New Years Eve at Shirdi with Baba

Aum Sai Ram

Many devotees now prefer to ring in the New Year at some Holy place and or with their Guru.
With this desire, around 3 lakh devotees reached Shirdi to be in the company of their beloved Baba for New Years Eve, for which the Sai Sansthan had kept Baba's Samadhi Temple open the full night on 31st to enable the devotees to have Darshan.

So, this New Years Eve Sai Baba also did not sleep as lakhs of devotees had lined up for his Darshan. Bhajan Kirtan continued through out the night and so there was no Shayan Aarti or the Kakad Aarti of Baba, on 01st Jan 2011. Many devotees came walking all the way to Shirdi carrying Sai Palkis with them.

The atmosphere at the Shirdi Sai Temple was showering with devotion. In front of Lendi garden devotees lit thousands of candles, while some were reading the Shri Sai Satcharitra wherever they could find a place to sit and do so. People were also singing Sai bhajans in Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil.

As the Clock struck 12:00 at midnight, the Bells started ringing in the Sai Temple. The devotees who were waiting in queues outside the temple bowed their Heads and did Pranam to the Temple's Kalash (Dome) and started chanting Prayers to welcome the New-year 2011.

However, at this moment devotees could not have Sai Baba's Mukh Darshan for a short period
because of the VIP crowd having Darshan inside.

The darshan queue was so big that the entire Pimpalwadi Road was full of devotees and to manage which, the Trustee of the Sai Baba Temple Shri.Jayant Sasane, the Executive Office Shri.Kishore More & the additional Executive Officer Dr.Yashwant Mane were monitoring the darshan queue arrangement. But because the Temple was open the whole night, the crowd was easily controlled.

In one hour minimum 10 thousand devotees were having Baba's Darshan, because of which in the night almost 1 lakh devotees took Darshan.

In two days itself, at the Shirdi Sai Prasadalaya each day around 40,000 devotees had their meals. Some devotees had given the Free Prasad Meal donation becuase of which the Meals were given to everyone for free.

One such devotee from Gujarat Shri.Aalap Rajubhai Patel donated Rs.11 lakh and 11 thousand for the free prasad meal scheme for everyone to have free meals from 14th to 17th Jan 2011.

Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shri.Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, Supreme Court Judge Shri.Dalveer Bhandari, Officer Shri.Rajgopal Devra, Shri.Anilkumar Likhna & Minister of Social Justice Shri.Shivajirao Moghe and some Actors, Industrialists, Singers etc too reached Shirdi to receive Baba's Blessings.

Courtesy:
Rohit Behal, Mumbai