News from San Ramon

June15 to June17

It was the fifth day of Amma’s San Ramon visit, and we enjoyed perfect California weather in the hilly San Ramon ashram where Amma held her programs.

The crowds coming to meet Amma have grown over the last few days. Parking all the cars on the flattened unpaved hillsides was a challenge, especially in the chilly evening weather, as was food preparation for all the people. Even kids and the handicapped were seen helping out in selling snacks (often with the promise of a treat if they did a good job), serving food in the large dining structure, or helping out in the kitchen.

If you looked at Amma from a distance, you would see a swarm of people around Amma, seemingly milling around. There were several perfectly coordinated activities around Amma.

There were people from three different lines coming for darshan, and she hugged them, gave them consecrated flower petals and candy, talked to them, read their letters, accepted their gifts, blessed their photos, consoled them, and joked with them. Meanwhile there was a question line, and Amma would turn round to her right to answer their variety of questions. On her left, someone who had some 5 minutes to give her prasad got an opportunity to discuss her feelings about a friend who was moving to India. Then there were the reporters from Radio Santa Cruz who were interviewing her. One Heart Productions, a TV documentary production team, was on-site, and were making a series of 13 hour-long episodes on Celebrating Women, one hour of which was on Amma. The series will be shown on various TV channels. Various charity and other administrative issues had to be discussed with the concerned folks, who generally stood on her right also. All of these activities were interleaved smoothly and Amma showed no signs of stress in flowing with the multi-tasking to say the least. She seemed relaxed and joyful and busy.

At night, there was the ever-popular and increasingly frequent question-answer session. Amma repeated her singing of the bhajan Iswar Tumhi Daya Karo translated into English (she sang it yesterday too). It was hugely successful -- the devotees felt that the language barrier with Amma was breaking -- and as if to express their joy in having gotten closer to their mother they applauded, and continued to do so when Amma diffidently asked the gathered crowd, “Was it OK?”

When it was well past midnight, everyone was seen to gather close to Amma for late-night fun. A young woman brought a large cake for Amma. There was a fracas, with Amma laughing and trying to eat more and more of the cake, and the devotees trying to playfully grab it from her. Amma explained that she knew the nature of the young woman’s love when she baked and brought the cake, and hence had eaten so much of it. The young woman who had brought the cake was not sure if Amma had really eaten the cake..Amma called out for her loudly, with her first name just as a mother would and told her, "I have eaten your love...in the cake that you lovingly made for me." The young woman shed silent tears of joy!

It was about 3 AM when Amma finally left the hall.

The next night, Devi Bhava night, lasted until morning. There was a family of four who had given away their darshan tokens to someone else. But the children were sad that they did not receive darshan, and when Amma was tossing the final flowers from the stage onto the passing devotees below, she called them up on stage, and gave them each darshan, beckoning one of the children into her arms when she moved away too early.

Devi Bhava ended at 9 AM.