07/04/2026
Today is the birthday of our Founder of Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya and The Temple of Fine Arts: Swami Shantanand Saraswati 🙏🏼
He Lives Through Us
He did not stand before us
as one name, one form, one role.
He arrived as everything.
A hand that steadied
like a mother’s quiet knowing,
a gaze that protected
like a father’s unspoken strength,
a laugh that walked beside us
like a brother, a sister,
woven into the small, tender hours of becoming.
And yet, he was more.
He was the rhythm before the step,
the silence before the note,
the breath before the word.
From 1971
he gathered dreams like scattered petals
and made of them
a thousand blooming stages.
We did not know
we were becoming history
as we moved.
Ramayana rose under his vision,
not as story, but as living fire.
Malay tales found their pulse in our feet,
Chinese melodies and stories curved through our hands,
Western symphonies met ancient mudras,
and somewhere, in the meeting of all worlds,
he smiled.
He told us, gently,
as rivers do not argue with the sea,
so too do all faiths
find their home in the same vastness.
And we believed him
because he lived it.
He composed not only music,
but people.
He choreographed not only dances,
but destinies.
Even now
when we teach,
it is his voice that arrives first.
When we move,
it is his body that remembers.
When we sing,
it is his breath that carries the note.
He did not leave.
How can one leave
when one has dissolved
into so many hearts?
If he were here today
he would be ninety-two.
But time does not measure him.
He lives
in every lifted arm,
in every trembling ankle bell,
in every child who steps into light
not knowing
they are stepping into him.
Guru,
you did not build an institution.
You became a current.
And we,
still flowing,
are your river
finding the sea.
