Our Every Need

17 September 2003, Wednesday night

Have you wondered how the thousands of devotees will find sanitary facilities during Mother’s birthday celebrations in Cochin? Read on.

Each night after bhajans, 150 or so devotees crowd around the stairway to Amma’s apartment to delight in Her feeding of Ram, the ashram elephant. Tonight Mother showed Her design skills as well, with strict attention to detail. Devotees also got a sewing lesson. After feeding Ram, Mother sat on the floor and was invisible to all but the persons nearest to Her. Those few who could see Her reported back to those who craned their necks to find out what in the world was going on. Finally, the words trickled back. Our beloved Amma was designing and making the prototype privacy curtain for the 3,000 pit toilets that will be provided to the 100,000 plus devotees who attend the birthday celebrations in Cochin.

For about an hour, Amma hand-stitched plastic cement bags together, instructing sevaks that they must sew the seams together facing the same way so that one side of the privacy curtain will lay flat. In this way, Mother told the swami that the curtains will be "beautiful" for the devotees. She also kept measuring the height of the sewn bags, making sure that the final curtain would be high enough to provide privacy for the tallest westerner. The final design, as of this night at least, will be smoothly surfaced walls eight feet high.

More than 3,000 bags have been collected for this purpose but this is not enough. More must be found. As bhajans were sung tonight, a team of workers washed the bags. Finding that they could not wash them quickly, the sevaks finally resorted to rinsing the plastic bags in the backwater near the ashram. When Mother was told that the bags were too wet to sew, She just declared that this was not a problem and that it could be done.

Beginning at 10:30 tonight, volunteers will be doing sewing seva for our Amma and for the birthday celebrants.

Who could possibly say that Amma does not provide for our every need?

- Helen (Triguna) Besse