Part 1: Homeward Bound

This is the story of the time that I spent in Amritapuri some years ago. It is an ordinary tale, nothing dramatic, but I wish to record it for reasons not entirely clear or sound. Perhaps I wish to scour my mental garbage bin for little nuggets I can take home, or maybe, I want to reach out to an audience and share the confusion and mystery of the spiritual life. There may also be a creative/literary impulse at work behind my production. It is entirely possible that I am getting a kick out of experimenting with and showcasing my limited literary ability. Anyway, we shall leave questions of motivation aside for the time being and start the story.

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 just 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 under 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.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

My Amritapuri Experience: Introduction

This is a serialized record of my experiences with Amma in Amritapuri. These blogs may be of interest to those invested in religion/spirituality in general and Amma in particular.

Amma is Mata Amritanandamayi Devi. I look upon Her as God, Guru and the Self. However, I am currently situated on the distant outer margins of the spiritual involute and so my regard for Amma, such as it is, is more likely to stain than reflect Her glory. True regard can only be manifested when one has integrated all of Her teachings into one's daily life and I am a long way off from being able to do that.

I am a novice on the blogging circuit and am likely to maintain that status for the foreseeable future. I embark on this exercise with considerable trepidation, not knowing what risks lie in train. I hope not to attract too much attention, positive or negative. If these blogs sink without a trace, I shall be happy to have met at least one of my aims - to stay nondescript. If I crave anonymity that much, why am I posting at all? Especially to a dangerously wide audience as this one? I created these blogs primarily so I could see all of my previously scattered output in one place and secondarily, in the hope of connecting with and possibly providing some marginal utility to others who are inward-bound like myself.

Unless they get too numerous (an unlikely event in my prognostication), I expect to read all comments that are posted. However, I will respond to comments only rarely, if at all. This is not out of any disrespect but merely a hard acknowledgement of the constraints that life imposes on my time and attention.

And now, with a prayer on my lips invoking Amma's Grace, I move to push this little rubber dinghy out to sea...