Reflections

- by Kunal Shah, Kolkata

Tai Ma is no more physically present with us. And I find myself sitting here, knowing that there are people sitting somewhere across those thousands of miles of ocean, carrying the exact same weight. Two people, two continents, one grief.

People of faith speak of feeling the Divine in places of worship. I have felt it in a room where she simply was. There was something in her stillness that was louder than anything I have ever heard - a warmth in her gaze that made you feel, without a single word spoken, that you were enough. She was not someone you could describe. She was someone you had to experience. And having experienced her, you were permanently changed.

My mother, Bhavna Shah, was barely eight years old when Tai Ma looked at her and said, with that quiet certainty that was so entirely hers… “Walk with me”
Three words. And yet, in those three words, she gave my mother a life’s direction, our family its soul, and all of us Veerayatan. Sixty years later - we are still walking. And I promise you, we always will be.

Tai Ma renounced the world for herself - and turned around and gave it back, entirely, to everyone else. Every eye she restored is a shrine. Every child she shaped is a temple. Every heart she touched is a place of pilgrimage.

When youngsters ask - what is religion, what is love, what is Jainism - I no longer search for words. I simply say : “The answer is the life of Tai Ma.”

She lived by one compass question. Now she leaves us a new form of it : “Agar Tai Ma hoti - toh kya karti ? ” – “If Tai Ma was here, what would she do”

Tai Ma felt every prayer you sent from across that ocean, every seva, every quiet moment in America when you thought of her - she felt it. Distance was never a barrier between her and her own.

She is not gone. A soul that has become a Teerth does not vanish - it only becomes everywhere. She is in this letter. She is in the love between all of us - scattered across the world and yet, utterly, permanently - one.