, has this to say about the terrorists: "They’re walking where their feet are.Like 95 percent of the people walking the earth, they are fragmented or in denial, so to speak." The people who inspire terror should be ashamed, but they won't, not until they come face to face with terror in their everlasting hell.

Tanya Anisimova, 42, a concert cellist and composer from the Moscow Conservatory as well as a Synchronicity member and a native of Chechnya, has this to say: "This is about peace, the whole place is about peace." She prays for her slain comrade the best way she knows how to: "We need to pray, and I need to make this cello sound" she said. In the end, victory shall be hers. Her cello shall definitely silence the guns and grenades.

Alan Scherr seems to have been a disciple of Master Charles, who trained under Paramahamsa Muktananda. There is a revealing article by Scherr at www.realization.org. Please read this, I found it moving, especially when I came to the last paragraph:

"For me, real freedom means living life in each moment, as it unfolds, without concepts or conditions. It is a life very few choose because it requires an orientation and re-prioritization of life that is, in many ways, antithetical to our modern Western culture. And yet, it is always available whenever one is truly focused upon self-mastery. The miracle of this life continues to unfold for me on daily basis." 

It is a pity that such a noble man as Scherr should die at the hands of these scum  with poisonous blood in their heart and empty words in the head. But it always has been thus in India. And there is no dishonour in such death.

It pierces me like a sharp dart, so painful is my anguish that we in India have let this happen to a guest who loved this country beyond belief: "Scherr has expressed a preference that he be cremated, possibly with ashes to be strewn in the Ganges River." How can we recompense his love and respect? No way is there, words are of no avail.

He is with God, and he has found a place more in tune with his heart than this loveless, shrivelled, doomed, divided earth, where 'God' is getting to be a curse word worse than all those four-letter words, and the priest rant and the fundamentalist chant carry more violence than gangsta rap.