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.
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