Does God Exist?

 

Does God exist? I don’t know but Divine does live among us. Not sure who finds who and why? Everyone has a view on how the universe operates and I have mine. We are all correct. As Sri Ramakrishna Paramanhsa said “ as many faiths, so many paths” (যত মত তত পথ). My encounter with the Divine happened in 2001.

In 1999 a team of doctor’s at AMRI Dhakuria, which is now Manipal Hospital) gave my mother 7 days to live. She had one of the rarest diseases in the world – Good Pastures Syndrome. An auto immune disease with 4 cases in the world that, pretty much like cancer, manifests when key organs in the body are already compromised. For my mother, it was her kidneys and partially her heart.

I was in the US still recovering from a car crash that killed 4 members on my family including my eldest sister, aunts and nephew. 

This news came as a tsunami. I quickly returned to India. In 2021 I was supposed to join a top MBA program in the US. Really didn’t care. Packed my bags and returned.

A bit about my mom and why I think our childhood financial condition could’ve contributed to her condition. Still unexplained. We live at our south Kolkata house in a joint family of 17 with my father, the only earning member. The history is given in detail in my blog  

https://kpax72.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-untold-truth-what-liberals-dont.html    

We didn’t get a square meal given my father’s earning so mom would skip meals often. She would satiate herself with mounds of chopped beetle nut and Baba 120 zarda. Just to kill her appetite so that my sister and I could share 1 piece of fish between 2 of us. Dad would leave every morning at 6 am and return late in the night. The other family members feeding off him as vampires. The same family members who tried to kill me this January. 

https://kpax72.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-great-escape.html

Every action has it’s own corresponding reaction. Something had to give. It was my mother’s health. For my mom the doctors started Dialysis at AMRI under the renowned doctor Arghya Mazumdar and under the guidance of Dr. BV Gandhi HoD Jaslok, Mumbai and probably the top nephrologist in India. Mom’s dialysis continued until 2001 and which point her frail body was failing unable to withstand dialysis. Her arteries and veins were getting ruptured and her body was looking like a street dug up in the monsoon. It was sometime in June 2001 that the doctors gave us a weeks time.

Around the same time I suddenly got a call from my mom’s childhood friend Pushpita. Mom and Pushpita aunty lost touch over decades since Pushpita left Kolkata. Pushpita was the wife of the Zamindars of Dhanbad and owner of ¾ of Dhanbad colliery. Pushpita had 3 other sisters – Maharani of Puri, Maharani of Ranchi and Maharani of Mayurbhanj. Their real estate was valued at close to Rs. 2000 crores back in the 2Ks. Pushpita aunty wanted to visit us to invite us for Shivratri. I remembered Pushpita aunty as an arrogant sophisticated socialite with stilettoes and wine glass. When she arrived at our house I was shocked. She was wearing a while saree with a red border, devoid of any jewellery. She had become a monk.  The story that followed was jaw dropping. She said she and her husband found God and renounced everything overnight. The couple donated their entire estate of thousands of crores and decided to walk the path of liberation. She found Kutti Baba, Maa Anandamoyee Maa’s nephew.

 During their conversation mom mentioned to Pushpita aunty that since she had only a few days to live, she would really like to see me married. I wasn’t ready. A rebellious youngster in 20s living a very meandering lifestyle with a chequered past as a frontman of India’s leading heavy metal band Fahrenheit. I was hot headed maverick not cut out for an arranged marriage. Plus I was anyway scheduled to leave by August 2021 and clearly was in no frame of mind to include an additional responsibility in my life.

Given that the doctor had charted a specific timeline for my mom, my sister too arrived in Kolkata from the US. Pushpita aunty suggested that my sister brought me to the Shivratri function at Jodhpur Park, a stones throw distance from my house. Aunty had thought of a specific girl whose parents too were looking for a groom. I refused to go to this particular function where supposedly a “Divine” person was being worshipped. That wasn’t me and I remember having a brutal verbal confrontation with my mom and sister. I caved in eventually because, all my life, I had always been a very obedient son and brother.

