Part 26: Ganesha Leads The Way To Devi

I don’t have a clear idea on where I’d like to take this narrative. Do I fast-forward or rewind? Mere play seems so ordinary. Disc/Video jockeys don’t do that anymore, opting instead to crash, cut, scratch and spin. Our canvas today is hip-hop framed in heavy metal, street-side babble bounded by noise. Do I dare strike an orthogonal note? Certainly not. You have to rumble in order to register. So welcome, rapt readers, to the spinning of this 26th disc with the full complement of modern jarring sounds.

My Nordic friend reclines on a six foot long meditation mat with his feet pointing to the stage where our Divine Mother conducts her earthly play – the Devi Bhava. As his pro-tem friend, philosopher and guide, I am a little chagrined by his ignorant failure to observe the proper decorum before our revered Satguru. However I am vastly more disturbed by the numerous censorious, even baleful glares directed at my protégé by my desi (native) brothers. At that point, I had a searing insight into the meaning of that old zen koan – caught between a rock and a hard place. I will elaborate.

Of course there wasn’t much I could do to nudge events in a less stressful direction. I judged that an explanation of the situation and intervention on my part would tax my tongue and his brain too much. Even if, against the odds, I managed to get through to him, it was likely that his emotional equilibrium would be upset. Athithi Devo Bhava (The Guest is God!) after all. You have to coddle him even if he is like a black hole in the center of the galaxy.

On the other hand, I was of course too much of a wimp to even think about tackling the hostile native crowd. Even if I had the guts, there was nothing more concrete to deal with than some loose looks. Faced with a difficult situation, I responded by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. I deployed a telepathic anti-ballistic missile system around the Scandinavian embassy in Amritapuri. Though previously untested, my system seemed to work. The glares continued but flickered out like flares without detonations.

We will let my friend relax in the security of my magic missile shield while we explore new territory. Recall my warning in the first paragraph: we’re in hip-hop mode now. It is time to cross over from Copenhagen to Coimbatore, the origin of my next set of characters. Standing in the mantram initiation line, I found myself behind a father-son team. They looked so much alike that I guessed their relationship even before we got introduced.

Allow me to flesh their portraits out a little. I need only describe the father (G Sr.) and then, as the technology is now available, clone him in order to provide a description of the son (G Jr.). This nomenclature marks a departure from my past convention based on the X series but I hope that it will be understood in the light of my newly proclaimed taste for the staccato rhythms of rap. Y does not have to follow X anymore, as it has done for thousands of years of chromosomal evolution. We can now cap X with any alphabet and what better choice than G for Ganesha, the little Lord of new beginnings, to mark a decisive break with the past? I may seem to be engaged in a trivial pursuit here with my little alphabet game but this is really like a mystical version of Scrabble. Deeper significance will be discovered, I trust, as my story progresses.

G Sr. was dressed in a white mundu with a thin kasavu (gold border). His torso was bare except for a neatly folded angavastram. A long gold chain dangled from his neck. A gold watch gleamed on his right wrist. From these little signs, I guessed that he was probably in the top decile of Indian per capita income. It does not take much to get you there of course, given that 54% of the population or around 540 million people live on less than a dollar a day (Ref here). He was short, dark and hairy. Father and son made a cute pair, I thought, like Papa Bear and his cub.

Small talk was exchanged. I learnt that G Sr. was a businessman from Coimbatore. He was gushing with devotion, or so it seemed. His certainty helped set my compass which was directionally challenged, then as now. A brahmachari who was assisting with the mantram line came around to help us select our sacred chants. My new friends from Coimbatore [and Guru-bhais (brothers) to be] were asked to name the deity of their choice. They seemed to have come prepared and picked Ganesha without any hesitation.

Then it was my turn. I had this exotic idea that Amma would pick a deity and mantram for me. I wanted to give Her the maximum degrees of freedom in picking my cosmic license plate. I know that analogy is not perfect. I was about to compare it to a 1-800 number but that does not fit very well either. After more than 5 million calls, I know that there is no response at the end of this line, not even a voice menu that drones, “Press 1 for health, 2 for wealth, 3 for wisdom…225 for nirvana and so on”.

It didn’t work out the way I had intended. The brahmachari was insistent that I had to name a deity and then choose a mantram from a box of written mantrams based on that deity. Never a rebel, I knelt before authority without further ado and did as instructed. I chose Shiva, a legacy probably inherited from my wife. My family (parents et al) was generally big on Vishnu, Krishna and Guruvayoorappan and to a lesser degree, Ganesha. Fresh from reading Arthur Osborne’s book on Ramana Maharshi, I had a mild case of renunciation fever at that time and found Shiva’s ascetic aspect appealing. Incidentally Shiva was my wife’s top choice for a rather different reason; she believed that Shiva was an easy dispenser of boons, a soft touch. Later on when I explained my choice to a relative who valued prosperity above all else, he gave me the other side of the Shiva story. While deeply respectful of Shiva, he was a little concerned that His devotees tended to be destitute, in material terms.

Incidentally, my material condition has slipped in the years since then. While far from destitute in absolute terms, I have fallen on hard times relative to my more opulent past. I can’t really pin my financial downturn onto Shiva because I never really focused on Him. Although my mantram was dedicated to Shiva, my deity worship has tended to center on the person of Amma and aspects of Devi. My most recent fixation is with the Saraswati aspect of Devi. I like to think that I have not abandoned Shiva but am merely approaching Him indirectly via Devi who stands on His prone form. A roundabout route, to be sure, but that is the nature of the spiritual involute.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah