Andavan Picchai

Ramakrishna was well versed in Sanskrit; he had many devotees, and he travelled widely all over India. Though he was a guru in his own right with many followers of his own, he had a desire to take sannyasa. He went to Rishikesh in 1942 to ask Swami Sivananda to initiate him. When Swami Sivananda refused his request, he went back to Pinnavasal to resume his tapas. Having failed in his quest to take sannyasa, he initiated himself.

In 1943, shortly before he passed away, Ramakrishna’s Paramaguru Sadasiva Brahmendra appeared before him and told him that he would have to take another birth to fulfill his wife’s curse. Ramakrishna begged him to spare him from this curse, but Sadasiva Brahmendra told him that since his wife was a very devout woman who had gained power of her own, the curse would have to take effect one way or another. Sadasiva Brahmendra did tell him, though, that, as an alternative option, he could enter a living woman’s body in his subtle form and go through the ordained sufferings.

Ramakrishna decided that he would try to take that second, rather bizarre, option. He took mahasamadhi in 1943, having already informed his devotees that they should not seal his samadhi shrine. A tube of some sort was left connecting the interred body to the outside world.

Now we go back to Maragathamma, who, when we left her, was lying unconscious in her family home in May 1948, five years after Ramakrishna had been buried. Late one evening Maragathamma’s heart beat and pulse completely stopped. At that same moment Sadasiva Brahmendra appeared to Ramakrishna, pointed to Maragathamma’s body and told him, ‘Now is the time for you to enter this pure and holy body of a saint. This body has been a temple of Lord Muruga for more than twenty-four years. Such a holy body will not be available to you at any other time.’

Ramakrishna somehow managed to move his subtle body into the body of Maragathamma during the period when her heart had stopped. I have read the relevant paragraphs in Maragathamma’s biography a few times, but it is not clear from them whether the authors are implying that Ramakrishna was reborn into Maragathamma’s body after dying five years before, or whether he existed in some state of suspended animation in his samadhi shrine and managed to escape at the right moment through the tube he had arranged to have inserted there. I get the feeling that they are implying the second, highly improbable option. However it happened, Ramakrishna entered Maragathamma’s body and somehow took up residence there. Immediately afterwards, ‘Maragathamma’ began to revive. She opened her eyes, having been unconscious for most of that day, and saw a group of people who appeared to be strangers.

She closed her eyes, with thoughts welling up inside her: ‘Who is this mother they are referring to? Who am I? They must be calling this body “mother”. If so, who is the one inside it? Am I their mother, or am I that which I have always been so far?’

With these thoughts floating around, she relapsed back into unconsciousness.

Maragathamma was bedridden for nearly six months, during which time she lived on a liquid diet and became very weak. One by one her relatives would come and say, ‘Don’t you recognise me? I am your son?’ or ‘Don’t you remember me? I am your daughter.’ All her relatives were confused and worried by her strange behaviour and reactions to them.

Eventually, Maragathamma heard a voice inside her that said, ‘Time will reveal what the soul hankers for. You will get whatever you want. What you have asked for, you have obtained. Make the best of the available circumstances. You asked for an abode where you could live peacefully. This body has been the hidden temple of the Lord where he was worshipped with incessant prayers. You never wanted the miseries of a birth in a mother’s womb. Now you have been given this body by His supreme benevolence. In this you will be vouchsafed the darshan of great saints. You will visit various kshetras and temples. Take on the duties that come before you and surrender your acts to the Lord.’

The hearing of this message caused her body to cry out ‘O Lord!’ and eject itself from her bed. Her relatives thought that she had had another heart attack and put her back to bed. What had actually happened was a sudden understanding by Maragathamma, the original tenant of the body, that her body had become the home of someone else. Her memories came back, along with the understanding that there were now two people living in her body. Perhaps it was the intention of Sadasiva Brahmendra to place Ramakrishna in a body whose former occupant had just died and departed. And perhaps Ramakrishna showed up a little too soon because, when he installed himself, the jiva of Maragathamma was still in residence. The end result, though, was that there were two occupants of the body, and in the initial period after Ramakrishna arrived, it was he who seemed to be the more dominant of the two.

In January 1949 a trunk belonging to Kaveriamma was opened. Kaveriamma was the mother-in law who had confiscated Maragathamma’s poems and forbidden her from singing them out loud. It had lain unopened since Kaveriamma had passed away in 1930. The trunk had contained many things – money, documents and so on – but when it was finally opened, it was discovered that white ants had eaten everything except for the notebooks in which Maragathamma had written her verses. Taking this to be a sign that they should be published and brought to the attention of a wider audience, they were sent to Tiruppugazh Mani, a devout Muruganar bhakta, who arranged for them to be serialised in a magazine that he was editing. These were Maragathamma’s first published works.

The morning after the notebooks were sent for publication Maragathamma had a vision in which Muruga appeared to her in a glorious light-filled form. He came close to her, lifted her chin with his hand and asked, ‘Do you not know me?’

Maragathamma prostrated at his feet and called out his name to show that she knew who her visitor was.

Muruga spoke to her: ‘Yesterday you gave away all my songs. Do you not like them or need them any more? More than garlands of gold, beads and flowers, I love garlands of songs. The songs are like flowers moistened with tears and woven into a garland in the heart of the devotee. From now on, start singing hymns on me as you used to do before.’