My first meeting with the Divine cannot be explained in words. I walked into the house and looked straight at a very old bearded sage like man dressed as Shiva. He was surrounded by devotees and there was the long sound of kirtan. In my entire life I had never partaken in anything like this. I didn’t come from a religious family. My eyes caught Kutti Baba from quite a distance as he was staring at me with piercing but kind eyes. The gaze seemed to enter right imto my soul. That look instantly took me to a state of hypnotism and I just started crying inconsolably. Just could not stop crying and everyone in the room just staring as me. A mid 20s teenager just weeping away in front of 1 few score strangers, with no trigger no reason. I just could not stop crying until Pushpita aunty herself unseated herself and came to me, hugged me and said “It’s okay. It’s natural when your soul is in communion with his and you realised he was the Divine himself. They show their true self to only those that deserve”. I had no clue why I deserved to be chosen by the Divine himself. Is this why he saved from from the car crsh? For this day? I still don’t know but there are reminiscences of my life that, when I revisit, I realize this was destiny written probably in another birth. I tried to run away from the house twice. Once in my 5^th grade and again in my 8^th grade. Some astrologer told my mom that she needed to remove all idols of Gautama The Buddha from the house. She did. I used to get visions of someone calling out for me from the mountains of Uttarakhand.

After 25 odd years I am slowly beginning to piece all of it together. For those who don’t know Maa Anadamoyee Maa, Shankaracharya of Sringeri considered her Maa Durga herself. 

Maa Anandamoyee Maa was the protector and spiritual guide of India’s Iron Lady Indira Gandhi. Legend has it that the period between 1972 through 1982 was extremely volatile for India and Shankaracharya suggested that the Daksha Yagna started by King Daksha Prajapati (father of Sati) had to be completed. Shankaracharya called a meeting of all the 13 akharas to decide who was powerful enough to complete the Yagna that was left incomplete because Lord Shiva had beheaded King Daksha. The most powerful ascetics of India unanimously agreed that it has to be Maa Anandamoyee Maa. In 1981 at a place called Kankhal in Haridwar and in the presence of Shankaracharya Maa performed the 11 days yagna, without a break, without a pause. The yagna needed 108 most elevated and powerful yogis in India. Pushpita aunty told me that miraculously strange sadhus who lived in the remotest parts of the Himalayas and who has had absolutely no encounter with humanity (hermits) appeared. It is said that Devas communicate with their divine energies. They don’t need phones or physical proximity. Here is the video link. Do watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jjY-OJPH4k

Kutti Baba was always beside Anandamoyee Maa like her shadow. Now here is the most interesting part. While the most enlightened touched Maa’s feet, Maa never let Kutti Baba touch her feet. Legend has it, Maa’s sevaks and sevikas had seen Maa touching Kutti Baba’s feet.

So who was this Kutti Baba who asked me to marry my current wife? Did he choose me because I come from the bloodline of  Krittibas Ojha, Maa Sharada and Sri Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath? So what? What's his relation with the three? Who was this Kutti Baba who made sure a kidney donor walked to our house rang the bell and offered to donate his kidneys to my mother and literally disappeared into thin air never to be seen again. My mother lived for another 10 years. Doctors called it a miracle. Who was the Kutti Baba who asked me to NOT go to the US in 2001 August and push it out to 2002 instead, warning me in 2000 that something terrible was about befall on the US. 9/11 happened and all scholarships were cancelled. In 2002 I was offered full scholarship, first non American to get at that particular university. Who was this Kutti Baba who saved my son from near death in his mother’s womb?  Who was this Kutti Baba whose body didn’t have rigor mortis even after 72 hours of his self declared Samadhi in 2007?  I was in the US when he went into Samadhi. The body was kept in his house in Sitarampur for 72 hours until I returned. Who was this Kutti Baba who instructed Pushpita aunty that he be cremated at Adyapeeth and his ashes be immersed in Nabadwip? Who was Kutti Baba who could tell you detailed day by day, hour by hour stories of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabu including how many times Mahaprabhu sneezed on a particular day what he ate, where he slept, who his friends were, what they played? Who was Kutti Baba who, sitting at Sitarampur village Dhanbad could give a vivid description of my house in Connecticut or friends in Boston? Who was this Kutti Baba who told me that I will get a job in a certain company and that I should never leave it. I found out why he said what he said after 15 years. Who was this Kutti Baba who refused to come to public notice but redeemed thousands of souls across the globe sitting in Sitarampur? Why did Kutti Baba want me to safe keep Maa Anadamoyee Maa's paduka? 

I still don’t know who Kutti Baba really was. I know he is here with me 24/7. I feel him, sense his presence everyday, every moment. I was asked by Pushpita aunty never to speak about him in public or publicize the thousands of miracles he performed for thousands on people. Until today, when aunty’s son in law decided to offer the story of Kutti Baba through his book “Sahaj Brahma Gyani Shree Kutti Baba” on Guru Purnima 2026.