Very Good

Sri Chinmoy playing tennis - photo by Prashphutita

Before Aspiration-Ground was built, Guru played tennis on a makeshift tennis court at Jamaica High School. The disciples watched and meditated from the sidelines. One day while Guru was playing tennis, I was visualising a film about the tennis star Jimmy Connors that we had seen the night before at Progress-Promise. The camera angles were imaginative and powerful and caught a gracefulness that Connors had when playing tennis. I was thinking that a film like that should be made of Guru’s tennis.

Just then, Guru looked over at me and blessed me. Weeks went by and I could not stop thinking about that blessing. I wrote to Guru and asked him if he was blessing me because he was happy I was thinking about him or because he liked the idea.
A short time later Guru said, “So Niriha, you want to make movies?”
I said, “Oh Guru, I was not thinking of my doing it. I just thought that someone should.”
Guru said, “You do it, you do it.”

So I started researching what equipment was needed and how much it would cost. Video was so new at the time that I did not really consider it. I was looking into film, but I discovered it was very expensive. A shop owner suggested I consider video, but in 1981 very few people even had video cameras and few stores sold them. I asked Guru if I should get a film camera or video camera, and Guru replied, “Video, video.”

The next question was how to get the money for the equipment. Within a week from the time I decided what equipment to get, my father informed me that he had just had a very successful transaction in his cable television business and that he was creating individual trusts for each of his seven children. I asked him if I could withdraw the amount I needed for the video equipment and he readily agreed. The timing was excellent, since I wanted to get the equipment soon—and since the “trust” rapidly disappeared when my father invested it in a bad scheme.

On July 27, 1981, with my brother holding the heavy video recorder while I held the camera, I took my first video of Guru as he played tennis at Jamaica High School. Guru looked over at us and said, “Very good! Very good!”
Niriha (New York)

One of Niriha's DVDs from Father's Day 2007

Niriha has been producing videos of Sri Chinmoy and Sri Chinmoy activities for the past three decades.