Thursday, 9th August 2007. I was on stage to perform the aarti at Shreeharigurugram. I had been asked to stand in front of idol of Shri Dattatreya. The aarti began and within no time, the flames of the aarti started spreading in the breeze. This resulted in the cubes of camphor lying in the platter to ignite. Now all the cubes were burning at the same time. It was only the first aarti and we were just about half way through it. My ‘uparna’ too fluttered in the breeze and to protect it from the flames, I stepped back a little and held the aarti further away from my body. By then just about everything in the platter was burning as aresult of which the platter also began to get heated. Soon the platter became so hot that I could barely hold on to it.
For a moment, the thought of setting down the platter came to my mind. But I dismissed it soon as doing thus would distract the bhaktas engrossed in the aarti; besides, it was only a matter of a few days and my burnt fingers would soon heal. I decided against setting down the platter. More importantly, I was fully aware that this moment of grace where I found myself actually standing on stage next to my God (my Aniruddharaayaa) was extremely special and such an opportunity was not going to come my way easily again.
- Kiransinh Khurne
