Bhagavan Sri Ramana’s birth anniversary is called Jayanthi day and it is celebrated every year in the Ramanashram in a very splendid way. This year it fell on 22^nd December. Early in the morning after the Dhanur Maasa puja there was special chanting of Arunachala Shiva followed by chanting of Tiruvempavai and Vishnu Sahasranaamam. Then there came the breakfast interlude. After this, the grand puja  celebrating the special event was begun on the shrine of Sri Ramana’s Samadhi. This Ekadasa MahaRudra puja was performed on an elaborate scale by the priests and went on for a few hours. After the finishing Arathi, devotees were invited to partake of the sumptuous lunch Prasad meal and there was quite a scramble to get in front of the food queue. In the evening, there was a music concert by the Amritavarshini troupe from Bangalore singing their same collection of Ramana songs as they do every year.

In Letters from Ramanasramam on 24^th February 1947, Bhagavan is supposed to have narrated the following incident in connection with celebrating his birthday: “On one of my birthdays while I was in Virupaksha cave, probably in 1912, those around me insisted on cooking food and eating it there as a celebration of the occasion. I tried to dissuade them but they rebelled saying. ‘what harm does it do to Swamiji, if we cook our food and eat it here?. I therefore left it at that. Immediately after that they purchased some vessels. Those vessels are still here. What began as a small function has resulted in all this paraphernalia and pomp. Everything must take its own course and will not stop at our request. I told them at great length, but they did not listen. When the cooking and eating were over, Iswaraswamy who used to be with me in those days, said, ‘Swamiji ! this is your birthday. Please compose two verses and I too will compose two.’ It was then that I composed these two verses which I find in the notebook here. They run as follows :

1. You who intend to celebrate the birthday, first ascertain as to whence you were born. The day that we attain a place in that everlasting life which is beyond the reach of births and deaths is our real birthday.
2. Even on these birthdays, that occur once a year, we ought to lament that we have got this body and fallen into this world. Instead we celebrate the event with a feast. To rejoice over it is like decorating a corpse. Wisdom consists in realizing the Self and in getting absorbed therein.

This is the purport of those verses. It appears that it is a custom amongst a certain section of people in Malabar to weep when a child is born in the house and celebrate a death with pomp. Really one should lament having left one’s real state, and taken birth again in this world, and not celebrate it as a festive occasion.”

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