Fashion Designer to Become a Jain Ascetic

-Srinivas Sirnoorkar,Gulbarga

In February, a fashion designer, his wife and their young son would be expected to travel to Dubai for the month-long shopping festival, Bali in Indonesia, or Cape Town in South Africa.

Instead, in eight weeks, couturier Kiran Maru, his wife Jyothi and son Bhavya are taking a journey into Sanyas (renunciation).

Thirty-six-year-old Kiran has decided to free himself from worldly pleasures and pressures. He, wife Jyothi (34) and eight-year-old Bhavya are all set to become Jain ascetics by renouncing all their material possessions. Their move towards asceticism has brought great joy to the Jain community here and elsewhere.

The three will attain the highest order of spiritualism for the noble cause of preaching and propagating one of the oldest religions on February 23, 2011, with Acharya Bhagawant Kalapuran Surishwar formally initiating them into the ascetic world at Adhoi in Kuchch district of Gujarat.

Kiran from Adoni in Andhra Pradesh and Jyothi, a Kannadiga from Belgaum, married 10 years ago and are settled in Mumbai.

“They were passionately discussing the tenets of Jainism and were planning to take sanyas to attain moksha (liberation) which is the ultimate goal in our religion. Over the last couple of years, they have been preparing for the ultimate by renouncing one pleasure after another of the material world,” said Manilal Shah, Kiran’s cousin.

The Marus were given a rousing reception by the Sankeshwar Parshvanath Jain Sangh when they were here recently to seek the blessings of their elders before taking up sanyas.

The three Shwetambars have already undertaken the ‘aparigriha vruta’, a religious ritual of not accepting anything from anybody, and have been undergoing vigorous training of the life of sanyas ashrama. After attaining sanyas, each of them will be moving independently all over India to preach and spread the universal values of Jainism. For the rest of their life, they will have to live on the alms and eat only once a day.

Manilal Shah said Bhavya, who has studied up to third standard, has also been given due training and he has been mentally prepared to take up ‘bala sanyas’ to become an infant ascetic. Ten years ago, a young commerce graduate Sapna from Gulbarga had taken the Deeksha.