This post is written by Anuradha, My wonderful cousin and Ammammas pet grand daughter.
Thank you Anu.
Is this dream real? There is so much I want to say about my experience. It happened two days later around 4:00 - 5:00 am in the morning I think. I am not a great writer who could use pompous words to prove his/her literary genius. I am just a mere living being who might have experienced something that one could have never seen, heard, observed before. Before I begin, I need to describe why I am taking these efforts to express something that is indescribable. My grandma is the most beautiful person (in the heart, spiritually) and I have had a great experience with her through all these years. For me, she is an ever loving and ever ebullient person. She shared so many of her life experiences that I cannot explain in one day. She is a great paradigm of strength, beauty, effort, hard work, and bhakthi. She is a wonder woman who achieved so many things in her life. I haven’t been with her for few years now and I couldn’t be with her at that time either. I couldn’t believe the words I heard when my mom called me. My characteristic of not accepting her being ill for the past few months made it far more difficult to digest the truth. Then, I suddenly realized that when I go back to Chennai, everything would look familiar. The same old street, railway track, and I might find my ammumma’s beautiful flowers growing without any qualms in our terrace. I would even find our cute little sparrows, squirrels, and other migrating birds playing, running around looking for food. I would not find her. I cannot imagine not being able to talk to her. I don’t know how, why, what; thinking of such things I went to bed. I had an encounter with the most enchanting yet bizarre experience in my life on that night when I was sleeping. I want to share my dream just when it is freshly stored. The experiences that I am discussing right now may seem weird for some and few may find it unrealistic and yet spiritual. I had the feeling of traveling in the air. I certainly knew that I was being taken swiftly by someone whom I knew for a long time. I was having a strange sense of being having fun. I felt like a small girl going on a trip to some familiar place. The feeling of moving further and further made me realize that I was going eons and eons away from earthly matter. Then, I saw a beautiful night with calm and brilliantly lit stars; so serene and blissful was that experience. This view was right in front of my eyes, but they were not very close to me. I couldn’t have a full view of it because someone familiar was there right next to me. At this point, I felt like they were showing me something. I got excited like a little girl who was at a village fair with fun filled rides. When I saw what I saw, I immediately realized that I was so far away from my home. And, when I was looking around here and there, I noticed that the distance I travelled with my fellow traveler was not manual i.e. it is undoable. Please read that again if you can, because I cannot describe it in any other way. At this point I expressed my thoughts. I gasped and said “wow!! It is so far away from my home”. I had this realization because; the thing I saw was a ‘home’. And I am choosing to use the word ‘home’ because I remember observing that place from above along with her and was sure thrilled by the sight. It was shining and glowing as a gold bejeweled place. How else can I explain sight of the gold rays illuminating the whole place? This context made me realize that I am eons and eons away from my home, yet I am able to feel a great connection. That kind of a powerful connection is bound to be supernatural. Then, I turned around and when I saw that someone again, I strangely realized that she was not her. She was a ‘realized soul’ blissfully composed and comfortable in her place. A smile made me realize that the connection is true. The next bizarre thing I realized was that all of a sudden I was down there in our world, and saw myself sleeping with my eyes closed from a top view and the next thing I remember was I woke up from my dream.
As a continuation of my dream, I would like to share some deeper thoughts that I felt after ‘the dream’. The first thing I need to share is that in the dream, I didn’t see the person I am mentioning in a physical form all along as the dream occurred. In the following night, I couldn’t sleep after 3:00 am in the morning. I kept thinking about her, the dream, and its meaning. First thoughts that came to my mind were her immense knowledge, skill, and her literary works. I had always seen her write her diary and she would never miss even one day without writing ‘Narayana Mantram’. Her everyday chanting slokas were very many. I have always admired her writings. I couldn’t read the Telugu articles she had written but I have definitely seen all the time she would sit and write them for publishing in a local Telugu journal. I am fortunate to have recited few of her Hindi and Telugu poems in the form of songs. My thoughts were inclined towards her immense knowledge that she gained over the years. I had a feeling that she definitely obtained pure blessings from Goddess Saraswati and used every opportunity to appropriately use them and spread the knowledge she gained of Vasudevam to the unknown kind. I felt a great respect and awe and asked her to kindly accept my namaskarams and forgive me for any unintentional human errs. As if someone was hearing, I heard a sudden noise of a thud. I felt like my request was heard and accepted. I woke up in the morning and I noticed that the pictures of Goddess Lakshmi and Durga placed in their usual places fell off from their positions. I had a strange feeling of why did this happen now and replaced the pictures in the right place appropriately. In a few minutes, I realized that that happened for a reason as well. I retraced my thoughts and started at the place where I left that night. I remembered the thought of having coming to a realization that she had Goddess Saraswati’s blessings. Seeing the two photos of Goddess Lakshmi and Durga in the morning gave me few more signs that she also had the blessings of them respectively. It all made sense to me. She was independent, brave, and courageous in all her actions. She independently worked hard, earned wealth, raised her children, and later travelled to different places. She was immensely talented