The word was out last night! Sunday morning, all the ashram residents
would be doing ‘bridge seva’!Amma’s request ! I decided i’d go and join
in…
the seva was due to start at 9.30 am…i got held up for sometime due to
some unavoidable circumstances…around 11.30 i got ready to leave for the bridge, before i left, i told a bramhachari who works with me, ‘today i’m going to build the bridge, like one of rama’s monkeys!’, he laughed and said goodbye.
when i got to the bridge, i saw the hospital doctors sitting there,
totally grey from the cement! they had started at 9.30, so they were
pretty dirty and exhausted by that time…i was immediately warned about the ‘dirt’ situation and was told to wear old clothes.
i ran back to my room, changed into an old t-shirt and ran back to the
construction place, Gurudas swami told me to start working on the other side(AICT side) of the bridge, when i got there, i was greeted by all my fellow bramhachari brothers, some of them wearing shirts, some of them without shirts, all of them flexing their non existent muscles!
I laughed and started working, we were supposed to carry sand and stones, so that it can be mixed with the cement…so an hour passed by, 1 pm, tired, looking around for some water, and there it comes, unfortunately, it is “chudu vellam”, hot water! The tradional answer from kerala to people who ask for water! i decided to work without it, waiting for it to cool down…meanwhile, it had started to rain, rains have been pretty unpredictable the last week or so, unfailingly making it at the wrong time always…but today it was welcome, it was pretty hot so far, so rain was a welcome change. We all took shelter for 5-10 mins, the rain then slowed down and then we continued again.
Dhyanji came with his camera to click pictures of us, most of us were
pretty embarrassed and we joked saying that we dont look at our photogenic best today!
after sometime, it was snack time! sudhamshu came with some biscuits from the bakery and everybody started digging in, nevermind that our hands were dirty! Then to our good luck, shraddhaji came with some juice for everyone! Hail the lord! We all drank a lot of juice, then got back to serious work, the climate was pleasant, most of the people who came with initial enthusiasm had left, so it was just us 15 or so bramhacharies continued…2.30! shouts all around, everyone looks up with surprise! The concrete laying was finished! The combined efforts of all the people involved, although slow and clumsy, was able to accomplish finishing the work which would’ve otherwise taken quite a lot of time. This is just like amma’s example that although all of us maybe zero watt bulbs, you put 100 of them together and you can read really well!
Anyway, the rest of the day will be spent recovering, around amma
ofcourse, as she will be on the stage all day giving darshan, so planning
to spend the rest of the day over there… around her, recovering,
smiling, ….
vikas.
september 17,2006.