Amma Darshan in Chennai

Travel Day 989 – Amma Ashram, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA

Wow, after all the time at the beach, the rigid Sivananda Ashram and the strange place Tiruvannamalai with its somewhat miserable looking Ramana guru, I was so happy to come home and see Amma again…

Amma Ashram in Chennai, India

It really was a strange experience and maybe it actually took me to go away and venture out a little bit, to actually fully appreciate Amma and what she was doing for the people. In any case, the fact that I knew all the songs that were playing and most of the people walking around really made me feel like coming home to my family. After all I had spent almost a month in Amma’s ashram in Amritapuri and so the comfortable, familiar feeling should not really have been a big surprise…

Still, it almost seemed as if I had not really been aware of the connection to Amma and I really needed to come here and fully experience it before I left the country. It all made perfect sense again: We had shared a personal car to get to Chennai with other devotees of Amma and only the hustle with local rickshaws and hotels made us second-guess our decision of coming to Chennai for a tiny second. But this feeling vanished quickly once we came back to the ashram and watched Amma giving Darshan…

Amma’s Ashram packed in Chennai

The ashram in Chennai was actually a really small location and when we arrived it was obviously packed already with people. In order for us to get a Darshan from Amma, we had to first get a waiting ticket with a number and then later exchange the waiting ticket for a Darshan token with a letter and a number. The whole system was different from the Amritapuri Ashram and made no logical sense, but that seemed to be part of the game and so we were left to wait until the evening to actually get our personal Darshan from Amma…

In order to bridge time, we fought our way through the crowds to the very front of the seating area to enjoy Amma’s presence and to take-in the atmosphere right by the stage. While the location seemed much too small and packed in the beginning, now that we sat down we realized that it had a significant advantage as well: we were able to sit really, really close by Amma as would normally only be possible while sitting on stage with her…

Amma’s Ashram still packed at Night

So we ended up spending the whole day in the ashram while talking here and there to familiar people, but we also needed a small break in-between. The heat in the ashram, especially with all the people around was simply unbearable and we had to escape to an air-conditioned coffee shop around the corner for a little bit, to al least cool down once. This really made me think again how it was actually possible for Amma to sit still the whole day in the heat, hugging all these people and still having constantly a smile on her face. It was truly a wonder…

It was no wonder though that I could relate to the positive energy so much better than to the one I experienced in Tiruvannamalai and once I got my hug from Amma, I really felt that I was in the right place again… : )