>“If my mother saw me right now, she’d think I was absolutely out of my mind.”
That’s what I was thinking. The point of course, IS to get out of the mind, and to get above that pesky thinking, but I don’t want to digress just my third sentence into this post.
I am in rural Southern India. I am sitting on a concrete floor, surrounded by five other Westerners and a few dozen Indians. Spellbound, transfixed, confused, intrigued. In front of me is a bearded 34-year-old man, hips cocked, grounded stride, wearing a lunghi, tied not around the waist as most men would wear, but instead as an almost makeshift tangerine halter dress. With a deliberate flick of his (her?) wrist, jasmine petals are delicately tossed against the backside of a cow. The cow stands proud, bored, chewing sugarcane, so used to the attention, she is beyond it. Cows are sacred in India. It’s her party and she’ll be indifferent if she wants to.
The man is known as Amma. At four years old, when most children are still aiming to get applesauce in a direct line from their spoons to their mouths, he (geez… she?) started performing his own pujas. (Ceremonies using incense, flowers, ghee, water, smoke, etc. to praise statues of deities and in turn ask for blessings.) At 16 he declared he was Narayani—the first ever incarnation combo of the female goddesses Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati: spoken of in sacred Hindu texts for thousands of years, but yet to make her glittering debut on this earth. Ta da.
It is one of the most provocatively bizarre things I have ever seen in my life. That Sri Amma is thought to be an Avatar (which has many meanings/interpretations but basically the gist is God in human form with superpowers and the like,) makes the entire situation that much more baffling. A bearded male, as female, God, tossing jasmine at a cow in an orange halter dress. The music accompanying is like modern jazz improv: not melodic: jarring and cacophonous, its builds deceptively exhilarating. We’re not in Kansas anymore.
Amma’s every move is deliberate… focused and efficient yet at the same time devotedly and slowly determined. It is almost sensual; a baffling display of divinity to witness in the flesh, at least from this gal’s limited perspective. Amma will be entirely encompassed by the puja, and then she unexpectedly darts her gaze out into her audience, here, in the cow stall, and will choose one person with whom to lock eyes. Sometimes she does this a couple of times in a half hour-ish puja, sometimes it is once. When her visage hits yours, it is absolutely disarming, dangerous almost. An electric bolt of something mysterious, secret, shared. This is not the round, nurturing gentle love of an older guru mother Amma who holds you to her breast. It is all woman, warrior, the matriarch, the boss. I have seen images of these versions of goddesses. I have never witnessed one in the flesh.
Rationalist skeptics could easily dismiss her as an elaborate drag queen act. I’ve certainly seen affected people from New York that were as dramatic, with better hair and fabulous shoes who would for sure advise to “lose the beard,” so to speak.
But I am here because a friend of a friend is a solid devotee. A talented Australian musician and his open and generous fiancée, both winsome inside and out. They share a fairytale love story with ensuing expedited proposal whose lovely, fated beginnings equal in measure to the drama of their current surroundings.
I had seen the musician perform almost two years ago in Sydney and that’s all I needed to know about his character. Whoever Amma was/is, the musician’s devotion to her and its effects on him were expressed as a handsome young man with groundedness, grace, wisdom, an affable happiness and humility. For my money, it’s tricky to find someone who is entirely devoted and yet still translates as genuine. Many can easily fall into the fanatic category and so be dismissed as loony tunes. The musician straddles this balance in such a bona fide manner, it makes you want what he has.
We all spend a couple of days here, ashram-ing it up, which basically means a lot of puja, a lot of philosophical discourse and a lot of coconuts. We follow Amma here, we follow her there. Due to the fact that she has very few Western guests (we are a half dozen at present, with hundreds of Indians filtering through daily) and that we are friends with the musician, we essentially get VIP treatment everywhere. Inner temple admittance, no lines, no waiting, always front row. Pretty incredible access to someone looked at in this light.
Our final full day my girlfriend and I put together a small basket. After the afternoon puja, Amma was to hand out holy water and bless items if asked. My girlfriend told me to hold the basket and I was nervous, shy. “What do I do? How do I do it?” It’s kinda daunting to approach someone people look at as God. We were ushered to Amma one by one. At my turn, I drank the water in one fell slurp from my right hand, as per usual, and balanced the basket in my left. I then haphazardly lifted my chin to find Amma pouring a circle of water around it. My eyes rose to meet her in thanks and then, in less than a second, our glance locked and it was… oh my… it was…
I don’t usually like to write about these experiences because words aren’t ever enough. They are so so very far away from enough. But I had asked that morning. I said, quietly, without even thinking about it—“I want to believe this. In you. Show me.” And in that less than a moment eye connection, it fell away. Everything fell away. I was swept into a tunnel of another realm of existence and she was gazing at me and the love was so pure, so deep, so unanticipated, so of another level I cannot begin to describe how in that instant everything made sense. It makes me groan to think of it. There is so much more to that brief split second, but compressing it down to words on a page, to a perspective so small it cannot even begin to mirror its majesty, is fruitless.
I asked for it, and I got it. I had a hard time moving, speaking, focusing my eyes for a good 15 minutes. The state probably could have lasted a lot longer but maybe it’s that on some level I felt I did not deserve it. How could a 5’ 2 3/4” bossy cheeky New Yorker hold such vast grace… even for just a moment?
The point here, to all of this, is not to intrigue you with mystical stories. Believe me, I have plenty and I don’t feel it’s my place to share them. But this one, this one was not mine. Amma is not my guru and she blessed me with a sensational love. That was a most gracious gift. I didn’t have an intrinsic belief but the respect for the musician and my friends allowed me the possibility of faith. Sometimes all we need is to leave ourselves open to the possibility. Just the smallest crack and the asking and it will blast us open.
There are essentially two ways to look at life. We can choose to look at the world as magic or not. Elephants, golden temples, supreme love, gifts and open-heartedness. Even if we don’t understand these things, they change us on a neurobiological level. These are stories I hope to save for my children one day to outline in spectacular detail as they lie snug in bed, rapt with attention. To show them the magic, the grace, the gift that can be generosity, friendship, love. I want to believe in magic. I think life is nicer this way. As they would say in India… isn’t it?
