When I saw her!

When I saw her!

n     By G. Manjusainath

          The grief of losing my father, who passed away in 2010, remained intense even after two years of his demise.

          Having never faced a situation of losing any near and dear ones, this death had shaken me to the core and compelled me to dive into the oft-asked pertinent questions about our existence and exit from the world.

Why are we born and why is God so apathetic to the sufferings of people in their final stages of life journey instead of just sucking life out of their bodies were some of the questions I was grappling with.

          All these questions would ultimately converge into one big question, “Is there any God in the first place?”

          I could not just dismiss his existence and turn atheist, for I had seen his miracles happened in my life. However, I had started drifting away from the Hindu ritualistic way of worshiping and inched towards believing in one unseen God, which was identical to the Abrahamic monotheism.

          But the destiny had something else in store. Probably, the Supreme Soul did not appreciate my approach, as was indicated in an incident occurred sometime in March 2012.

          One night in my dream, there appeared a fair girl, seemingly three to four-year-old. She wasn’t so chubby but cute enough to attract anyone with her nice facial features and attire.

          Wearing a green colour Lahanga-Blouse, made of silk with golden brocade, the girl was riding a tricycle at a stormy speed. I could catch her glimpse only once before she rode at an incomprehensible speed all over the house.

          As I wondered at the stamina and energy of the girl to ride the tricycle so swiftly like a whiff of air, I noticed my father screaming and asking me, my son and daughter to stay away from her.

         Saying, “Don’t touch her! Don’t go closer to her! Come this side!” he dragged the three of us to one corner of the room.

        Remember that it was just me, my late father, my son, daughter and the little girl in the dream. There wasn’t my mother and my wife in the ‘vision’.

          Baffled, I got up abruptly and noticed that it was already about 5 am. I then shared the dream with my mother, wife and children in the day. No one could decipher anything. It was finally concluded that it was just another dream with no meaning as such.

          A week later, my daughter Bhargavi returned from the school complaining about a small boil in her palm below her thumb.

          To me it appeared like a chickenpox, which I expressed explicitly only to get an earful from my wife and mother for speaking something ‘unspeakable’!

          In India chickenpox, smallpox and measles are addressed as ‘Mother’ (‘Mata’ in North India and ‘Amma’ in South India) because these epidemics are considered as a symbol of fury of the Goddess. In olden days, 'smallpox' used to wipe out villages after villages. If the patient survived, he would live with unpleasant scars all over the body. Thanks to the medical science, the vaccine has led to its extinction from the Indian subcontinent.

          However, the fear of 'Mata' prevails so much to date that every year in almost all the Hindu villages, sacrifices are offered to village Goddess, which can either be goat, sheep, poultry birds, buffalo or some vegetarian items.

People contracting chickenpox are treated with highest respect and are offered food and drinks with cooling effect to calm the Mother.

          The next day, Bhargavi got a few more boils around her palm but strangely, it did not exceed beyond her palm, not even at the back of her palm!

          Two days later, when my son Sudarshan too contracted it, my wife and mother conceded that it was chickenpox and again I found myself at the receiving end. They squarely blamed me for inviting the fury of the Goddess with my irresponsible utterances!

          A week later, chickenpox took me in its grip. Mine were big boils, somewhat like smallpox.

           My mother and wife were spared from the contagious disease.

          It was not difficult for me to understand what the dream meant but why was my father so rattled in the dream after seeing the cute little girl?

          Apparently, way back in 1966, almost eight years before I was born, when our family lived in the Railway quarters in Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur, my father had a very strange experience.

          Once he was sleeping next to the window facing garden, when in the dead of night he woke up to a conversation between two women in Telugu right next to the window inside the garden. (Our family does speak Telugu and Hindi besides our mother tongue Kannada because we are Kannadigas from Andhra Pradesh who had migrated to Madhya Pradesh about a century ago!).

            He told us that he could not see them but he clearly heard their conversation.

          “The first woman asked the second one why was she there. The second one replied, ‘I am here to take away two people’,” my father had told us.

          It was neither the time nor any occasion for them to be inside the garden of the Railway quarters, he had pointed out.

          Months after the incident, he lost his eldest daughter due to extreme arthritis. He had opted Ayurveda over alopathy. The rigid dietary restrictions took a toll on her appetite and eventually her weight too, which culminated in her severe illness and hospitalisation. One day the frail girl collapsed on my father's arm in the hospital.

