i spoke to my mother the other day and she told me, she and my brother's family had decided to spend new year's day at the baltimore aquarium, and that she particularly enjoyed the dolphin show. i was amazed at how each one of us in the family had had dolphin darshan with out any prior arrangement on new year's day! what is this but grace...
but that is not the end of the story though. i walked past amma's room the other day, and i only i recall the contents of my mind at that moment for it was relevant, except now i don't remember it...i look up and for the first time see the windows of the balcony open and through the window, what do i see, but a poster of two dolphins jumping out of the water, like i had seen not a few days earlier.
love.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Happy New Year! 2009
it is 15 years to the day since i first left india. and now i am back, and am in the ashram. more than a bit dazed, not quite sure as to what i am doing here, but sure that there is nowhere else to be other than here. so that is the larger context, i suppose, not being sure, being 'here'.
as the day crept on, and my dazedness thickened, i was reluctant to go to my room to rest. amma was giving darshan. i had traveled half way across the world, two planes, a brief pause at an aunt's place and life, a train ride and an auto ride later, here i was at the ashram.
amma had said, come! and i had. but what now?
i go for darshan. no acknowledgments, no conspiratorial winks, no nods, no sign of the context of my coming, nor content of my being.
finally i arrange for a friend to wake me up around 11:30 and go to rest. i fall into a heat-infused, jet-lagged, exhausted heap and wake up a but rested, yet still removed from it all.
out in the amma-verse, there have been all kinds of performances...and i am slightly bitter, for i had so longed to be here, to spend new year with mother, especially the year past, and here i was now, and was not even able to be present for anything! the exhaustion in one thing at the physical level, but it is steeped in the soul level also.
a young indian-american man sings a beautiful rendition of 'lean on me'.
and then amma starts to sing. mata rani. and i am seized. literally seized by the All. my heart lifts, and i am on my feet, with radhika, my italian friend, and we are ELATED. amma sings another refrain, and i am bodily lifted off, soaring, four feet into the air...and can not simply translate into words, the sheer and utter upliftment of the moment, leaping joyfully, twirling in the air, a joyful dolphin whose element is the air.
which is what i see the next morning at the beach, and never have i seen them leap so high off the water, as they did that fresh morning, fresh day when the year was brand new.
as the day crept on, and my dazedness thickened, i was reluctant to go to my room to rest. amma was giving darshan. i had traveled half way across the world, two planes, a brief pause at an aunt's place and life, a train ride and an auto ride later, here i was at the ashram.
amma had said, come! and i had. but what now?
i go for darshan. no acknowledgments, no conspiratorial winks, no nods, no sign of the context of my coming, nor content of my being.
finally i arrange for a friend to wake me up around 11:30 and go to rest. i fall into a heat-infused, jet-lagged, exhausted heap and wake up a but rested, yet still removed from it all.
out in the amma-verse, there have been all kinds of performances...and i am slightly bitter, for i had so longed to be here, to spend new year with mother, especially the year past, and here i was now, and was not even able to be present for anything! the exhaustion in one thing at the physical level, but it is steeped in the soul level also.
a young indian-american man sings a beautiful rendition of 'lean on me'.
and then amma starts to sing. mata rani. and i am seized. literally seized by the All. my heart lifts, and i am on my feet, with radhika, my italian friend, and we are ELATED. amma sings another refrain, and i am bodily lifted off, soaring, four feet into the air...and can not simply translate into words, the sheer and utter upliftment of the moment, leaping joyfully, twirling in the air, a joyful dolphin whose element is the air.
which is what i see the next morning at the beach, and never have i seen them leap so high off the water, as they did that fresh morning, fresh day when the year was brand new.
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