Featured Team Profile

Nani Ma Trustee Shradha Cancer Care Trust Spiritual Advisor Ganga Prem Hospice

Nani Ma

Nani Ma was born and brought up in England. From childhood she had many questions about the meaning of life and the Reality lying behind this outer appearance. After her graduation, at the young age of twenty two, her passion to find the Truth led her to India where she had heard of the existence of seers who had unravelled the age old mysteries of life and death.

It was in Rishikesh on the white sandy bank of the Ganga that Nani Ma found her Master and a new meaning in life. Sri Mastaram Babji was a perfected sage who taught the ancient wisdom of Vedanta and at the same time infused his disciples with deep devotion to the Divine. Nani Ma spent the next sixteen years studying Sanskrit and the Hindu scriptures, and practising intense austerities and meditation under his guidance. At this time Nani Ma developed a deep love for Ganga Ma, for her guru, and for the eternal teachings that he imparted to her. As she says, "His ashram was heaven, he is my father and Ganga Ma is my mother."After Babaji's Nirvana in 1987, Nani Ma moved up the Ganga river to Gangotri where she continued her austerities, study and meditation for a further eight years. She then came down the valley to the small ashram in Uttarkashi where she lives today.

Years of austerity and meditation have awakened a compassion in Nani Ma that has inspired her to become part of the Ganga Prem Hospice project and to help it by sharing her love and insight with terminally ill patients and their families at the most difficult time of their lives. She feels, as do the ancient scriptures of all religions, that death is not an end but a transition which can be met with fearlessness and peaceful anticipation rather than turmoil and sorrow. She feels that spiritual support provides the missing link in the achievement of complete holistic care which is the natural right of every human being at the end of their life.

Nani Ma is one of the guiding forces of Ganga Prem Hospice, and is responsible for the spiritual leanings of the hospice project. Many terminally-ill patients have drawn emotional comfort and understanding from her loving care during the home visits that she carries out whenever she is in Rishikesh. She is also responsible for the ever-growing volunteer base of the hospice and has inspired many people from around the world to give their time and services to the hospice project. Nani Ma now divides her day between managing the hospice's administrative work, receiving visitors, study and meditation and running her Guru's beautiful ashram on the bank of the Himalayan Ganga.