After much rest and reflection, an itinerant devotee returns to the trail. In the intervening months, Mother has written a few more words in this loiterer’s book of life. Her words do not yet sum up to a full sentence; not even a subordinate clause, barely enough for a phrase perhaps. Despite Her terseness, a hint of intent is now apparent to this actor, an insignificant extra in Her cosmic production. If one believes that the merest doodles of Mother’s Mont Blanc (metaphorical pen) represent entire epics in the lives of Her animations, my attempt to decode the Divine hieroglyph may not be totally unfounded. The task would be a lot easier though, if Her script were less scarce. Did I just wish for a sentence? How dumb can this devotee get? Isn’t life sentence enough?!
I’m done waffling. This fool may not be able to approach, even asymptotically, the succinct speech of Sakshal Saraswati (verily the Goddess of Learning) but he will try not to drool.
Continuing in the surreal vein of the previous episode, this one and the next will record a somewhat magical meeting with another ashramite, a gentleman - let us call him X3. In the course of my talk with X3, I grumbled about the lack of any direct demonstrations of Mother’s omniscience or other extra-sensory powers in my life. X3 responded by sharing a snippet from his story that spoke to my concern. Our gentleman friend had been living in the ashram with his wife for close to a decade. Both in their late sixties, husband and wife were wedded as much to seva (service) as to each other. Their advanced age and the Amritapuri force field (only half tongue-in-cheek here) probably accounted for the bulk of their dedication to service, but the fact that they were childless may also have had something to do with it. While barrenness was no issue (pardon the evil pun), X3 did have another problem, and the story he proceeded to narrate revolved around this.
His tale began with a dose of personal history. He told me that he had led a dissolute life as a young man. He said that he was too ashamed to talk about his many vices, but that chronic womanizing and drinking had cast dark shadows over his life, in early adulthood. In middle age, the excesses of his youth caught up with him and he was laid low by serious health problems. He declined to spell out the nature of his ailments (my guess: some horrible STDs), but indicated that they were severe enough to force a change in his lifestyle. The spirit was still willing but the flesh was too weak, apparently.
He trudged on for another twenty years, fighting illness and recidivism. The battle was stiff and results were mixed, however, until he finally landed in the A-Zone (A=Amma) at the age of 60 or so. From that point onwards, the force field took over and the tide turned. Over the next five years, as he buried himself in work, he found his noxious old vasanas (tendencies) being slowly extinguished. Despite the glacial rate of change, the transformation was near total. In his words: “You cannot imagine what kind of a man I used to be (depraved) and I could not have imagined the kind of man I have now become (reformed).” He put it all down to Mother’s grace and in response to my expressions of doubt, he went on to illustrate the palpable nature of this grace, underlining the idea that it was not wispy, wishful thinking.
After around five years of the reformed life, in accord with the guidelines for householder devotees including celibacy on campus, X3 fell victim to an unexpected revival of his most vicious vasana – the urge for illicit intercourse. It began as a mildly mischievous thought, a mere ripple on the surface of the ocean, but quickly turned into an unstoppable tsunami of desire. The pain was so poignant in the description of his predicament, that I could not but sympathize with the miserable fellow. After all, I know from my own experience that the powerful L force (lust) is one of the fundamental forces of nature, ranking right up there with the other four forces (strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic and gravitational forces for those fond of physics) in the Unified Field theory. And while I subscribe, in a general way, to the theory of ojas – the idea that sexuality and spirituality are antithetical to each other, and have made definite, if slow* progress in my tussle with testosterone, I can surely empathize with the plight of millions who may presumably be moving in the opposite direction. (*At the rate of scant inches per year, doubtless I will be able to eradicate the erotic from my consciousness in a zillion lifetimes.)
Despite my sincere efforts to commiserate mentally with X3’s difficult situation, I came close to convulsing with laughter when I tried to visualize our friendly sexagenarian as a sexpot. I thought, in Malayalam:
Aal kanda kondatum bole irikyum
Pakshe kalikyan takkali venam
Malayalees, I trust, will get my drift though my metaphors are unconventional. A rough translation for non-Malayalees is as follows:
The man looks like a dried twig
But wants to play with a juicy tomato
Although my sides were about to split, I realized that laughter would have been cruel at that juncture. With superhuman effort, I managed to avert an explosion of mirth. I forced myself to remember that while the body ages, desire does not.
A verse from Bhartrihari’s Vairagya Shatakam makes the point:
Balirbhimukhamakrantam palitenankita shiraha
Gatrani shithilayante trishnaika tarunyayate
Translation: There are wrinkles on my face because of old age. All the hair on my head has turned white and my hands and legs have turned loose and feeble. But my hope is like a young and beautiful damsel. Everything else may cease and get destroyed but hope and desire rage eternally young.
And in his Shringara Shatakam, Bhartrihari cuts, through rotting flesh, to the very bone with:
Krishah kaanah khanjah shravanrahitah
Puchchviklo prani puyaklinnah krimikulashtairaavrittanuh
Kshudhaa kshaamo jeernah pitharakkapaalaarpigatah
Shunimanveti shvaa hatmapi nihantyev madanah
Translation: Truly, Kamadeva (God of lust) does not spare even the dead. Even an old dog which is weak, one-eyed, lame, single-eared, bereft of a tail and afflicted with wounds full of pus and infecting worms, cannot contain its carnal desires and stalks a bitch throughout the day.
Om Amriteshwaryai Namah