‘O Lord!’ cried Maragathamma, ‘I have forgotten everything. The flame of light that was burning in this body has gone out. The gift of singing was given by you and also the oath not to sing. The bird that used to sing has flown away from this cage. You know very well the one who is residing in it now. Are you just playing with me?’

The Lord replied: ‘The oath was for the previous soul. Although the body is the same and the previous bird has flown out, do I not know who is the one residing here now? The power to sing is given by me. I am the one who prompts you to sing. You are but a penholder who is dipped in different-coloured inks. I am the eternal poet who catches hold of you to write the songs. I have given you the understanding to know yourself, and still you have not come out of your delusion.’

After saying this, Muruga laughed loudly. Then he continued to speak:

‘This is the first vision that you asked for. In this drama many such scenes will be opened out for you, one after the other, filled with joys and sorrows. Be a witness to all that is going to happen henceforth. The duty of composing songs has been allotted to this pen only by me.’

This Youtube video features one of Maragathamma’s songs, sung by her granddaughter Meera Prakash.

Muruga then disappeared in a brilliant flash of light. Maragathamma, inspired and empowered by the vision, composed a spontaneous song which described her recent vision. The songs began to flow again.

That evening Balambika, the man who had taken the songs to Tiruppugazh Mani, came to see her with the message that the songs had been highly appreciated and would be published. Balambika also handed her a packet of prasad and a small pamphlet which described a function that had taken place in Tiruttani on December 31st 1948. In the prasad packet there was a paper with a photo of Arunagirinathar on one side and Muruga on the other. Arunagirinathar was a famous Muruga bhakta who lived in Tiruvannamalai about 500 years ago. Up till the arrival of Ramana Maharshi, he was probably the most famous saint that Tiruvannamalai had produced. Maragathamma, though, was more interested in the image of Muruga that was on the reverse of the paper: it was a picture of the form in which Muruga had appeared to her that very morning.

I recounted earlier that Maragathamma had heard an inner voice reassuring Ramakrishna, the co-tenant of her body, that all would be well. The voice promised, ‘You will be vouchsafed the darshan of great saints’. This promise bore fruit when Maragathamma came on a pilgrimage to Tiruvannamalai in March 1950. This is how her biographer describes the first part of her visit:

On 27th March 1950 many ladies, including Amma’s sister-in-law, planned to go to Tiruvannamalai. They requested Amma also to go along with them to have Ramana Maharshi’s darshan. When they reached Tiruvannamalai, it was almost ten o’clock in the night, and they rushed to the temple. The pujaris of the temple met them at the big outer gate and told them that they were returning after closing the temple. Members of Amma’s party told the pujaris that they wished to have the darshan of the Lord through the grills before the lights were switched off. Half the party went inside, while the other half stayed behind. Those who went inside first visited Siva’s temple and had his darshan. When they went near the Devi’s temple they saw a charming young lad sitting on the steps and singing in a melodious voice. He told them that he would do puja and archana to the Devi on their behalf. They said they had not brought any flowers or fruits. The boy replied that there was a plate full of flowers and fruits inside the sanctum, and they could share its contents. The visitors were happy. The boy opened the door of the sanctum, did puja and archana, and gave them the prasad. In their hurry the visitors had not brought any cash with them. Amma had only one old copper coin, the ring-like quarter anna of the olden days, which she gladly offered. The boy took it and happily wore it on his little finger like a ring. He said he would take his full dakshina [payment] the next day. They asked him his name and the boy replied that it was Dandapani. While Amma and the others were coming out, the lights went out. Everyone rushed out except Amma. The boy caught hold of her hand and led her inside the temple to a place where there was a small shrine of Muruga. It was at that spot that he had emerged from a pillar to give darshan to Arunagirinathar, the great bhakta saint and author of Tiruppugazh. Dandapani told Amma that he always stayed in that temple and narrated several stories to her. Then, leading her up to the others, he said, ‘You have won. I have brought you to light.’ Then he vanished. All the members of the party came to the temple the next morning to search for the boy, but they could not find him anywhere. When the previous night’s incident was narrated to the pujaris, they made fun saying, ‘How could you perform puja when the temple was already closed and we ourselves had already gone out?’

As I mentioned earlier, Arunagirinathar is one of Tiruvannamalai’s most famous saints. His most well-known work, Tiruppugazh, is revered and sung by all Muruga bhaktas. Arunagirinathar received the gift of poetry in the same way that Maragathamma did. While attempting to commit suicide by jumping off one of the gopurams in the Arunachaleswara Temple, Muruga appeared before him and saved him from death. In return for saving him, Muruga asked Arunagirinathar to tour the Tamil region, singing songs in his, Muruga’s, praise. When Arunagirinathar confessed that he didn’t know how to sing or write songs, Muruga asked him to open his mouth. He wrote on Arunagirinathar’s tongue, and by doing so, bestowed on him the gift of being able to compose and sing songs in praise of him. In another interesting parallel, according to the traditional biography, Arunagirinathar once spent time in a different body. He once moved into a parrot’s body in order to obtain a flower from an inaccessible palace because he had been told that it would cure the king of Tiruvannamalai’s blindness. That is far too long a digression to describe here, but I would like to tell the story, alluded to in the last long quote, of how Muruga manifested before Arunagirinathar in the Arunachaleswara Temple since it explains who Dandapani, the young pujari, was.