Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  Balu had found his guru and his God. Soon he was so in love with Mother’s love he became oblivious to the world. He couldn’t sleep and had to be near her. Amma initiated him with a meditation mantra, and sent him out of the ashram to earn a Masters degree in philosophy that he believes he only passed with her divine intervention. Together they began to initiate other devotees and the ashram grew.

  The first westerners started coming in the early eighties. Swami tells me that one is still here. In a tiny, homely, yet starkly simple flat high up in the pink tower, Sharadumba greets me at the door with a gentle but sickly smile. She doesn’t go out much, as her liver almost stopped functioning on a tough tour with Amma last year. Twenty years ago Sharadumba was a Buddhist who meditated on the female manifestation of Buddha energy, Green Tara. When she arrived at the ashram, Amma greeted her on the dock with the words ‘Green Devi’ (Devi is a Hindu goddess). The American saw Tara in human form.

  ‘I left many lifetimes of Buddhism to belong to Amma who is all pervasive consciousness, like the Buddha.’

  Sharadumba swears she saw miracles here and tells me the story of a leper called Dattan.

  ‘He was reptilian, his skin was hanging off, he had missing eyelids and massive lesions on his skin, yet a certain dignity about him. He would get darshan last. Amma would hug and kiss him – she’d stick her tongue in his puss-filled lesions, put sandalwood on him and dress his wounds. I almost threw up the first time I saw it. Apparently he’s cured now.’

  Sharadumba is a darling and radiates goodness, but I go to my dorm room feeling repulsed and revolted by this story. What kind of a being would lick a leper? Yet as I fall towards sleep, my disgust turns to shame. Even if I don’t believe in miracle healing, if this licking story is true, the Mother has performed a miracle of some sort. She must be capable of absolute, indiscriminate love and affection. I resolve to try to open up to the Mother’s love.

  First, I embrace her ashram’s routine. It starts at a quarter to five. In the temple, the first ripples of heat rise with waves of rapid, tongue-twisting Sanskrit. A swami leads the recitation of the one hundred and eight names of Amma – the qualities of the guru. They hail her as the ‘manifestation of the absolute truth’, as a being ‘whose greatness is unsurpassable’ and as ‘the life and saviour of the state of Kerala’. Next are the one thousand names of the Supreme Mother (or Devi), each carrying a different shade of philosophical meaning. Such chanting is believed to guarantee the protection of God and ensure our physical and spiritual growth. It puts me to sleep; the rhythms of adoration caress me like a motherly hand stroking my brow.

  While Amma might love us without distinction, her ashram is strictly divided to ensure there’s not too much of the wrong kind of loving between the sexes. Men and women have separate rooms, yoga times, temple queues, mother hugging sides and swimming times. Later in the day I head to the pool, which is like a warm bath and has a cling-guard rather than a lifeguard – a pale, skinny French devotee who checks we are all wearing full leg-covering caftans in the water. The fabric billows out and swirls around like seaweed. We then have to pass an inspection to leave. The cling-guard warns, ‘Suits stick when wet, do not go sexy.’

  I laugh and she stares at me, shocked and stern. I wait until my salwar is dry enough for a twirl inspection; she grunts and lets me go.

  Far more noticeable than the women–men divide is the western–Indian divide. I am given strict instructions by the ‘foreigners’ registration office’ that I must eat at the ‘foreigner canteen’, shop at the ‘foreigner shop’, and I am encouraged to buy the all-white ‘foreigner uniform’. I pay the ‘foreigner rate’ of one hundred and twenty-five rupees a day (five dollars), while the locals pay thirty (one dollar). The Indian monks and nuns work hard printing and binding Amma pamphlets but otherwise they live rent-free, while the western devotees pay eight thousand American dollars for a flat or a VIP travel position with Amma. This doesn’t really bother me; westerners generally can afford more and I’m thankful our cash pays for a smaller darshan queue. When I find out the extra rent also earns me the privilege of doing seva, or divine selfless service, I’m also happy to participate.

  I feel the joy of giving as I build up blisters washing the floor of the massive auditorium. But as I start sweating onto the endless piles of chapatti dough my righteousness wears off, for a huge group of Indian visitors has gathered to laugh at how bad our round bread looks. I suggest to the Italian devotee with blonde curls beside me that perhaps the Indians could also do some divine service.

