Devotees Experiences

Important Extracts from "Tuchi Baap Dhani"

As Shree Walawalkar narrates - ' A few days after my wedding in 1959, I was visiting our village in Konkan (Ratnagiri District) with my wife and in-laws to pray to our family deities. While returning from my village, we took a small halt at Narsobachi Wadi to pray and visit the famous temple of Lord Dattatreya.

The next Bus leaving from Narsobachiwadi was 4 hours later, so I decided to go for a swim in the Krishna river (even though I was not an expert swimmer). As I entered the water, I failed to see the signs on the riverbanks warning visitors of the Whirlpool in the river.

While swimming, I was pulled towards the center of the whirlpool and even before I realized, I was sinking into the water. There were about 50 people around and everybody started to shout 'someone drowned, someone drowned' ; but no one dared to risk their lives to save mine.

I was atleast one foot below the water surface when I realized that my life was to end in a few seconds. As soon as the thought struck me, I remembered Shree Maharaj and that's when the miracle occured - From the opposite side of the river bank, a young man, about 17-18 years of age came swimming towards me and pulled me out of the whirlpool and safely out of the river.

To express my gratitude and thank the youth for saving my life, I started to look for my wallet to pay him something. But  LO !! the youth had suddenly disappeared. That surprised me and I wondered why this poor villager would leave so suddenly without expecting anything in return from me. Certainly, he could wait for a few more minutes with the person whom he just saved. This incident proved very touching to me.

On my return to Mumbai, I went to visit and pay my respects to Shree Maharaj. Shree Maharaj said, "You almost drowned at Wadi. It was Lord Dattatreya who saved you but you did not even offer your respects to him". Hearing that I replied, " I could not recognize the youth as Lord Dattatreya himself". Even when I was saying this, I was certain in my mind that it was nobody else but Shree Maharaj himself, in the form of a youth, who saved me from the jaws of death.'