My Amritapuri Experience: Part 1

[Guest guest]

Sisters Jyotsna and Achintya,

 

Thank you both so much for sharing those stories. It is wonderful to

read about Amma's workings in your lives, complete with wrinkles and

all. I have a ravenous appetite for Amma/Amritapuri stories.

Sometimes when the lists fall silent I want to shout, "WHAT DID AMMA

DO IN YOUR LIFE TODAY?" but am restrained by an over-developed sense

of decorum.

 

I feel inspired to tell my own story - of the time that I spent in

Amritapuri. It is an ordinary tale, nothing dramatic, but it made an

impression on me.

 

I arrived at Trivandrum airport late one night and was driven up to

Amritapuri in an ashram taxi. The ride was comfortable and

unremarkable. I had company - an American returning to the ashram

after seeing his son off at the airport and of course, the driver who

was a local. I had a brief dialogue with the American in the course

of which we exchanged basic information about each other. He told me

that he worked as a checkout clerk in a supermarket in the States and

that every so often he would save up and blow his savings (of many

months presumably) on a trip to India to be with Amma. He was an old-

timer around Amma, apparently, having first met her in the early

nineties and this was his third or fourth trip to HQ.

 

He was nice to talk to, mild mannered and pleasant. He talked a fair

bit about expenses - about how expensive it was to fly down to India

and how he had to work for x months to spend y months with Amma and

so on. He also gave me well-intentioned warnings about some of the

ways in which Indians might try to rip me off. I was touched by his

solicitude but did not feel the slightest bit of alarm given that I

was very much at home in Kerala. Being Malayali might have had

something to do with my confidence! I had been a 'local' years

before, and now here I was, years later, returning as an 'expat' with

dollars in my pocket and Hushpuppies on my soles. Nobody was going to

take me for a ride, I thought to myself, least of all in Kerala. As

our taxi tumbled Ashram-ward in the middle of the night over familiar

pot-holed roads, I looked outside through the windscreen and felt

comfortable. Little did I know that before the night was over,

someone with a heavy vehicle license was going to drive a 16-wheel

truck over my smug, budding ego. No prizes for guessing who that

trucker turned out to be; it was Amma! I was about to get my first

taste of Amma as Kali several months before I had even begun to

think, in conscious terms, of Her ego-slaying aspect.

 

To be continued...

 

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

 

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