SHARJAH // Thousands of UAE devotees of the Indian spiritual guru Sathya Sai Baba wept as they bade farewell to a man they worshipped as an incarnation of god.
They folded their hands in prayer while watching television or laptops streaming live broadcasts of his funeral from Puttaparthi, in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state.
“I couldn’t help crying; I felt like a family member has left my house,” said Sridevi, an emotional housewife who asked to be identified by one name.
“We feel a lot of pain today. Now we can’t see Baba anymore.”
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In the Emirates, many followers took the day off to devote to prayer just as they did on Sunday, the day the 85-year-old sage was declared dead after a month-long illness, with multiple-organ failure cited as the cause of death.
Devotees across the UAE gathered yesterday in their own homes or in community centres, which opened as early as 5am, to meditate and pray together.
Men and women lit brass lamps as chants of the invocation Om Sai Ram resonated in prayer rooms filled with flower-decked photographs of the saffron-robed holy man.
In India, the country’s prime minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar were among an estimated 500,000 people who paid their last respects.
Khaki-clad police draped his glass coffin with the Indian national tricolour and soldiers fired a 21-gun salute.
Sathya Sai Baba’s nephew performed the last rites as Hindu priests chanted verses from sacred texts.
Red curtains were drawn around the coffin during the burial in a sprawling venue where he once addressed followers. The site is expected to become a permanent memorial.
Devotees said that they broke down while watching the funeral and during private prayer ceremonies.
“We wept, there is a heavy feeling in the heart,” said AV, a Dubai-based community leader of Sai programmes that distribute food to labourers.
“I never thought I would feel this bad. It was as if our aarti [prayer service] was taking him into the next world.”
The living rooms of many devotees have been turned into shrines with metre-high photographs of Sathya Sai Baba raising his arms in blessing. Large posters bearing his popular sayings, such as “help ever, hurt never”, are tacked on walls.
“I feel there will be a vacuum when we go to Puttaparthi this year – before it always felt like going to our parents’ home,” said Sridevi.
“I felt very much sad and destroyed but I believe that if we call, even now he will come to give us guidance,” said MV, Sridevi’s husband and a management consultant.
“His physical body is not there, but he lives in us Sai bhaktas [devotees]. He is inseparable from us.”
While followers swear by his miraculous healing powers, the guru’s popularity had in the past been marred by allegations of sexual abuse and fake miracles.
He repeatedly denied the allegations, as did his ashram.
There has also been conjecture in the Indian media about the successor to his US$9 billion (Dh33bn) trust, which manages schools and medical centres in India and around the world.
UAE devotees say they are unfazed by the allegations and insist they will continue his work of serving the poor. “We don’t worry about people pelting stones. He told us not to bother. More than chanting lips, he said helping hands are holier,” said MV.
rtalwar@thenational.ae