My Guru – Vishwas Karulkar

I have been living a life of influence. All the decisions in my life so far have been affected directly or indirectly under an influence of a person or two. One such person who has directly strike imputes on my personality through enriching my thoughts is Late Mr. Vishwas Karulkar. He was in his retiring years when we came in contact of each other. He lived a simple yet fulfilling life that is reflected in strong bounds of his family and the circle of influence he was able to generate around his charming personality.

His two most out-spoken ideologies were ‘Self-appraisal’ and astute belief in ‘Dharma’. On the subject of religion he preached that the ‘Dharma’ is a theory that explains to an individual the ways to live human life. Do no harm; accept no harm were his two principles that were installed slowly but steadily in all his disciples. He devoted his entire life for the holy work of ‘Dharma’, which included the Godly work done by ‘Vishwa Hindu Parishad’ for the educational wellbeing of the deprived teenage children. Our annual share in this gigantic work was mere a monetary help that couldn’t even help an individual to buy a Burger in a multinational’s outlet. He gleefully accepted that without any complaint and always bowed for our contribution.

Throughout his life he advocated the importance of accepting the self with all the shortcomings and being loyal to once strengths. Being a simple man, his example too were lenient and one which we could easily relate with. To simplify the concept of self appraisal he utilised the example as follows. He would say “when we expect a guest in our house, we generally make our home appear beautiful. The corners are cleaned, the furniture and rubbed, the curtains are washed and the bed sheets that recline on our beds are colourful and new. On other days they are shoddy, shabby and are torn in places.” He continues “for the guest who visits our house once in his lifetime, we transform the appearance of our house to make him feel pleasant, while we spend our entire lives in an untidy, perhaps tattered condition in our own house. We do this as we think that we do not deserve to live in a better house.”

How else can one justify the reason behind an individual’s low self esteem in our society today?

The great soul passed away exactly two years ago on this day. I am and will always be loyal to the teachings of my Guru, Late Mr. Vishwas karulkar.