Category: WithAmma
travelling with amma
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first day covai
this is the first time in this year i am seeing so many mosquitos. at night in the room i had to put on odomos – an ointment — to drive away all the mosquitos. it worked well. the weather in covai is very nice and cool. usually when we come in the month of april or may it’s hot. unbelievably hot. really torturous. now the air is so fresh and cool. outside it is dusty though. but considerably less than previous years. **** in the morning Amma came to the stage a little earlier than usual, little ahead of…
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Reached Coimbatore
Amma reached the Coimbatore Brahmastanam around 11pm. We were caught in the traffic and came few minutes later. Two hours later, Amma’s children arrived by bus. As they walked across the Ashram towards their accommodations, Amma was standing on the stage, surveying the surroundings, making sure everything is ready for tomorrow’s programmes. As they walked towards the stage, Amma looked out at all her children and waived ‘hello’, a huge smile on her face. Everyone smiled and waived back. i am sure that it might have been a warm welcome after a 11-hour journey. Dhyanamrita21 Jan 07
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praying for happy journey
Around 3 p.m, Amma left Amritapuri for the 3 week visit to Tamil Nadu. It’s a 7 hour journey by road. Nine buses and six cars with about 500 children of Amma, four trucks with luggage, sound system, bookstall, and kitchen items are there with Amma on the tour. Really , it’s the Ashram on wheels. Tamil is the native language of Tamil Nadu – the neighbor state of Kerala. Amma has a long connection with Tamil Nadu. Even before she started her mission, Amma had been to the temples of Madhurai and Rameshwaram with her parents. In the early…
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Dirty Dhoti
During darshan, Amma often tells people to sit on the stage in her presence for a while. The first night in Kodungallur, near the end of darshan, she invited a feeble little old man with inquisitive grey eyes onto the stage. Two of us devotees who were on stage lifted the man from the ramp below without difficulty. He wore a sleeveless t-shirt and a stained dhoti that was pulled up to his knees in the manner of someone who had been doing physical labor, or just had been sitting around his home. In short, I saw him as a…
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Sunny Faces
Amma’s Kodungallur Ashram was a nice surprise for a program location with beautiful nature surrounding it. The attractiveness of the area showed not only in many luxuriant trees and flowers, but also in the bright happy smiles of the local devotees. As I was wiping the ladies’ faces in the darshan line, I mostly only saw sunny faces even during the latest hours. Also the Amma doll that I was carrying with me received a lot of attention and ended up going through the arms of many women and children in the line who were eager to hold her. Amma…
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madness of the soul
huge crowds, big grounds, evening programmes. That’s about where the similarity stops between indore’s programme last year, and this year’s kozhikode programmes. On one hand, there was the external madness of devotion of the devotees in indore expressed in their rush to the stage by the 10s of thousands to receive darshan at the same time. On the other hand, there was the internal madness of devotion in kozhikode. the patience, the reverence, the respect. They say that Kozhikode is Amma’s Vrindavan. But couldn’t that also be said of the devotees of Indore? The gopis of Vrindavan experienced both types…
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sameness
every darshan program follows the same schedule. amma comes to the hall, gives a talk, followed by bhajans, meditation, then darshan. as a westerner we travel with amma, go to the program, help with seva and spend time on stage. after so many cities, so many tours, one would think that this sameness would get boring. Not with Amma and certainly not for Amma. for as she travels across India, she gets to see tens of thousands of her children who are doing her work out in the world. Students, doctors, engineers, labourers, politicians. All imbibing or trying to imbibe…
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just given dakshina
two children came onto the stage in elaborate dress and makeup to perform kathakali, a traditional dance of Kerala. I busied myself trying to make room for the dancers and musicians. This done, my attention was caught by a couple saying in unison to one of the child-dancers; “No, No!” I looked at the girl and saw that she wanted to wipe away a single tear that seemed frozen on the surface of the thick green theatrical makeup. My suspicion was confirmed when I turned to the father and he told me with a satisfied smile, “She had just given…