Swamiyee Saranam – 4

                         I was sitting in the last row of a cramped and crowded room next to a small kid and her father.  It was an Ayyappa Swami Bhajan session and group prayer in the house of a Ayyapa Swami comrade.  I especially went to see him sing and listen to his devotional voice.  The kid next to me was sitting on her father’s lap keenly observing everything happening around her.  I could feel the uncomfortableness her father was feeling sitting there and when asked he said he had an injury in his leg and could not sit comfortably and seating his kid on his lap for a longer time was giving is inducing pain.  I asked the kid to sit on my lap for sometimes so that her father can relax. She refused.  She didn’t move from her father’s lap. As the pain increased it induced anger in him and he showed that on his kid, but she didn’t react to his anger.  The prayer started and the singing was loud.  I asked her again to come to me.  For a second she looked at me and then she looked at the Swami Ayyappan pendent in my thulasi mala.  She held the my swami’s pendent it in her hand as we sit without shirt in the prayers and said ‘Ayyappa’.  ‘Yes’, I replied.  ‘Ayyappa looks beautiful’ she said.  I don’t know what to respond.  I took her from her father’s lap and comforted in my lap.  She turned the pendent and looked in to the image of Swami in both the sides of the pendent and she said the same phrase.  All I could say was ‘Yes’. 

                       The beauty She saw in Him, the peaceful, pure, and childish beauty she saw in Him is only kids could see, I guess.  The bajan was louder with drums, when I though she could fear the sound, she was enjoying the songs and ambience.  The environment was devotional and calm amidst loud singing.   All I saw in her was undisturbed calmness.  When the Guru Swami asked a Kanni swami to lite the lamp set below the feet of Swami Ayyappan, the Jothi, the flame glow bright and iridescent. 

                      Sitting on my right lamp she bent to her left and was observing something while I was busy singing along with fellow comrades.   Slowly she pinged my chin to ask something.   I bent down and her mouth so that I could here her in that loud ambiance.  

‘Why is that shaking’ she said.  I didn’t understand what she was talking about.  I looked at the direction she was showing.  All I could see was Ayyappan in Harivarasana posture and a lamp below His feet. 

                    As if understanding my perplexity, she said ‘why is that flame in that light shaking?’  I looked at the lamp and could see the flame waving right and left and I thought it was wind’s work. I told her the same but she was not convinced.  She said ‘then why all other lamps are not shaking?’ and she was right it was only that lamp below His feet was shaking, very different from other lamps.  I don’t know what to answer again.  Kids could see what the so called well learnt, all known, grown-up, and cognitive adult eyes could not; never. She pulled her father’s neck and asked the same question.  Her father thought for a second and said ‘it is Ayyappa and He is dancing’ that answer satisfied her and she was happy.   She didn’t wait for another second and immediately said ‘I want to touch Ayyappa’.  Now her father too was stunned and didn’t know what to answer her. 

‘Wait for the pooja to finish and you can touch him’ I said and she turned to her father to affirm the same. 

I didn’t see her and her father once the prayer was over also, I didn’t know weather she had touch Him but I, for sure, know that Swami had touched her.

                                                                                                                                                SK