Archive for category: India 2004

Bharata Yatra 2004

Monday, 15 March 2004 — Raj Bhavan, Jaipur, Rajasthan

There are things that should not happen in this world, but they do: a child set on fire, a girl thrown down a well. Are there words to comfort someone who has survived such a thing?   What do you say to a seven-year-old boy who now has no face?

When such people come to Amma, most often She does not speak. She cries. She cries their pain. She cries the pain of their families. She cries the pain wrought by the horror this world can hold.

This is what happened as Amma gave what comfort She could to the people gathered at the Governor of Rajasthan’s home in Jaipur. With money drawn from the Governor’s Fund, His Excellency Shri. Madanlal Khurana gives 250,000 rupees every week to Rajasthan’s poorest of the poor—some of who have fallen victim to unspeakable abuse. Monday, he invited Amma to Rajasthan’s Raj Bhavan to help him distribute checks on Her way out of Jaipur. After all, he said to Amma, “You showed me the path.”

No one in Amma’s small entourage really knew what to expect, but when Amma arrived at the mansion, some 800 people were waiting—with papers in hand—ready to plead their cases for relief. Some were standing, some were sitting in wheelchairs, several were lying on their sides.

One such person unable to sit or stand was a girl of about 18 named Ankita. Except for a space left open for her to pass urine, her entire body below her chest was in a cast. When her new husband’s family realised her parents were unable to pay the stipulated dowry, they threw her down a well and she broke her legs and her back.   As Amma knelt by the girl’s side and was told her story, the tears came—to the girl, to the girl’s father, to her brother and to Amma. Amma touched the girl’s arms gently. She stoked her hair. With wet eyes, the girl did what she could to lift her arms in pranam.

The case has not yet been confirmed. But Amma told the governor to get Her all the girl’s papers, all her medical records. Amma said She wants the girl brought to AIMS, Her hospital in Cochin, for free treatment.

Next was the seven-year-old boy, Adarsh, who caught fire when someone torched his parent’s hut in a property dispute. He has no eyes anymore. No ears. Just a button-size hole where his nose used to be. Amma tried to comfort him as much as She could, but his pink body was really too tender to caress. With incredible care, She lifted him, kissed the side of that featureless face and set him down again. With tears in her eyes, Amma said, “When someone dies, Amma does not worry so much—it’s just the body that is gone, the Atman never dies. But when they have to live like this—in such pain and suffering—it is almost impossible for Amma to bear.”

As Amma spoke with the people assembled at the Governor’s mansion, the Governor repeatedly told Her how it was Amma who’d inspired him to begin serving the poor in this way. His Excellency first met Amma in the mid-1990s in Delhi, when he was the state’s Chief Minister, and has been a devotee ever since. As they spoke, Amma told him She wants to help anyway She can—be it through the building of free Amritakuteeram houses or through the allotment of more free Amritanidhi pensions. When it was time for Amma to get back into Her camper for the drive to Delhi, the Governor prayed to Her, saying for a third time, “Amma it was You who showed me the path. Please grant me the strength and courage to continue.”

—Sakshi

Tuesday, 9 March — en route to Ahmedabad, Gujarat — Bharata Yatra 2004

When many people from affluent Western countries visit India for the first time, they are overwhelmed by the immensity of its poverty and the extent to which some of its people are suffering. They simply haven’t seen “villages” of families attempting to construct homes out of trash before. They are not used to watching legless women drag themselves down the street by their hands, leprosy, street children with stomachs so bloated they look like they might pop.

Traveling along India’s highways and visiting her major cities with Amma is the time when many of Amma’s children–from the West and from the East–get their first real taste of the miseries of the world. This was the case for one young American woman accompanying Amma on Her 2004 North Indian Tour. So when Amma asked Her children for questions during a roadside tea stop on the way to Ahmedabad, the lady spoke up. She told Amma just how difficult it was for her to witness what she was seeing, how it was making her quite emotional–even depressed. She asked Amma for advice as to what she should do.

Amma seemed to pay keen attention as the brahmachari at Her side translated the lady’s question, then She spoke: “This journey with Amma is to understand the sorrows and sufferings of this world. We should only take what we need from the world. To appease our hunger, we need food. To cover our bodies, we need clothes.”

Then Amma said something that was beginning to seem like Her mantra for the tour. She had said it so many times–practically, at every stop. It was a proclamation of the beauty and power of renunciation: “When you take, you become a beggar. When you give, you become a king.”

Amma then went on to explain how there are 24 hours in a day, and that we should try to use some of that time for uplifting the poor. She explained how each of us has different capacities, and we should use whatever capacities we have to help others. Amma then suggested that some people could make and sell handicrafts with the profits going to the poor. Those with high education, She said, can teach others. “Our abilities and skills in a given field only increase when we share them.”

Amma told the lady that She was advising her in this way because she was a spiritual person and she had asked Amma. “Worldly people don’t concern themselves with such things,” She said. “They are focused only on earning for themselves.”

Amma said how some of Her children have even worn the same shoes for 25 years in order to save money with which to help the poor, and how all of us can start giving away our old clothes that we no longer use to help the less fortunate. “There are children who have reduced the number of saris, clothes, jewellery, fancy food and luxuries they buy every year, and then are giving what they save to Amma,” She said. “Small children sell flowers, food and malas. Flea-markets, washing and parking cars–all these are ways in which Amma’s children around the world are raising money to help the ashram in its charitable activities. If many people like you start thinking along these lines, we can change the face of this earth.”

Amma then told an anecdote about someone watching the nightly news after the Gujarat earthquake: “Watching the TV,” he later told his friend, “I felt so sad.” “What did you do?” his friend asked. “I changed the channel.”

“Sympathy is not enough,” Amma said. “It won’t be complete. You have to expand and live a life of sacrifice, reducing luxuries.”

“When you take, you become a beggar. When you give, you become a king.”

–Sakshi