in arts as well. Her literary skills were equally accompanied by her creative and artistic skills which led to beautiful and pleasant paintings. She spent most of her time teaching Sanskrit, Hindi, and Telugu to children. Her ideal place to perform her duties of teaching was the ever beautiful terrace of ours. She and I have spent so many evenings and nights enjoying the sunset and moonlight equally. We would talk about birds, her poems, music, and also about God. My objective of this writing is to race back and jog my memories about her and find out more about her. I remember she always had her schedule and follows it every day. I am amazed by this simple fact because she has followed it all through her years. I have seen her giving Surya Namaskarams in the mornings as a regular practice. Did I miss the fact that she would always keep herself busy with something she liked? Yes, she reads her set of magazines, scholarly articles, and also great epics such as Tulsidasji ki Ramcharithamanas. At other times, she didn’t have to watch TV the whole day. Because, she would stitch a beautiful dress in a day or two and give it to a young girl and feel satisfied about her accomplishment. She always had great stories to tell us kids. An amazing and inspiring fact is that she was ambidextrous along similar lines with famous scientist Albert Einstein and great freedom fighter MK Gandhi. Inquisitively, I would ask her to show me her writing using both hands one after another. She would show it and tell me the story or the effort behind her gift. She learned to write using her right hand when the then school administration decided not to recruit her as a Hindi teacher if she remains a left hander because in those days it was not appropriate to use left hand for writing. By the way, with such great talents, she had to be proficient in knitting! Is that correct? Of course! She knew it all. She had to face a situation where it became a necessity to earn and not to rely solely on her husband (my grandfather Sri Krishnamurthy garu) to run the family with 5-6 children. This was how her life turned from a home maker into a great legend.
I want to concentrate more on the research about my grandma after my encounter with the dream. When I was with her few years back, we would sit together and perform auspicious tasks of reading religious books. Few of those books were Magha Masa Puranam, Ramdasa katha, and Valmiki Ramayanam. The Valmiki Ramayanam was a really massive epic book. I remember the introduction of the book. The introduction began with a question by Narada to Lord Vishnu about Kaliyugam and how to gain self-realization. It provided an understanding about one fact regarding Kaliyugam. We may not see Rama, Krishna, or any of his incarnations in a direct and obvious manner. Though some of the services to perform in this yugam are to chant Rama Krishna, perform our human duties with devotion, and leave everything to Him. Yes, she was my guru at that time. I couldn’t continue to read more because it was right around the time when I was about to get married. Another aspect of her life was her every day dietary habits. She had always been a fan of Lord Krishna’s favorites. She loves home-made yogurt, butter, and ghee and she would prepare them without any hesitation. She was also proficient in making my favorite lemon pickle from the scratch. Also, we would sit together and finish eating a bunch of grapes bought in the morning and have fun filled chats about it. I had to talk about her food pattern because my current eating habits are strongly influenced by hers. She always had some kind of food based remedy for small problems such as headaches, indigestion, and more. She would make marinated amla and keep them in store. One of the most enchanting experiences for me with her was that we both saved a baby cow from getting hit by an accident. When a truck driver started the vehicle without noticing that the baby cow was lying in front of his truck, she would have gotten hit if we had not yelled and interrupted his move just in time. We both went down and applied a medication on a small bruise she had retained and saved her life. Now when I imagine the baby cow, and the incident, I feel so happy that we were near her to save her. Another fact about Ammumma is that she would always try to tidy up her place wherever it is. Any place she was in it would be clean no matter what. I have lived with her in most of her homes from the two places in RajaAnnamalai Puram to Nandanam to West Mambalam. How did she generate the habit of keeping the place neat all the time? These facts may seem simple and monotonous for some. But they are not just mere chores. They all have some meaning. I have always seen her as a devotee of Lord Krishna and Lord Rama. We both would listen to Sri Ramadasa Krithis all the time. I would discuss so many great things about Lord Krishna’s miracles. She may have definitely sensed that I have become very inquisitive about God and His whereabouts. In West Mambalam, I had inculcated the habits of going to the nearby Ammavari temple whenever possible, and perform suitable poojas like everyone. These memories are ingrained in me. But I couldn’t help but notice one thing. I am sorry if I am wrong, but I had not seen her chant devi mantras or slokas, whether they are Lakshmi, Saraswati, or Durga. To be accurate, I have been trying to remember if she performed such activities when I was much younger. I also asked my mom about her devotional activities. She said she was a devotee of Lord Krishna and Guru Raghavendra Swamy. Then, I was trying to put all the pieces together. I came across a much more serious fact about her. She had the practice of continuing a ritual that is an asset to every woman but not accepted after the demise of the husband. She continued to adorn a pinkish red bindi on her forehead. My intuition was getting little bit more obvious when I thought about the time when my atha, Seetha Lakshmi, daughter of my grandma during a Lakshmi pooja, placed a blouse piece on a photo of Sri Lakshmi devi and the blouse piece retained an imprint of the Goddess in the form of a little girl. I believe that she was bestowed with immense blessings from all the three Goddess. Is there a link between all these events? And even more, is there a link between my dream about her? Is she trying to tell me something here? Why did I in first place get these thoughts?
