Everyone in town recognized the nightly resounding clattering of iron. Every day, Kuresha, the town’s richest and most generous man, opened up the gates of his mansion and allowed—no, encouraged—anyone from town to come and take anything they wanted. After sunset, he would shut his iron gate with an ear-splitting bang heard through all of…
Ramanuja couldn’t wait to get to Srirangam. Kanchi Purna—a great devotee of Lord Varadaraja—was blessed with the good fortune of having daily conversations with the Lord. During one such conversation, Sriman Narayana himself in the form of Varadaraja had told him to instruct Ramanuja to go to Srirangam and seek out Maha Purna as his acharya.
Maha Purna had no time to waste. He had to get to the city of Kanchipuram as quickly as possible. Purna’s acharya—the esteemed Yamunacharya himself—had instructed him to bring some young man named Ramanuja to Srirangam.
In the simple town of Sriperumbudur, the house of Keshavacharya and Kantimati was lit up in celebration of their radiant newborn child. Kantimati’s brother Srishaila Purna, the direct disciple of Yamunacharya himself, came to adorn the baby boy with the name Ilayazhvan, who would later be revered as Bhagavad Ramanuja.