  ‘Don’t,’ she says sharply. ‘Remember, we westerners have more ego, we need to do this work to get rid of bad karma and to make Amma happy. Obedience to a guru destroys the ego that separates us from God.’

  The reason the devotees meekly obey the Mother in a way they’ve probably never followed their parents is that they truly believe she orchestrates the minutiae of their lives. An emaciated, balding, middle-aged Mike from Manchester tells me she got him a job and then took it away so he’d come here. Lanky, lithe Bob from Iowa (whom Amma has renamed Hari) saw his saviour in a vision where she danced suggestively as Krishna. He then let her decide his fate and at every hug he asks her questions through the translating swami and always obeys her answers.

  ‘I will leave when she wants me to, until then, I’m hers,’ he blissfully babbles.

  Hari’s pale freckled wife Sharona saw Amma in a dream dressed as Kali – the fearsome goddess that wears human skulls as a necklace. Sharona says she succumbed to the divine agent that killed her ego and since then life has become easy. Amma does ninety percent of the internal work on her, bringing about the situations and challenges that will lead to transformation.

  ‘We are completely connected to her, she knows everything about me. I project everything onto her, my love and my dislike, I pray to her, I talk to her, I write to her. I observe her and I know how to be.’

  This primes me for a second darshan. Sharona promises me Amma will give me what I need, and suggests I ask a question in my mind that Amma will hear, understand and answer. I have my fourth shower for the day, wash my hair and brush my teeth but after ten minutes in the hall I’m sweaty, red-faced and blotchy again. Amid the push, shove, knee-crunch and head-yank I concentrate on my question.

  ‘What is my purpose, what does God want from me?’

  Again, the flash of the nose ring, the gentle hold of the neck and the whisper in the ear. The answer, my purpose in life is: ‘rootoongarootoongarootoongarootoongarootoongarootoonga.’

  My shoulder nearly dislocated by the yank out of the Mother’s midst, I wait for a vision. Is the purpose of my life to root?

  A five-second flash of nonsensical babble is hardly inspiring faith. I go for a cup of tea and watch Amma’s children. The Indian devotees are enjoying the ashram like it’s a holiday camp with a divine counsellor. The kids spend the day riding the elevators; the women chat and do each other’s hair and the men sleep, drink chai or play badminton. The westerners in contrast, seem pious and precious. Many are sullenly silent, a number are frequently crying and some are very snappy. One yells at me for serving her a small dinner portion and another refuses to let me owe one rupee (four cents) when I’m a bit short of change. I’m lectured for eating eggs and my jokes are received with stone-faced stares. I see one girl lie to get given an extra darshan hug and I observe a lot of pettiness, pushiness, jealousy and competitiveness for Mother’s closeness and attention. This family seems dysfunctional.

  The saintly Sharadumba is one of the few not infuriating me. She agrees that the devotional path is not a pretty process, but says it’s essential.

  ‘The jealousies, pettiness and pushiness are the devotees’ vasanas, their latent tendencies caused by bad karma. Amma encourages the jealousies to purify them all.’

  Perhaps my impatience and annoyance are caused by my own bad karma and Amma is purifying it while giving me a good laugh at the same time. But could the Mother get annoyed as well? In a lit
tle afternoon lecture to the devotees she seems frustrated and talks about small-mindedness. The swami translates.

  ‘I’m trying to give my children time but the situation is changing. As ashramites, we are all in heaven, be brave and not afraid and don’t be so glum, you’ll give yourselves heart attacks.’

  I nearly applaud.

  Perhaps the saner devotees have all gone. When the inner work is over, Amma’s children are sent out to work for certain charities. The Mother still lives in two tiny rooms here and money collected goes to an orphanage, secondary school, a widows’ pension and housing projects for the poor. Her trust also pays for medical dispensaries, a world-class hospital in nearby Cochin, an aged care home, a tribal school, a college for the speech impaired, industrial training courses, colleges and a computer institute across the river.