Before that Thursday, I had been at least able to talk to her on Saturday. She said she was fine and she is doing well. Did she say that because that would make me happy? Because, truly as she might have expected, I felt happy. I have seen her healthy all my life and perform her duties properly. She is an ultimate role model for me and every one of us. She is ever living in my heart. Few years back, when I was in Baltimore, I missed her, so I tried to show my affection to her by writing a short poem about her and sent it to her. I felt so happy and satisfied that she liked and read it several times every day. There are several more thoughts that are revolving in my head about her. I sincerely and truly feel that she is in a caring, and the most comfortable place. She knew that we would be worried about her. She is watching all of us from above and would shower her blessings to all of her loved ones.
Today I am missing her. Every day I could say that more and more. Sometime I feel that it is actually not fare on His part to let us suffer by taking away someone so precious in all of our lives. I had that beautiful dream initially after that day which kept me in a bizarrely strange mood about her for the next few days. But now I realize that I am missing the dream and I am coming back to reality of not seeing her among us in this world. When the days are moving so fast and I am feeling a pain as I realize that we don’t have her with us. But as I think about her past few weeks, I have been trying to figure out why did she had to suffer her last few weeks. Okay before I begin, first of all let me tell you this, I had a beautiful relationship with my grandmother. Sometimes it was spiritual, and sometimes it was friendly, caring, and loving. And at other times we also had little tiffs and later forgot about it entirely. In all these years, I never felt like this before about her. She is now a spiritual guru for me and she is a soul very close to God. Now again to reiterate the current inquisition, I have been thinking about what led to the fact that she had to suffer for the past few weeks. At around the month of February-March, she had regained her health a little after a minor problem. I was so glad to hear that she had started walking again and she also had the strength to perform her best duty, to teach. But when she wanted to go out again, she fell and had a minor spinal injury and so had to stay bed-ridden. I am feeling so much pain imagining these incidences but I need stay connected to the spiritual inferences which would make me think that she is in a much better place. Now my analysis is taking me back to the days when I was in West Mambalam. She would discuss so many things about her life and also the books she was reading. She gave me great information on Baktha Ramadasa. He was a great poet, a devotee, and also had self-realization which led to his spiritual activities such as singing devotional songs set in different carnatic ragas and building a beautiful Sri Ram temple in Bhadrachalam. But there were some activities that were not of a positive note. It is in the literature that he once caged a parrot and never let it go or fly for years. And another fact is that he used the tax money collected from people to build the Sri Ram temple. He was later punished for using the tax money for his own purpose by making him spend many years in detention. He was later saved by none other than Sri Rama and Lakshmana. Now regarding my ammumma, I feel like she during her years might have made her own set of minor errs which would have led her to go through health problems during her last few weeks. I believe that it is His way of taking her back directly to heaven without any in between pit stops.
Here is an unbelievable fact that happened few years back when I was living in West Mambalam. We chatted for hours about our lives and at some point; our discussion became a bit emotional. At that juncture, she uttered few words I couldn’t believe at that time and even now. She said that she trusted my mom and dad deeply to take care of her during her final years. I couldn’t respond to her because I was in a brief shock. But now when I think about those powerful words, I am just amazed by the fact that she knew and understood something years back. I am glad she was in her very own shrine of love and devotion during her last moments. I truly respect my parents, my atha and uncle, and all of my uncles and aunts who were there for her in the time of love, need, and most importantly devoted care. Ammumma, I love you always. I want to see you in everything and everywhere. You have given us great many things in the form of knowledge, memories, and your skills which we would be able to use to see you all the time. I consider this as my duty to convey the above message in this form. I feel that everything here fulfills the purpose of this writing but again, are words enough?