          Before my father could recover from the shock and sorrow, another tragedy hit him six months later when he lost his second daughter to smallpox.

          Now, coming back to our story. It took about a fortnight to completely get rid of chickenpox.

        Our date with mysteries did not end with our recovery. It took a fortnight to get well and days later we had another experience.

         One night I had a dream that I was having some food in a leaf bowl or ‘Dona’ under a tree sitting next to my wife. It looked like a tamarind tree due to its leaves. I could vaguely remember some temple around.

          Morning there were more surprises in store for us. My wife too reported a similar dream where we both were having some food beneath Peepal and Neem tree.

          Joining our conversation, my daughter said she had a dream where she saw the huge face of a Goddess right behind the school in front of our house, almost the size of a three-storey building!

          We all concluded that it was a call by the Divine Mother herself for leaving without harming anyone of us and wanted some offerings from us.

So, we decided to make our offerings to ‘Kabbaalamma’, the village deity of Turahalli in Bengaluru where we live.

          We performed special prayers to her and offered her Prasad but the dream returned a few days later.

          There was another Goddess Temple around one-and-half km away from our home, which we thought could be a call from there.

          This time I decided to check whether there was a Tamarind tree there but I could not find any. We did make our offerings but as expected “the Goddess was not satisfied”. The dream recurred again a couple of days later.

          One fine morning, my brother-in-law, who stays in the close proximity to our house, called us to join him for a trip to Goravanahalli in Tumakuru district, about 100 km from Bengaluru.

          When we were discussing whether to go or not, he was right in front of our house in a Tata Sumo to pick us up.

          It was his sudden and unexpected plan without any preparation, and the place he had chosen to visit was a Lakshmi Temple in Goravanahalli, which we had never been before.

      With little time to start, we left home unprepared soon after taking bath and decided to have some food somewhere midway. But we either missed seeing any good hotel or did not find any suitable eatery.

          By the time we reached Goravanahalli, it was almost afternoon.

          As we were already in the temple complex, we decided to pay our obeisance first and then go for food though I was as hungry as a bear.

          Inside the granite rock temple, there seated royally on a grand silver throne Goddess Lakshmi, the deity of Goravanahalli. The black stone idol had the eyes, throne and weapons made of silver.

          She was decorated with garlands of flowers, Tulasi, vermilion, turmeric and sandalwood paste. The interior of the temple was full of fragrance because of the burning incense sticks, flowers and the sandalwood paste.

(Pictures taken from internet)

          The Goddess finds place in many folklore in the area for the power she wields and the miracles she had exhibited.

          A cold shiver ran down my spine as I faced the Goddess. Her piercing eyes were striking.

After paying obeisance to her, we came out where just at the exit gate, the temple authorities were distributing Prasad, much to the delight of us hungry souls.

          After searching for a decent place, me and my wife finally settled on a platform and started feasting on the little Prasad given in the leaf bowl.

Suddenly I looked upward only to find that we were sitting beneath the leafy branches of Peepal, Neem and Shami tree. Shami has leaves similar to tamarind.

          The trees were bit away but their branches had extended to the place where we were sitting.

          I nudged my wife to look upward. As she raised her head, the astonishment on her face was palpable.

         I had always maintained a reverential distance from Devi or Shakti Upasana or worshipping supreme being in the Goddess form, for the stories about her volatility scared me and restricted me from even venturing closer to her.

         Also, in some remote corner of my mind, I had an apprehension that Shakti Upasana was related to Vamachara or left-handed attainment (black magic in crude terms). But this incident slightly changed my views towards Devi Upasana.
             We left the place after paying our obeisance to the Goddess again. The dream did not return, for the Universal Mother had conveyed to me that I should not get into the debate of whether she is with or without form.

          The Lord of the Universe also communicated to me that it is as much a ‘She’ as it is ‘He’.

         The event made me perceive that devotion is more important than the deity or the mode of worship. It is her choice how she wishes one to worship her and she will find her ways to lead us in that direction. Maybe sometimes she wishes a particular person not to worship her ever and remain atheist forever!

         Five years after this incident, I came to know for the first time that the Goddess in the form of a little girl is known as Bala Tripura Sundari (Literal meaning: The childhood form of the beauty unparalleled in the three worlds).

          Her pictures show her wearing silk made Lahanga-Blouse with brocade. Her painters depict her well decorated with ornaments.

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