By Sagar Sriramagiri | Posted: January 17, 2019

On January 11th, 2019, at about 6 PM, My wife Shivani and I were just getting seated in the food court of the Newport Mall in Jersey City, NJ. At first, we heard a commotion, with people running and shouting behind us. For the first 5 seconds, we ignored this commotion, assuming it to be some kids having fun, and continued with the food on our table. Very quickly, the commotion escalated to louder yelling, and then to chairs and tables being thrown. This was the first warning to us that we might need to get up and be alert. The very next moment, as we turned around to see what was happening, we heard the first sounds of gunshots. This was followed by even more frantic yelling and commotion just a few feet in front of us.

I have, just like almost everyone among us who lives in the USA, have an acute awareness of the dangers and possibility of a mass shooting in both my conscious and subconscious mind. I have heard of countless instances of a shooter randomly killing everyone in sight.

In the few seconds following the gunshots and the sight of a gun in the air, all that I knew and read and understood about gun violence evaporated from my conscious mind. There was a blankness of thought, an immediate and instinctive switch to action without any doubt or judgment. I shouted to all around me, “Get down on the floor!”, “Get under the tables!” and quickly dropped to the floor along with my wife and a few others around us.

For the few minutes that I was aware of the gunman still being in the food court, it felt that death was near.

Of those around me, there were a few who were in tears, a few trying to call their family or friends as quickly as they could, and a few in a total state of shock, unable to process anything or do anything, frozen in the moment.

I had never been in a situation of this nature before. Yet, looking back, I believe that the many years of my practice of meditation and Sudarshan Kriya helped me stay alert and relatively unshaken in those moments of imminent danger.

After a few minutes, and once the immediate commotion subsided, we got up from under the tables, and looked around to see the mall security officers arriving on the scene. We started to collect our belongings and walk down towards the exit. When we reached the 2nd floor, walking through the blood droplets and bullet casings, we stood in the open with almost all the stores shut down, and heard a fresh round of gunshots, more yelling, and running. The panic and the possibility of a shooter on the loose was still there.

We rushed to the only store half-open--a Pandora Jewelry store that was about to shut down. The store manager waited a few seconds for us to run inside, closed the store, and escorted us quickly into the back closet, where 10 others were already in hiding. As we stayed hunkered, we started informing some of our friends of our situation and their prayers and blessings helped our morale.

We waited out another 40 minutes in the closet while the Jersey City police arrived in their gear and guns to scan and clear the entire mall. At about 6:55 PM, we exited the mall, escorted out by the police and mall security.

We walked back home, did our evening meditation, ordered food from a takeaway, spoke to our friends, and ended the day exhausted, still processing the events we’d just survived.

Later that evening, we found out more details of the shooter and the incident from news sources. We were told that the shooting was possibly gang-related violence, and not a mass shooting as we had suspected.

To this moment, I am grateful for the fact that we and many others in that mall that evening walked out safe and alive, to experience the beauty of another day.

The next evening, our life and our commitments to the life ahead of us meant we were back among our friends at the Art of Living center in New York working onwards to bring peace not just to us, but those that surround us. The day ended with this beautiful moment, as we sat in silence and love.

What I learned

That evening brought to us the knowledge of the impermanence and fragility of life in a very real and personal manner. I am alive today, able to look beyond the event and be grateful for its lessons. I am able to continue my life, and able to share what I learned:

1. What comes to me in my life is sometimes beyond my control, like the evening of January 11th, which was neither in my plans nor in my wish list.

2. Life is so delicate. This incident gave me a better understanding of how it feels when death is so close.

3. I was only few feet away from the active shooter. I thought it was a mass shooting, and that we were all in danger. Yet I was unshaken. Some people were hysterical, and some were in tears. I found myself helping those around me, and giving them strength.

4. In that moment I was not afraid of it being my last day. Subconsciously, I was totally at peace. I was not afraid of what could happen.

4. I still feel it and think of it often, and the memory is still fresh, but I have been able to rise above my trauma. I was affected by the situation, but I am not bogged down by it.   

I attribute all of this to my practice of Sudarshan Kriya and Sahaj Samadhi meditation, both of which I have been practicing for many years. These techniques helped me to move much faster and process this incident calmly, both during and after the fact. The fear and the fight/flight response didn’t kick in during the peak of the event. I was completely in the moment.

While the lessons of that evening remain, our life is, in its own unusual way, back to normal.

And Shivani, my companion in life and that evening, is back to herself, re-telling the tales of that evening in her own trademark style. She is also a yoga and meditation teacher. She keeps telling her friends, “thanks to my practice, I do not recall the incident again and again in a traumatic state of mind. I am looking at the incident as a learning in my life and at the same time I am able to laugh it off. Just 45 minutes before the incident, I read this blog post by Kishanji, which spoke about death. One of the things I recollected was remembering God at every moment, and being in touch with the divinity inside you at every moment, because you don't know when your last moment will be. Yoga is all about mental equilibrium and equanimous state. My practice helped me maintain a relaxed, equanimous state, and helped me put my life learnings on yoga and meditation into practice when it was REALLY needed.”

Even after the incident, Shivani picked up her Samosa (an Indian snack)  and Chai and left the mall eating it. She left with all her senses intact. Usually, many people who experience trauma are in such state of shock that their senses are numbed. But that was not the case with my wife.

I don’t know what will come tomorrow, but whatever it is, it will be life.

Sagar Sriramagiri is an Art of Living teacher, teaching Art of Living programs in USA, Europe for over 13+ years, Professionally he is a tax manager with Deloitte Tax.