When Amma danced out of the hall the last day, we expected that would be the dance experience in Munich. How wrong we were! Amma called the Munich devotees and staff to gather at an organizer’s house the night before we left for Paris.

A tent had been set up outside the full glass windows on one side of the house for the overflow crowd which gave them a good view of Amma. But that was not enough for Amma and she kept trying to find some way that we could all be in the same room, but even Amma, the “great expander of space” couldn’t cram one more body into this living room.

It seems that Amma can’t bear any separation from her children, even a glass window. Additionally, when she started serving our Prasad dinner, she reminded to think of all that weren’t there with us. She particularly mentioned how sad she was that all the Munich sevaites had been unable to come. We had watched them work most of the day after Devi Bhava, having had no sleep the previous night, to dismantle and clean the mammoth venue.

After the meal, Amma led us in singing “Hari Narayana” and “Shristiyum Niye”. As usual, she went particularly deeply into “Shristiyum Niye”. You are creation, You are the creator… You are the entire nature…Earlier, she had given us short satsang, reminding us that while experiencing and enjoying creation, remember the Creator. She said to remember even on the mundane level, that whatever we enjoy, that someone made it. Even when eating a sweet, we should remember that someone made it…
As only Amma can do, she swiftly went from being lost in her own transcendent world while singing, to playing and dancing with her children. She began improvising on the mike as she had seen some of the devotees do, making rhythmic jazzy sounds. Then something in the rhythm of the new percussion instrument that a drummer was playing launched her into dance mode. She began doing a particular Adivasi dance that we always see in Manathawady. The dancers move in slow circles with one or two hands raised in sarpasirsa, the classical Indian dance mudra depicting a snake. Moving in a slow circle in place, leaning at a slight angle with her hands before her face, Amma exactly reproduced the movement and feeling of that dance. It was completely mesmerizing, which is one of the points of this tribal dance which is dedicated to the Goddess. An image came to my mind of the ancient snake goddess of Neolithic Europe.

Next Amma danced in her most recent favourite style, which someone described as rocking a baby, the dance she usually dances to the bhajan, “Ayarkula Kozhuhte”, but this time it was to rhythm alone. Then she moved into an Adivasi dance from the Attipadi region of Kerala, which she had learned from the orphanage kids who dance this way when they visit her at the ashram in India.

Finishing off with a rhythmic chant of “Kali, Kali, Maha Kali, Bhadra Kali” and the de rigour “Mata Rani ki Jai!!!!” she finally went to her room and we to our buses-speechless- to return to the accommodation for a few hours sleep before the departure for Paris.
Rta
Munich, 2012 Europe Yatra