Farewell Pundit Basdeo (Vasudev) Misir!

Tonight Universal Collective Prayer takes a more somber and respectful note as we salute one of the pioneering pundits of Trinidad and Tobago as he leaves the material plane and remains only in spirit for how long we don't ourselves know. Perhaps he will become one with 'the Universe' forever or perhaps only temporarily so, until he again takes a material form to join us on this plane. At 95 years of age he would have lived through many of the milestones that marked the foundation of Hinduism in Trinidad and Tobago. He would have no doubt worked alongside my grandfather, Pundit Parasram (Parsuram)Maharaj who was simply known as 'Baba' by many on the island and would have been 94 years this February if still on the material plane but departed it in 2004. So basically Pundit Misir and he would have experienced many similar times on the island and in the history of Hinduism on it.

Some members of my family attended funeral rites for Pundit Misir today which took place at the Shore of Peace, Mosquito Creek, Trinidad. However I do not have enough details at the tip of my fingers to write more about him just yet. However I wanted to mark this day.

My inability to just google up info. makes me realize how little there is here on the world wide web about my ancestors and so I plan to do some research about the Pundit and write a longer post soon to commemorate his life. I hope to find many stories this Saturday when I attend a function of the Pundit Parasram School for Hinduism that one of my uncles has set up in memory of his father...my grandfather.

My overall intent (I guess what over on Intent.com would be called my primary intent) for Universal Collective Prayer is and always was to 'play' with all people in the universe and bring them together to dance in Universal Collective Prayer. However I've been realizing like today that I also need to at times recall, reflect, remember or take note of the people who if it wasn't for I'd not be able to make this dance in the first place. So I need to at times give them a bit of my bandwidth too! :) Cause if they didn't set the foundations for Hinduism from which my dance started there would be no dance from me on here.

Of course we all have our own paths to take too so my prayers may not be like how they envisioned it back in their day and my intent is not and never was to disrespect these people or others when I mention them or draw from their traditions and mix it with mines here on the prayers.

So I will soon write more about Pundit Misir. Till then I do a send off to the Pundit on his departure from this material plane in keeping with his religious traditions. I did not know him well personally but I know he was well loved by his family and many who will surely miss him here on the material plane. He also had a large following of 'chelas'* to whom he was a beloved guru and so his guidance, compassion and seva* here on the material plane will also be missed by them. So here I choose a track that I requested be played at my grandfather's send off cause I knew he liked the tune and in particular its lyrics so I hope it will also be fitting for the send off by Pradeep-Dekh tere sansar ki halat kya ho gayi bhagwaan kitna badal gaya insaan...Look at what has happened to your world, O god. Man has changed so much:


Here is a link to a picture of the late Pundit as it appears in a local newspaper here in Trinidad. He is receiving an award to commemorate his seva* to the local Hindu community here in Trinidad.

*my Hinglish version as I pluralize the word 'chela' which is used in Hinduism to mean someone who follows Hinduism fervently or who follows one spiritual master or guru
*seva roughly translates to selfless service to man.