Very Good

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)