22  January 2008 – Pondicherry
Since the first night in Coimbatore, some of the Western women have been called to do crowd control at the beginning of darshan.  We form a line against the railing leading to the stage, hands linked together, prepared to stop the local devotees from jumping over the railings to the front of the darshan queue.  We all know bhajans are coming to an end; I look at an Indian woman with a mischievous grin on her face.  She knows why I am there.  It is her role to try and get over the railing and my role to stop her.  We look and acknowledge each other before the leela begins.

At the Pondicherry programs, ‘crowd control’ becomes ‘crowd reassurance’ with a large number of Westerners attending.  The sea of women devotees heading towards the darshan queue was pushing aggressively and Westerners had questions about where to go and what to do for darshan.  Several women, perhaps unaccustomed to traveling in India, were frightened by the force and pressure of the crowd.  I could only repeat phrases like, ‘It will be ok, Amma won’t let you get trampled.  Just let go of the railing so you can head in that direction… you’ll get there eventually… chant your mantra, keep breathing…”   I was thankful to have my seva change from that of enforcer to that of protector, understanding that at their source, they are one and the same.

We also have a stage seva called ‘pushing’ which was recently amended to a more politically-correct ‘positioning’ – admittedly it may have sounded  a bit strange for a new-comer devotee to be asked to do ‘pushing’ near Amma on stage.

I am consistently reminded on tour and at the Ashram of how challenging I find it to be in the midst of pushing – pushing in the chai line, in the food line, pushing to get a good sleeping spot on the floor in the tour accommodations, pushing for a spot near Amma.   While I may pat myself on the back for avoiding the physical pushing in these situations, aren’t we all pushing each other in some form or another?  Is pushing our agenda?  Are our desires, our interpretation of justice, our ideas about how the world should work any less aggressive than pushing in a crowd?  In the end, we are pushing against our own stubborn egos in our attempts to find God.
Amma talks about burning through karma on these tours.  I wonder if the direction of all this pushing – against each other, against ourselves – creates that fire.  So with that beautiful irony in my mind – the group of us pushing our way towards surrender – I am off in search of the dinner queue.
Kate – USA