Returning

July 24, 2007 Kamala Amma's Grace

Dearest Friends and Family,

We are back here in MD, at Uncle Jeff and Grandma’s house after a 10 day visit to CT and Boston areas, where we attended Amma’s program and retreat in Marlboro, Mass. We stayed at Priya Raji and Uncle Vaidya Atree’s home in Salem CT, where we first began attending weekly satsangs in CT back in 1997. . Now the weekly satsang is held at her Sister Renuka’s family – Uncle Shridhar and daughter Viday’s home for the past several years. Its a satsang group that meets once a week, does archana, sings bhajans, and eats together, out of love for Amma. Its a heart satsang, not part of the ‘official’ network. Everyone participates, gets to lead a bhajan, and offer the lamp during the arati. It has more than quadrupled in size since we began going in 1997. It is hallmarked by inclusiveness and love, as well as a subtle thread of Vedic culture, and delicious foods… In many ways, the satsang becomes a big support group for ‘living in that effort’ eg. in the spirit of ‘ashram’ throughout the week, as the emotional and material needs of the members are often addressed with loving concern by Raji and family. We went to satsang and met the newer members on Saturday. It is hard to be around hearts that care deeply…we share the great loss.

We visited the house where Anni was born and grew up till 9 years of age….it was sad. The property has been neglected, and many of the things that she had dreams about – certain lilac bushes being taken down, etc., were proven true. Big trees have fallen, and a large hall we had once built to house a school or a darshan is in sad shape….

We saw Amma in DC and in Boston. What to say? We feel very sad. There is a thrumming joy in a mother’s heart that plays always inside when our children are alive, no matter how great the other miseries may be. Death shows us its music was there.

We have uploaded some pictures of our last days in California at San Ramon and with Sarah at Marin park, north up the coast from San Francisco. In Boston, we met Murali- see the photo album…over the years we have worked on lots of songs for Amma together. He is an amazing child prodigy in flute. He wants to help with Anni’s album. Hearts that love Anni are homes for us. We can relax there, in them.

We are now trying to prepare for departure to India August 2., although I haven’t seen the tix yet.

For Link and I now, the rest of our lives is preparation for leaving. We only want to do things to spread the ideals of our little family that our precious Anni embodied to perfection, to know, find and connect to her in everything everywhere.

If Link can scan them in, we will put up some newpaper photos of all of us taken when Anni was a very young girl and some other photos, that we found here of Anni before we went to India.

Note from Link: Everything’s up there in the Photo Album:

Our Anni

Loving you all,

Kamala Aunty, Anni (always) and Link