THE MONK WHO SLAM-DUNKS

Swami Nateshananda Saraswati aka N. Amarnath is a former basketball player who participated in the 1980 Moscow Olympics

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

For Swami Nateshananda Saraswati, 70, shooting a basketball remains a meditative practice. In his purvashrama— the life before becoming a sanyasi of Advaita philosophy—he was N. Amarnath, a basketball star who represented India in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics and led the Indian team in the 1982 Asian Games. In his prime, scoring field goals brought him immense joy. Today, his ultimate goal is moksha or liberation and oneness with Brahman, the supreme cosmic power in Advaita.

Being at the ‘kuticaka’ (first) stage of sanyasa, Saraswati lives alone in a flat in Coimbatore. The colour saffron dominates the decor, including the bedsheets. THE WEEK visited him on the eve of his trip to Rishikesh Dayananda Ashram ahead of Guru Purnima. “Kuticaka sanyasis live in one place, just abiding in the knowledge,” said the Olympian, who embraced the sanyasi life a year after his wife’s death in 2018.

Saraswati believes that destiny has always taken him on routes he had never expected or foreseen. “There are many talented players who played for India. But how many could become captain,” he asked. “Destiny had that for me, even though my parents named me after the legendary cricket captain Lala Amarnath, hoping I, too, would be an Indian skipper one day.”