Glowing Sunflower

“Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. “

Those who understand this and practice it live in freedom. – Bhagavat Gita

I got acquainted to her as my friend’s wife. A simple lady of few words, beautiful smile, subtle sense of humor and cheerfulness. It is six years now and we have hardly spent times together. Most occasions we meet would be at Sai Bhajans, marriage functions and in the Baba Temple. Few minutes of conversation and we would depart.

Both husband and wife are ardent devotees of Shirdi Sainath and are dedicated volunteers at the local Baba temple. And whenever my friend shares some of his thoughts, I admire her strength, humility and child like ignorance.

Last week I was blessed to travel and be with her for five days. My admiration for her has grown in multifold. I realize she is a personification of humbleness, sincerity, total surrender  and unfathomable devotion. Each and every word she utters is a spell of gratitude and the most admirable thing in her is her living in the present.

Our journey was a wonderful spiritual experience to me. This is all the more special to me as I have been with her drowning in sheer faith and selfless devotion. There have been times when I have (most of us would have) resolved to situations gathering myself that this is what God has destined for me. Resilience comes later. The surrender, acceptance and grace with which she accepts things is just not amazing…

it is infectious.

So many thoughts, emotions, opinions and feelings got untangled mysteriously inside me. I realize what is Bakthi in the true sense.

Writing about her now, this very moment I visualize the incident at Dwarkamayi in Shirdi. She volunteers to join the queue awaiting to be invited to perform jadu (Sweeping ) It is almost 12.30am, long time after night arthi. She is standing there with folded arms and in a slightly stooping gesture. Her whole body exhibits devotion, humility, eagerness, longing, yearning, excitement and sincerity. She is at the far end of the queue. I am wondering when would she get her turn ?  The very next moment, the person overseeing the cleaning process points out at her and says “ Amma, Avvo”. She runs towards him like a child running towards mother. She cleans up the space allotted to her with so much of joy, fulfillment and devotion. Inexplicable.

She comes back with the same smile, humbleness and devotion. She silently sits by my side and starts reading Hanuman Chalisa from where she discontinued. I am wonderstruck.

She is a glowing Sunflower and her Sun in BABA.

Venkatamma to all her friends including me, Venkatalakshmi, You are a blessed soul.

BABA is living with you. 

The dim lighted Verandah (Thinnai) …

BGM played by the street dogs and cow from the cowshed…

The happiness I felt when all the pigeons flew away together in the net…

The anger to hit the tailor who hides the needle in the banana offered to the elephant…

Feeling Sorrow when the Rajakumari was caught by the villain and cheers as the hero comes for rescue…

Snuggling to each other…  our giggles…

I relive all the emotions whenever I recap my story telling (rather listening) times.

As I grew up, so did my world of stories. I am highly indebted to my English Teacher Mr.A. Gopal who generously gave permission to write own stories in English for our hand writing home work. From writing, narrating evolved. Most of my narrations would be the then famous movies. This was during the lunch hour and many times a movie would run for 2-3 days. That was absolute excitement.

When in college, initially language tried to bar my storytelling. When I realized it was easier to pick up Kannada than to try to make my friends understand Tamil, I learnt to speak in Kannada and lo!! storytelling again. Now it was Tamil novels which they never got to read - from Sujatha to Sivasankari, Balakumaran to Lakshmi.

Story telling has played a major role in my personal life. My marital relationship and the joy of mothering my children is a beautiful silk woven with stories of love, respect, understanding and happiness.

I stepped into NLP by choice to enrich my training abilities. And the beautiful outcome of my NLP journey with my masters Ramesh Prasad, Tulsi, Sue Knight , Colin Spencer and Arul Subramaniam was the magic of connecting to myself and realizing what is inner happiness.

I continue to enjoy my inner happiness in Chaitanyam, my NLP based training program for pregnant women and now I am happy to share Tejaswini with you, a story telling platform for women.

When it comes to relationship, art of storytelling is the art of communication. Storytelling is a natural way of learning about feelings and relationships. Most often misunderstandings in relationships occur because we stop communication and not because we mishear.

 “All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about them”. How true!! any  experiences of an accident, an illness, a death or any disturbing event is felt better after telling about it, the more times the better. Telling stories help adults deal with life’s challenges.

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you”  -Maya Angelou.

Unplug and share your story.