  What with all their good work and their willingness to help me, I’m feeling guilty for judging the western devotees. And it seems they show more compassion than their Indian counterparts. At dinner I sit with an Indian girl, Uma, who prefers to hang out in the foreigners’ section than with the locals. She came here to study computers when her daddy died but the brahmacharis didn’t accept her and burnt her hand on the cooking pot; she solemnly shows me the scar. Uma says many of the Indian monks and nuns also don’t like the paying pilgrims.

  ‘They are believing that you are from a culture that does bad things, they think you are all on drugs.’

  ‘Uma, sometimes I think India is just one big drug trip,’ I answer solemnly.

  Before bed are bhajans. I join thousands gathered under a massive chandelier in the new auditorium to sing with their saint. Amma only finished hugging five thousand devotees two hours ago, yet she comes out looking fresh in a clean white cotton sari. Backed by a huge rainbow and some dinky Casio keyboard playing with tapping tabla she transforms into a Diva, singing and directing the clapping faster and faster. At a song’s peak she leans back and throws both arms up motioning like she’s juggling a giant ball or a small world.

  ‘She’s calling down the Divine Goddess,’ the girl beside me gushes.

  The Divine Goddess must make Amma happy. She lets loose a guttural sound and a cackling laugh that’s amplified by some reverb. We chant the sacred syllable ‘OM’ and then some Sanskrit verses. Amma strides off smiling. A small group of pilgrims push and trip over each other to be the closest trailing her every move.

  Sunday morning, five o’clock and I look down from the tower roof to see the hive has swelled overnight. A python of pilgrims snakes around the temple, out the gate and down the path. On Sundays Amma does two darshans – one as Amma and one as a manifestation of the Divine Devi. People are pacing themselves for a long day. They’re sound asleep in the corridors, doorways, gravel heaps and stairways or standing stoically in huge queues for the shop, chai, toilet, lifts and, most of all, darshan tokens.

  Through the heat of the day Amma hugs eight thousand pilgrims at a rate of twenty a minute and twelve hundred an hour. She finishes at three-thirty, and at five is back in the auditorium to sing. The crowd has swelled again. More than fifteen thousand people are here for a hug. Entire families sit clinging to their luggage – women dressed in their best silk saris with fresh flowers in their hair clutch children dressed as Krishna. Old grandmas and cripples stand on the edge of the crowd. The heat and humidity is so incredible that the heat rash has spread all over my body – I haven’t been dry for days.

  Above us, somehow Amma seems younger, refreshed and blissed out. She gives a lecture in the local language and then leads some songs. As the final ‘OM’ rings out, the doors jerk shut on the stage. The crowd is at critical mass. It chants for the costume change that signals the beginning of Devi darshan. This is the external manifestation of Amma’s oneness with the Supreme where she’ll take off two of the veils that separate we mortals from the divine, enabling us to glimpse the ultimate truth of existence. It’s like waiting for the opening show at Mardi Gras. The heat rises to hell-like levels; it sits on us like a low cloud and rains sweat smelling of onion and hair oil. The crowd is pushing forward, a sea of ecstatic people drowning in their desire for love.

  The doors jerk open. Amma sits under an orange felt umbrella, looking like a small teenage girl playing dressups. She’s in a red and gold sari with a huge silver belt, glittery earrings and a touch of makeup, and sports a tin foil crown on her head. Her swamis prostrate before her. The crowd surges and bows. Then it begins again. The Holy Mother is surrounded and swamped. The sick, the crippled and the love-hungry descend, desperate for a divine hug, a smile, and a few words. It’s seven-thirty and the queue goes for miles.

  I go up onto the stage to give prasad. This is an honour reserved for foreigners and strictly timed with a stopwatch to two minutes. I hand Amma little packets containing a bag of sacred ash and a single boiled sweet that she gives to each devotee. Up until this moment I’ve thought perhaps the Mother was divinely mad, but as I struggle to keep up with her pace, I realise she’s too cool to be crazy. Surrounded by shouting, screaming, pushing and pandemonium, she is systematic, disciplined and patient. Each devotee is given the routine hug, kiss and prasad. Those who are crying get an extra pat or are invited to sit close by. Amma occasionally looks cranky but is usually smiling. She’s highly disciplined love in motion. Apparently she never has a day off and hasn’t cancelled darshan in thirty years.

