Evening Standard - Thursday, June 17, 1971

SWATHED IN FLOWERS
13-year-old Guru Balyogeshwar
Srï Sant Ji Maharaj
is welcomed at Heathrow Airport today.

Hallelujah! The
mini Guru, aged 13,
cometh

"THEY ARE not," said a stern Heathrow Airport official, "playing their bells, conches, flutes or horns in the arrival building."
And he added : " We do not intend to have clarinets, tambourines, cymbals or anything else that jangles. They may say he's the Lord, but as far as we are concerned he's just an ordinary passenger."
All of which was a bit of a dampener for the biggest crowd of Guru worshippers ever seen at Heathrow.
Nearly 200 of them descended on the airport with garlands, bags filled with petals and babies in push chairs - all to meet 13-year-old Balyogeshwar Srisant Ji Maharaj.

Garlanded

When the mini Guru, hardly 5ft. tall and wearing a plain white robe, came through Customs his devotees fell at his feet and garlanded him with carnations.
Then out came a massive sack of petals and he was smothered with them as he made his way through the milling throng helped by police.
The followers of the Guru, nearly all of them English said they had known about him for two years. He had come to save them from themselves.
One of them, questioned about the Guru, said: "I think you had better speak to Charles. He's got the gift of the gab and everything."

13-day visit

But Charles passed the questions on to a white-robed Indian who said that the young Guru came from Heaven. But if you were talking about his body that, in fact, came from the Himalayas.
The devotees said that they all belonged to the Divine Light Mission.
Their master is here on a 13-day visit and will appear in London, Leicester, Exeter, and at the Glastonbury Festival on Mid-Summer's Day.
In the end there was no live music until the Guru left the terminal building.
Inside he made his regal way to the background of piped airport music which happened to be a selection from The Pyjama Game.