A Son Remembers: Laxmikant Dash’s Journey into Kriya Yoga

 

I remember my father, Laxmikant Dash, was attracted to 'Kriya Yoga.

just two or three years after his retirement from the post of manager of finance at Hindustan Steel Limited in 1987. And that is why he used to visit Calcutta occasionally. How he reached his guru, Shri Ashok Kumar Chattopadhyay, I do not know, but he told us at home that he had taken initiation in Kriya Yoga from him. From his talks we came to know that he had learned the steps of Kriya Yoga very quickly and had become an admirer and favorite of his guru, Shri Ashok Kumar Chattopadhyay.

Later, Baba started learning Bengali. The reason for this was that Gurudev had given him permission and responsibility to translate the book written by him, 'Puran Purush Yogi Shri Shri Shyamcharan Lahiri Ji,' into Odia. At that time he used to live alone in one room of our house in Rourkela Civil Township. The house was rented, and he kept two rooms for himself. He was always of good nature. So he did not want to burden his son-in-law with his presence. But Sangsaath was very kind to his relatives

He used to say that I should stay alone for my practice and writing. He used to cook his own food. But he could not live without meeting his son, daughter, and grandchildren (all my children and children of my two sisters lived in Rourkela). So every morning at 10 am, after eating food cooked by them, he would come to our house on a small motorcycle, ride 10 km, and return to his house before evening.

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When I went on study leave to IIT Kharagpur in 1999 for my doctoral studies, all of us siblings, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren one day pressured him not to come back to his Civil Township house, and he agreed. Then we all together persuaded him to sell the house, and the house was sold. From then till today, Baba is with all of us. Not only this, he also used to take up all the daily responsibilities of the house. He would very quickly and quietly fulfill all the needs of the house by 10 am. In 1994 his first translation, "Purana Purush Yogi Sri Sri Shyamacharana Lahiri," was published from Brahmapur. He was very worried about how quickly the translated book would reach the original author. He calculated the royalty amount of the book and sent it from his own pocket to Guru Ashok Kumar Changopadhyay. The experience of publishing this book shocked him so much that he repeatedly said that he would never think of publishing a book again. He thanked the original author for his effort.

He thought it would not be possible for him to get anything published by paying commission fees, and he would not be able to do the financial and communication work required for it. He had written a book titled ‘Problems of Religion in Modern Times and Paths to Liberation’ after reading many useful books on the subject of karma, and since its scope was not so large, he thought he could publish it himself. But it could not happen due to some restriction or the other.

Baba had gotten many other books translated from Bengali. It was only after his death that I started reading them carefully. A completely different side of my father started opening up before me, which I had not even imagined. I knew that Baba was very short-tempered, and I was sure that he would never step into the field of literature or writing. But after retiring from his professional life, he is writing hundreds of pages! This amazes me a lot, and those manuscripts have exposed my own shortcomings. Then I realized that even though I was the only son of such a great and unique person, I did not even have the letter ‘K’ in verbs. It is true that Baba loved talking to me. Perhaps he would have liked to discuss with me his experiences of work and the thoughts that came to his mind while reading books and writing essays, but I never had the time. I was always busy with my office, my profession, and my progress in it. Now I have to face a lot of problems.

A question often arises: to what extent was it true that I did not have time? What else could I do for this except to blame myself? Today, on the auspicious occasion of his first Shraddha anniversary, we are able to express his own clear views on the problems of Dharma and Karma in the form of at least this one book translated by him, ‘Bandhan Mukti’ and ‘Sangrahakaar Veda.’ This has been possible mainly due to the interest and hard work of my elder brother Pradeep Kishore Mohapatra (Budhabhina) (CA Bhubaneswar), his elder sister Dr. Mrs. Sarada Mohapatra (Sarada Nani) (Brahmapur) for editing the manuscript of the book, and Salitendra Narayan Patnaik, editor of ‘Samyak’ magazine, Brahmapur, for taking the entire responsibility of preparing the book!

It is worth mentioning here that Baba (Laxmikant Dash) has promised to publish at the earliest the translation of "Shyamaparan Kriyayoga O Advaitavad" written by Shri Ashok Kumar Chattapadhyay, the publishing rights of which Baba had acquired from the original author some time back, and for this I want Baba's blessings

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