“December 11, 2005, Purbi Champaran District, Bitauna Village - at around seven in the evening, around 50-60 naxalities (a Maoist Communist group in India that has been declared as a terrorist organization under the Unlawful Activities {Prevention} Act), both men and women, killed my husband right in front of me. I don’t know what happened after that, but my husband’s murder left a deep scar in my heart,” shares Reeta Singh, Youth Leadership Training Program Coordinator, about the beginning of her journey with the Art of Living.
Post this horrific incident that changed her life forever, she sat for the course on December 17, 2006 as a result of her sister’s consistent insistence. Reeta continues, “I don’t know what happened on the first day of the course. But on December 18, 2006, after I did my first Sudarshan Kriya, I spoke my name after a year. Up until then, I was a dead body, who was unable to walk, talk or express any emotion. During the course, my teachers say that I was in such a bad space that even they cried looking at me. But once I did the course, I never looked back. Neither did I feel that my husband is no longer with me.”
Before she walked on this path, she was an extremely aggressive person suffering from various ailments, “When my husband was alive, he spent most of his time taking me to the doctor and back. I was addicted to sleeping pills, yet I wouldn’t get any sleep and was in a lot of pain. But ever since my first kriya, I haven’t felt the need to take any medication because now, I can sleep anywhere and in any condition,” beams Reeta, dressed in a white kurta-pajama with salt and pepper hair and free-flowing energy that’s almost contagious.
Soon after, she became a teacher and took courses in prisons, but her real test came when she taught the kriya to those who had brutally murdered her husband, explains Reeta, “I went there out of my own free will because I wanted those who had ruined my life to have the same knowledge and opportunity to change their lives. I met them the day before I was to take the course and when I saw them, I didn’t feel I was looking at the enemy, but my own brothers and sisters. Even they accepted that they’d killed my husband and asked me how could I conduct the course for them after what they did to me. My answer was: ‘You accept what you did to me is wrong, yet I’m here to give you something valuable, which is for your benefit’.”
Till today, those four courses that she conducted are very memorable to her because they did the course with a lot of discipline and bhakti, and were filled with regret and remorse. But Reeta asked them to let the guilt go and start working with love and affection instead of arms and violence.
“Today, I am no longer scared of anything because I feel that a protective shield is looking after me - with Guruji on my right and my husband on my left,” smiles Reeta, while getting ready for a meeting with Guruji in the Bangalore ashram, leaving us with, “You know, why I don’t feel any sadness or fear? It’s because I have tremendous contentment and it’s all because of Guruji.”
