Embracing the world [C. Sujit Chandra Kumar]

As he sat for the evening bhajan in that imposing auditorium of Mata Amritanandamayi's ashram among 500 devotees, Raveendran Nair's mind raced between disappointment and hope. There she was on the dais, dressed in a white sari and flanked by two swamis. Some western inmates had brought their quilts but most others sat cross-legged on the floor. On both sides of the dais were gigantic photos of a smiling Mata.

Earlier, an ashram official had advised Nair against joining the queue to meet Mata Amritanandamayi or Amma as her devotees call her. Fridays are reserved for first-timers and inmates. But he knew that if he stayed back, she would take him in her arms the next day.

As the hi-fi system relayed the high-pitched bhajans, mostly in Malayalam but interspersed with Hindi, English and even French songs, Nair's anxieties began to dissolve. A little white girl, right behind Amma, swayed from side to side and so did many in the audience. As Amma chanted 'Krishna, Krishna' and her ecstatic laughter reverberated in the hall, his troubles seemed irrelevant.

He was in his forties, wearing a cervical collar. He had a fall, a year ago, while carrying a head load of stones. Being the only breadwinner of the family, he had to carry on. When his limbs began to go numb, he consulted a doctor who advised surgery and warned that there was only 20 per cent chance of recovery.

"Since then, I have been coming here off and on. I am feeling better, physically. I am sure Amma will see me through this," he says. And she had suggested that his daughter, who had just passed plus two, should try to join the nursing course at AIMS College of Nursing run by the ashram. Unfortunately for him, the interview board did not select her and he was awaiting further instructions from his saviour.

Many who come to this scenic, remote fishing village of Vallikkavu, now called Amritapuri, in Kerala's Kollam district are driven by material needs. But there are others who have been wallowing in wealth and fame but were still not satisfied.

Like Janani, 57, whose name was Beverley Noia when she was professor of comparative religions in a New Mexico university. Her studies gave her an idea of God but she craved 'direct' knowledge. She had a house in the city and another in the mountains but wanted 'something' more.

A student told her about Amma's US visit. "I was very sceptical because we get false gurus in the west who come for money," she says. Her encounter was uneventful; Amma hugged her, as she hugs everyone.

But she watched her in action for four days. The distance, formality and solemn manners that she expected in a guru were missing. "She was like everybody's darling mother. Nobody could have put on an act for so many hours," says Janani. She gave up her job, family and other worldly possessions and has been serving Amma for the last 11 years. "I don't know if she is God. But she has a special communication with God," she says.

 In 1993, she was one of the three people who represented Hinduism at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago. Last year, she won the Gandhi-King Award for Non-violence; earlier recipients were British primatologist Jane Goodall, former South African president Nelson Mandela and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

 Amma, who has grown from being an illiterate child with strange spiritual experiences to a global guru who presides over an empire of charity. Her ashram figures at the top of the list of charities receiving donations from abroad. In 1998-99, for instance, the ashram is said to have received more than Rs 50 crore. Amritaswaroopa-nanda says, quoting a minister, that it is also the only one to pump back into the society all the money it receives. But Amma and her disciples attribute the growth of the ashram to the service rendered by the brahmacharis and devotees.

Listen to Dr Prem Nair, medical director of the ashram's prestigious Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS), and you realise it's no bluster. He chucked his job as gastro-enterology professor at Southern California University after meeting Amma in the US in 1989 and joined her ashram. Later, he was asked to take charge of her hospital in Kochi. "For a lot of people, priorities in life change after meeting Amma," he explains.

Prem was also moved by a personal experience. He had a growth in the abdomen and it was diagnosed as lymphoma. Doctors suggested bone marrow transplant. When he told Amma, she said he was going to be all right. This was more than 12 years ago. "I declined the suggested treatment and here I am, still alive," he says. How could a modern medicine man choose such an option? "It is a matter of faith," he says.

Besides AIMS, which in five years has grown to a Rs 70-crore, 800-bed hospital and has treated around 20,000 patients free of cost, the ashram has institutes that teach science, technology, computers and management, homes for the aged, orphanages and family groups. Amma has also established 16 Brahma-sthanam temples with women priests, something unprecedented in the male-dominated Hindu society.

