After 5 months of traveling, I was feeling the need to do some work. Not spiritual work as one person thought, but physical work. Have someone provide a mound of dishes to wash or slices of bread to butter. The place to go for such things? An ashram. Which ashram? Well, I knew Amma's was in the south and I connect with her religion of love and dedication to selfless service, so it seemed fitting.
On the hour long train ride from Alleppey, an enthusiastic university student told me about his home city if Kochi and how he was paving his own path vs. marriage at 25.
From there I got a bus to the main bus station and then another to the village next to Amritapuri. While waiting for the second bus, I wondered if I would in fact get on it as everything was in Malayalam and English wasn't widely spoken. At some point a gal came up to me and pointed at the bus I should get on.
The ashram is on the land surrounding Amma's childhood home, which is on a thin bit of land between the Arabian Sea and a wide section of the backwaters. There is a footbridge to walk over the river or you can sit on a boat that a man navigates with a tall pole.
Check-in took a while as there were many people arriving and it seemed a bit complicated to decide on a suitable room. I was asked if I was okay to be with people older than me or in a no fan room. I said whatever was fine, but the lady really wanted me to express an opinion.
My room was in one of the tall buildings and the view from the higher floors was spectacular. Large buildings of the ashram and neighboring university popping up, but all else concealed by the dense covering of palm trees. The river on one side and the sea on the other.
I took a tour to get the layout of the place, watched the sunset on the beach and then head back for Bhajans. It was fun to see Amma on stage singing delightfully despite my growling stomach having missed lunch. The music ended and the line formed for dinner. It was watery rice and 2 curries and I wondered how I'd eat this 3 times a day, but I grew on me and it did vary slightly. Idly in the am, rice without water at lunch and rice with water at night. We had many a discussion about the health benefits of the water.
At dinner a woman came around with a board listing seva, selfless service, options that were vacant. Awesome! I signed up for dish drying in the am. She became a favorite sighting those first few meals as there was always work to be done.
The next morning, I woke up earlier than expected so showed up for dish duty early and asked if I could help. I was given 2 bell peppers to chop, which I didn't chop finely enough, so spent time cutting them further. When I asked where to put the unused parts, the gal pointed towards a bucket and I dumped them in. While I was wondering why there was paper in there, she said, "I said the orange bucket!" and I noticed a more orange than the more red bucket I used, on the other side. She wouldn't be the last rough personality I'd run into as not everyone was a sweet teddy bear type.
Dish drying was more my speed. There were a few Spanish speaking guys rotating through, so we chatted away while drying dishes. Through the seva board lady, I also signed up for 3 slots of dishes one day. This was interesting as there was different crew each time each with its own personality.
To get a formal assignment, I went to the Seva office to properly sign up for a duty and was given more kitchen prep, but with a more chilled out supervisor and easier task of chopping things in larger chunks and buttering bread lightly. I asked if I could work at the recycling center, so was put on milk packet duty for the days after.
Milk packet duty lasted about 2 minutes. There wasn't room for all the helpers and the smell of old milk wasn't really my thing. More than that, it seemed like I could be of more use doing something else and I like feeling useful. I found myself learning how to sew the bags they used to collect the waste. On campus, the trash spots consisted of about 5-10 bins: soft plastics, hair and dust, paper, hard plastics and bottles, food, etc. These were all dumped into the bags we sewed and brought to the recycling building on the beach for sorting.
The sorting was impressive. Every morning at 7 am a group would assemble to sort each bag into about 10-15 bins. From what I could make of it, these would then get further sorted and then sent out for recycling or burning or trash. People at the ashram weren't very good at their part of the bargain, so this group was digging through all sorts of waste to ensure as much as possible was recycled. As I was there for just a few days, I was a middleman, pulling out PET bottles and soft plastics by the handful before the more detailed sorting occurred.
The bags were made out of 2 woven plastic compost bags. We cut them open and sewed them together to create a large box-shaped bag. The first day, it took about 1.5 hours to make one bag and I marveled at how it was okay for me to do something so slowly. The days after, I was able to make 2 bags in the 2 hour shift.
The sorting was impressive. Every morning at 7 am a group would assemble to sort each bag into about 10-15 bins. From what I could make of it, these would then get further sorted and then sent out for recycling or burning or trash. People at the ashram weren't very good at their part of the bargain, so this group was digging through all sorts of waste to ensure as much as possible was recycled. As I was there for just a few days, I was a middleman, pulling out PET bottles and soft plastics by the handful before the more detailed sorting occurred.
The bags were made out of 2 woven plastic compost bags. We cut them open and sewed them together to create a large box-shaped bag. The first day, it took about 1.5 hours to make one bag and I marveled at how it was okay for me to do something so slowly. The days after, I was able to make 2 bags in the 2 hour shift.
It was one of my favorite parts of the day. A group of about 5 women, sitting on stools by the beach sewing and chatting. There was a gal from the coldest inhabited place in the world, another who'd known Amma since she was 1 year old, and another that was about to move home for the first time in 22 years. Our leader had been coming to the ashram for half the year for the past 5 years and worked in recycling because she didn't like it and wanted the personal growth that would come from that. So many interesting stories.
Most people at the ashram seem to be working on their spiritual sides and come to spend as much time as possible with Amma. Once a week, you can receive darshan, an embrace from Amma, and as international guests we could sit near her for 45 minutes while she gave darshan. This was always an interesting experience as the stage is brimming with activity and stress levels appear high with all the folks supporting the process. There are people to get you into position to receive the hug and others to give the prasad to Amma to give to the recipient and others to fix Amma's sari and cushions. This is all done in a specific manner one because Amma is revered and also to ensure she can go on hugging people for years to come for 12+ hour stints. I imagine repetitive movement must be hard on her as well. Given all this stress, I find it a bit hard to sit there. There are more people wanting to sit than space and it can get a bit nasty. Kind of the opposite you'd expect a few arms lengths from the guru of love.
In addition the the darshan, twice a week there is meditation on the beach at sunset followed by Bhajans and daily there is morning chanting, which I heard once given the early start time of 5 am. I sat nearby to participate in a puja that was for removing obstacles. Seemed fitting given it was inauguation day in the USA and almost everyone is seeing obstacles right now.
There are also various classes and courses, most for a modest fee, ranging from dance to trusting your intuition.
Given all this activity, it seems that most people survive on just a few hours of sleep each night. My roommate was getting about 4.5 and said she'd never be able to sustain that at home. I chatted with another gal about my hypothesis that we are stretching ourselves in more directions in our regular lives by dealing with never-ending workload, commuting to work, taking care of homes and families, and socializing with friends, but she explained that she lives in the forest in a home that she's converted into a healing center where she works, so her life is quite chill. Instead, she felt there was some energy being transmitted around the place.
A week there was a good amount of time to re-energize my desire to go explore. It was a week to form relationships, have conversations in full sentences with a variety of people, not have to decide where I would sleep or what I would eat, and do a lot of physical and and some personal work.
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