  I find the intensity exhausting and have to go and lie down for a couple of hours. When I come back at four a.m. the music is still going strong, the queue still growing, and the hugs still happening. It occurs to me that the only time I’ve ever felt absolute and unconditional love for everyone and everything was when I was possessed by a chemical goddess. Perhaps Amma’s Devi darshan will awaken the natural ecstasy within me or at least crack my ego, doubt and bad karma. At five I’m up on stage. The helpers are even pushier than before. I tell one that Amma hasn’t told me yet what God wants.

  ‘Ask her for something more superficial then, hurry up, quickly.’

  I’m knocked to my knees and my head is again in the vice. I don’t have time to think. But I’m feeling cheeky.

  ‘Amma,’ I say in my head, ‘give me bigger boobs.’

  I’m pulled out before I even register the hug, the kiss and the divine ditty.

  I push to the middle of the melee, limp with dehydration and disappointment. That’s three strikes of the divine and I’m out. Beside me, a shrunken old woman sits whispering to a plastic Amma ring on her finger. Beside her, a young French girl sits rocking, her arms wrapped around an Amma doll – a gollywog in a sari that costs one hundred and eighty American dollars. The girl’s head lolls back, then jerks forward, her eyes roll and spin, her mouth flops open and she drools. She’s hysterically high on Amma love, drunk on desperation for divinity. An elderly English woman collapses weeping and is virtually carried off the stage.

  Can you feel pity for the divine? I’m overcome with sorrow for the Holy Mother surrounded by such grasping, pulling, demanding, desperate people. I need to get out. I walk away to watch the nuclear red sun come up over the canal. Ignoring the music and the mayhem, it kisses the earth from below and blows away the mist snaking through the trees. Fishing boats chug in from the sea. I gain strength for the finale.

  At eight in the morning the queue is like the magic pudding, still getting longer and longer. The flopping doll-hugger is still rocking and salivating, oblivious to the surrounding mosh pit. I try to enter the trance of the true devotee and fall asleep. At nine-thirty I wake up to realise Amma has been going for fourteen hours without a break for water, a wee, or a stretch. The bhajans are picking up in speed again and at ten the line suddenly stops growing. She gives her last hug, stands up and staggers to the front of the stage. A devotee beside me grabs my arm.

  ‘Trust your heart and not your head, what’s your heart saying?’

  I tune in. It’s beating ‘bullshit, bullshit, bullshit’ in time with the tabla.

  Amma th
rows flower petals. The mass of arms and legs push against the stage. Thousands raise their hands and beg for love. The Mother falters and almost falls. She slowly scans the crowd, her exhausted eyes full of absolute patience and love. When she sweeps my face the bullshit-beat stops. I feel my heart melt, contract, and then explode. A supernova of love sends sparks of pity, compassion, admiration and amazement through my being. If God is the source of pure love then Amma’s an avenue. I feel the touch of a pure soul, of a saintly grace.

  My suspension of cynicism could be hype or hysteria, momentary madness, the drug of exhaustion or the power of group suggestion. Whatever it is, it fades by lunchtime. I just don’t have the good karma, innocence or absence of ego that will allow for the surrender and deep devotion to a guru. Yet I bow before Amma’s patience, compassion, strength and the power of her ability to love such annoying groupies. And I hail a saint who tears at taboos, especially ones that restrict physical intimacy. If everything happens according to her grace, she must want the story to end like this: without resolve.

  And yet, there is some. By the female shakti power invested in me by the Hugging Mother I resolve to give the men of India a better go, for I realise I have been judging them too harshly; they are creatures of habit and conditioning, and if I can treat them with something closer to love than hate, perhaps they will respond and respect me. I buy a kitsch little plastic red ring with Amma’s face on it to remind me that love is a powerful tool. I walk out of the ashram faithfully feminine, with my head down but my heart open.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Guru Girlfriend

  The Mother Hugging Divine Manifestation of the Supreme Goddess has done it. My breasts are getting bigger!

  It’s a month since I made the wish in her lap and my boobs are blowing up like balloons. Even Rachel notices.