When we began to take a serious interest in Vedic astrology, my husband Nicholas got in touch with Bhava in England and sooner than you could imagine, a friendship developed between Komilla Sutton and him. At one of the first conferences we attended in London, we already met Prof. Sekhar. At that time he gave a lecture on the karmic factors of the Vedic horoscope and I will never forget his opening words. “You are all honest and serious persons,” he said, “to you I can give this divine knowledge without accumulating bad karma for myself.” And he looked for a few moments into the faces of those present with the loving and at the same time penetrating gaze that many of you have experienced yourself over the years. That was the beginning of a long and deep friendship between a man from another culture who could have been my father. By the way, he was actually born in the same year as my long deceased father.
Back in the fall of 2001, we met him in Bangalore at a hotel where I was getting my first Vedic astrological reading. This was, I felt deeply, not just a consultation or a conversation, this was a ritual. It was in that hotel that we laid the foundation for a collaboration that would last more than 2 decades. And again, my husband was the link.
Now, more than 20 years later, I can look back on countless hours together in Germany, India and England. We have worked together. Prof. Sekhar’s responsibility was teaching, he appointed me “his voice” and Nick observed everything very closely, caught translation insecurities and, above all, in his polite English way, always made sure that Prof. Sekhar received an English-language newspaper every day and lacked nothing.
Beside the many common impressive instructive hours in the respective seminar room, in which Prof. Sekhar taught not only astrology, but also palmistry and Vastu, we all enjoyed also the many long evenings, in which we sat together in small round and stuck to Prof. Sekhar’s lips. On these occasions he sometimes told the most beautiful stories, which conjured a breath of India into our European summer evenings. He once told us that there is a saying in India that a person with Kala Sarpa Yoga in his horoscope took away the freedom of a bird in his last life and locked it in a cage. An allegory that says more to me than many clever explanations.
And just recently, at one of our last meetings, Prof. Sekhar told me that his father was a direct astrologer of the then Raja in this South Indian royalty. He said that the father wore jewelry worthy of a raja and that in the summer the whole family, with subordinates and the entire household, moved to the mountains to enjoy the cooler climate. That already his own son, Jaya, whom he was the only one to introduce to astrology, would live in a completely different social context, this gentleman certainly could not imagine at that time. With the end of the English occupation, the venerable astrologer, so highly esteemed by the Raja, was to lose much property and prestige. Nevertheless, his son Jaya, despite his academic education, managed to feed all his offspring with the income from astrological work.
This story sounds a bit like something out of the Arabian Nights. And surely the South Indian father could not have imagined that his son would one day spend his summers in Europe for many years and become an internationally recognized author of numerous books. We have been fortunate to know this son Jaya personally and to be able to learn from him, and I cannot really estimate how many of our students he has helped over the years to better understand the cosmic laws and to clear up a few misunderstandings.
I, for one, am very grateful for the contact with this special person who will visit us once again in Germany and who is willing to generously share his knowledge and wisdom with us. And that he meets with our students people who sincerely and seriously seek the truth and do not bring him bad karma, he no longer doubts.