These institutions, most of which have come up in the last decade, reflect a shift in the ashram's approach from sadhana (penance) to service, though inmates insist these are but two sides of the same coin. If in the early days, her fame was dependent on the belief of her devotees that she had supernatural powers, the accent now is on the service aspect.

The Vallikkavu ashram was once a soul-soothing spiritual tourism spot for foreigners. It is now the self-contained headquarters of an international charity conglomerate with towering quarters for devotees who live with their families, a post office, a bank and a vehicle booking counter. The only reminder of old times is the ferry, which one has to take to reach the ashram.

The ashram has built 25,000 houses for the poor in 12 Indian states and will build another 1 lakh in the next decade. It rebuilt three earthquake-affected villages in Gujarat and distributes a monthly pension to 50,000 destitute women, mainly in the south Indian states. The ashram has branches in many Indian cities and has centres in several Asian countries, the US, Europe, Mauritius and Reunion Island. Soon after the celebrations, Amma will kick off her European tour, covering England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Austria and Holland. In November, she will spend two weeks in the United States. In February next year, she will tour north India and then fly to Mauritius, Reunion Island, Malaysia and Singapore.

A curious admirer recently wanted to know Amma's reaction to a media assessment that she was now more like a corporate executive than a guru. She replied that her institutions stood for dharma, not profit. The electricity tariff for all her institutions in India would add up to Rs 10 crore a year and a radiation equipment that had just been imported for the hospital cost Rs 12 crore. How was she to pay for all this?

Prajnanamritananda, who was pursuing his doctorate at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research before he gave up everything for Amma, points to Amma's manage-ment skills when asked about the ashram's success. "Companies usually follow a fear-greed management policy," he says. "In the ashram, compassion and love are what drive the inmates. And stress is on the spiritual growth of the individual. So, there is a blooming of potential."

Gentle persuasion is the management mantra, whether it is to fine-tune disciples' spiritual practices, behaviour or dress code. In a recent session for the inmates, she spoke of how, in the early days, a western woman devotee wore a transparent dress, and the 'big swami' (Amritaswaroopananda) ordered her to leave the spot, leaving her in tears. Amritanandamayi consoled her, explaining that the brahmacharis were yet to gain full control of their minds. But why should I suffer because somebody else can't control his mind, the tearful woman wanted to know. Message 1: Pay close attention to what you wear. Then comes another anecdote. During a foreign tour, Amma was at this airport, and a couple was kissing in public. "I was hoping that the brahmacharis wouldn't see it and they were praying that it escapes my notice," she said, plunging her admirers into peals of laughter. Message 2: What is acceptable in one culture is anathema in another.

For long, Damayanti, Amritanandamayi's mother, would withdraw when press photographers visited Edamannel house, next to the ashram. She hasn't been too kind to her extraordinary child, called Sudhamani in those days, and the biographers have not missed it.

Damayanti and Sugunanandan, who now address their daughter as Amma and light a lamp before her photo, recall that the child had great concern for the poor, though their own family was barely subsisting. She didn't care much for education, which ended in the fifth standard, but was keen about chanting and prayers. She was virtually the servant of the family, doing all kinds of menial jobs. Sugunanandan remembers that the child was found mixing water in the milk the family sold, so that she could give the money to the needy.

It was in 1975 that Sudhamani showed her 'Krishna bhava' (behaving as if she were Lord Krishna) during a religious reading in the neigbourhood. At other times, she used to behave like 'Devi'. Says Sugunanandan: "Even though a believer, I found it difficult to understand this and was worried that it was a mental problem."

People began to flock to the village and seek her blessings. But there was also opposition from within and outside the family, which culminated in her expulsion from the house. For a time, she lived outdoors and around 1979, a few disciples left their families and started living by her side. Sugunanandan remembers that the rationalists made life difficult for Amma and her family by harassing them and those who visited her. In 1981, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math started off in a few thatched huts near her family house.Today, after two eventful decades, the Math is big, with its imposing structures, presses, canteens and computers