"Can a medical student learn pulse reading in one day?",the great saint ramakrishna paramahamsa told someone who was asking him how to answer those seekers challenging the existence of god..."You have to find out who teaches it,do rounds of him regularly for sometime,undergo training ,and only then you can differentiate between vathanadi, pithanadi or sleshmanadi. It takes sometime before you can actually get to know him"
My experience with subahmanyeswara swami seemed to be one along somewhat similar lines too. The plain fact was i never was drawn to him the way i was attracted to other forms of divinity, and there was a very simple reason behind it.....I had a horror of snakes....In my younger years, it used to be deeper, very probably because of ignorance,though over the years i learned to overcome it.....Continuous watching of N.G.C no doubt must have helped to educate me on those poor misunderstood creatures who more often turn out to be victims than otherwise..Once i read somewhere..might be an animal lovers pamphlet....that snakes are pinned down to the boles of trees,and skinned alive ,and left just like that and they die a long lingering death. ..
Yet, i still could never bring myself to venerate them.It somehow struck me as a primitive practice.My father used to joke that all those ladies who went out pouring milk into anthills would run away if the god they worshipped chose to come out of them, and anyway snakes never drink milk....His words might have influenced my thoughts.I never celebrated NAGULA CHAVITHI or NAGAPANCHAMI,as other women..,ofcource not as a defiant posture, but mostly because i remained indifferent towards the whole thing.Quite frankly i thought the existing gallery of gods at home was quite enough...if only one could believe completely in one god...
.
Well...the connection between my fear of snakes and subramanya swami simply is....in Andhrapradesh, also in most parts of Karnataka,and many other states too, he is worshipped in this form only and no wonder i kept my distance from him.But i used to watch other people and knew subramanya aaradhana was a very emotional and almost ,you could say an extreme cult sort of worship...People went to him,appealing for health, progeny. One can routinely see roadside temples spread everywhere....some of those walls being painted with loooong tailed and fearsome multi hooded serpents....and i flinch.....
A great deal of fear is also there,among almost all sections of our society regarding NAGADOSHAM,....it really permeates it.....All sorts of problems are ascribed to it.....ill health, hysteria, nervous disorders, births of handicapped children,family curses,....I personally knew a family whose men always seem to develop complications with their legs after 60 ...They either get paralytic or accidents happen to them.....All this said to be because some of their forefathers destroyed an anthill and killed the snake therein and built a bungalow over it........
Anasuya"s friend Poornima says all the men of her family get to die at a very young age....mostly unnatural deaths.....She said once her uncle happened to be lying down on the floor of their house with one foot to the wall,when a snake crept out of a hole in the wall and bit him to death...I thought this was spine chilling..
.Yes....stories like these abound....and ofcource when things are going all right we tend to ignore them..We say ...yes....there could be real hereditary reasons that could explain these things...some trouble with genes very likely....
Experts on scripture rationalise the philosophy as how the snake represents the spinal chord, a vital organ and also the centre of nervous system,carrying signals all the way to the brain,,..no doubt ..any defect therein would inevitably be disastrous ... That is why his domain over mental illnesses ... also how it represents the sperm and the origin of life as such,hence the resulting problems are his domain too. .A fully shaven human being,when he sits with his back to us would look just like a cobra shooting it"s hood out of it" coils..
.well... A pertinent question at this juncture would be why one has to go to the lord,when the thing you should be doing is to consult a neuro physician or an endocrinologist .I know we are entering the realms of occult here where mind matters more(pun intended)and satisfactory answers are difficult to find.
.....
... The long and short of all this is to explain how my original fears being compounded by these gruesome anecdotes kept me uneasy,and did not allow me to appreciate the cult.
It went on for sometime like this and then a time has come, as the Paramhams said, for the going rounds and the trainings by the great doctor....In 1988 January Anasuya went down with a severe attack of measles and again in may with another virulent attack of chicken pox. She suffered a lot during both these, running high fevers, and developed secondary infections with chicken pox, but ofcource,as is wont with children ,bounced back to normalcy quite easily,and was her normal self again.But just prior to these two bouts,i had two curious dreams of a long, huge snake which seemed to be chasing me...No doubt , i was naturally worried, and lugging her reluctant dad(he thought i was being foolish), took her to MOPIDEVI, a popular subrahmanya kshetram near our hometown.It was the first time ever i went visiting him,and though i went there with my pleas, i was quite frightened by the sight of the huge anthill there , where people were breaking eggs, pouring milk,..the brass snake shaped spears placed all over the railings...you could say it put fear of god (literally )into me . You may bet i beat a hasty retreat once my rituals were over and also felt ashamed of my self, for with this i was neither doing justice to the lord nor could i control my prejudices.
In 1994, we went for a holiday, to my brother"s place at NAGARI, in Chittoor district, where he was working as munsiff magistrate and while we were there he suggested how we could make a short one day trip to , Kanchi, which was just two and half hour drive away, and also a quick visit to Thiruthani which was literally on the way so to speak. One need not even deviate from the road.We liked the suggession,and did the trip,drove up to the short hill to Thiruthani. It could be called my second visit to the lord...I was still feeling uneasy,but the form of a man here was a relief. I found i quite liked the divine cherub, with his luxurious mane of locks and chubby cheeks. ( though in Thiruthani he was a grown up man)..We made our obeisances, saw the rudrakshamantapam,and returned.I never felt any kind of passionate feelings of devotion or anything, and neither did he seem to favour me with an experience as such..Why should he?......To put it humorously ,you could call it a polite meeting where i gave him a coconut and he reciprocated by giving half back...
In 2003 december we went on a short christmas holiday trip to Bandar ostensibly for performing my mother- in- law"s annual ceremony and had sometime to kill....so visited the nearby places including my husband"s place UNIKILI,(sadly no body lives there now), and MOPIDEVI again, though this time i was calmer,even felt peaceful. Surprisingly someone told me it was SUBRAHMANYA SHASHTI on that day.....Finally we seemed to have broken the ice...the lord and me....I was thrilled to have been let into his court....after all, he received me on his most important day...did"nt he?....Later we went to jillellamudi too...A queer thing about the visit was we ended up seeing his temples all through ,,,,We jocularly congratulated Anasuya for this because lately she has taken up reciting SUBRHMANYASHTAKAM everyday...She said somebody told her it was beneficial. ..she became a staunch devotee now,,,,Had to go to the skandagiri temple every month.....so .. life was going on like a breeze....
Till march 2004 when Anasuya had an attack of viral encephalitis...We had a bad time coping through those three tough days...By god" grace she came out of it unscathed..,,almost like sun coming out of an eclipse.....We think that the all the three crore gods have watched over her,,protecting....No doubt subrahmanya swami was an active one among them.....and this tour was in a way ... a thanksgiving one..
No comments:
Post a Comment