Kali Story....

[Guest guest]

Namah Shivaya, friends,

 

Sorry for the long silence, especially to you, Avinash, as we were in the

midst of all those emails! I went from Hyderabad to Chennai on a mini

vacation, and then landed up here in Palakkad (Kerala) at my parents, from

where I have dialed in and picked up the threads since my last posting.

Yes, you are right...enough has been said and it all seems fairly sorted

out...don't have a breakdown, my friend Len (smile)...I still don't think

you said anything wrong...actually, it was kind of good...we all got to

squabble a little bit together like the best of siblings, no? And we are

all still friends...

 

Anyway, I got so many sweet responses to my Kali story promise that I find I

must post it generally after all! And of course, it is really not such a

big deal to talk about...as is usual with "miracles" it means most to the

person it happened to. So, with apologies for what may be an anti-climatic

story, I will tell it to you:

 

As I told you, I grew up in Calcutta going to Kalighat temple. Then I

attended college in Mass, and later began working in New York. Around this

time, my mom presented me with a small picture of Kalighat Kali, thinking

that I would like to include it on my little puja shelf. She herself had

retired her picture of Kali when they moved to Bangalore from Calcutta, and

tried to prune and simplify her puja room. Then, one night she had a dream

that I told her urgently to put the Kali back right away. She felt it was

so real that she woke up and, in the middle of the night, rushed to put the

Kali back in her puja room.

Since this happened, she thought I might want a picture of Kali too for

myself. Well, in typical childish contrariness, I sort of shrugged off the

gift and declined to display it, and was also probably somewhat leery of

trying to explain Kali to westerners to most of whom the concept of Krishna

and Co. were difficult enough to convey. As someone said, Kali is an Indian

deity that doesn't get a "visa" as easily to the West as some others!

Anyway, mistaken though this was, I thought I'd really rather not, thank you

very much.

 

So, eleven years went by, I got married, and moved around Manhattan,

eventually to Brooklyn, had a kid, etc. Through all this, I grew slowly in

my understanding of my guru and her role in my life. Then, when Amma gave

me a mantra a second time (long story), Kali reentered vividly into my

spiritual life. I saw her and Amma as the same many times. She was no

longer alien to me (a little scary!), known only through my parents, but

very real and direct, and just like my own mother. I loved her so much, and

NOW I started to search for that picture. And, needless to say, the picture

hid itself from me. I did not feel that I deserved another photo, because

this one had been rejected ignorantly by me, and so till it revealed itself

to me, I was not deserving of a Kali photo. Even then, someone on this site

once talked to me about Kali images and sent me a photo of the Kalighat

Kali, which I printed out and stuck in my shrine, as a sort of place-holder

till the real Ma turned up. I would execute some searches for it

sometimes...no luck.

 

Then along came our move to Hyderabad. We sorted, packed, stored, shipped

and discarded in a perfect frenzy. Things built to a pitch the day we were

moving out, and the day before we left the US. The very last room to be

cleared in the last twenty minutes we were in our apartment was my bedroom.

My shrine stood about three feet from my side of the bed in Brooklyn.

Between it and the bed is a small night-table with a tiny shelf beneath.

The very last space I cleared was this tiny nightstand shelf, which we left

bolted onto the wall for our subletters. The last thing to emerge from it

was, you guessed it, the Kali photo which I had searched for for so long!

It was laying facing toward me. Kali had been no more than three inches

from my face all along! I felt that her blessing was upon us in that

moment....how can I explain it? It moved me immensely that the divine

Mother had been hiding herself from me and had been physically closer than

anyone even in my shrine was. And, I had thought, she must be in some

forgotten dusty box in our basement, or even lost. In what moment I had put

that photo in that shelf has completely slipped my memory,...and try as I

can, I cannot remember it even now. I had been in that apartment only 5

years, and had moved three times before that since I received the photo.

 

That's my Kali story...I feel that a mother will never let you go, no matter

how you may reject her, and repent and search...she is right alongside

always...

 

Om Namah Shivaya,

Usha

[Guest guest]

Jai Kali Ma!! Thank you Usha for including us to tell your story.

It was definitely not at all anticlimactic for this child, thanks to the way

you wrote it. And just now the sun in the west lit up a crystal that hangs

in the window and 2 bright lights from it are reflecting back it me from the

computer screen, as if Kali's eyes were gleaming out of your story.

Jai Ma!

In Amma's grace,

premarupa

Aum Amriteshvaryai Namah