Balamani Amma's book Nivedyam -poems from 1955-86

The sweetness of offering

A study of her book Nivedyam and its English translation.by Dr Suvarna Nalapat

(Nivedyam –Poems From 1959-1986 .The 27 years of sweetness that emanated from the hot oven of Balamani Amma’s Athma and offered to the human civilizations .)


Whether we like it or not, ecstatic experiences search and find out poets .Just like the choiceless experiences of J.Krishnamurthy.They are” boiled in the heat of memories and the sourness removed and rendered sweet with time.It is this sweetness which human beings take out,churning the life on earth.And that is called literature.”(Balamani Amma in the preface to her work Nivedyam).Those who are lucky to taste this nectar awake into a new life and become the twice-born(dwija).Looking at the poems in Nivedyam(Offering)as three timespans in the poets life,tells us,whatever was in the poet in 1959 ,remain as such in her,without any diminishing or increasing.If we look into Sopaanam(The ladder)written before Nivedyam ,then also we see this same changeless character.So the experiences were not only choiceless but also changeless ,like the Brahman.The Vilaapa(written in her 16th year)and vanamaala(1939) also show the same simplicity ,the same love,visionary power,and purity.A soul destined to picturise only the softest emotions of humanity.A mirror kept clean throughout life.There are no secrets of guilt to be kept underneath the false carpets and later on taken in solitude and washed as a process of cleansing the soul,in those poems.No shadows of wild desires.A world of light and bliss and truth.A world where the shadows of body makes fearful images.The questions and answers of a yogic mind are lightened up in those poems.

The grandmother.

The grandchild sitting on her lap and keeping his head on her bosom ,spreads a bliss ,forgotten somewhere,as if an electric light.The faded eyes remember the softness of the young bodies and minds of the children who came before him.The crumbled skin still experience the same motherly instincts as the predecessors did in her youth.The poet says,they have left leaving several old toys and the autographs of measured intelligences (certificates of merits)for their mother and gone to their on playgrounds of karma.But ,this young one also comes to her when he is afraid,or when he needs a loving embrace. In his soft red hands she is seeing the dirty ,yet water-lilylike hands of those children.In his footsteps she hear the footsteps that came to her running from the school,the ones those went away in search of bright future.The ones she had watched with pride and with pleasure and pain mingled.
The grandchild looks at her old wrinkled face ,in search of love,kindness.Why is she not gathering my pearls of smiles and waste time in touching the rough rudrakshaas of her old memories?Is he searching for his young mother in this old woman?Though she cannot spread the moonshine in her eyes and nectar in her breasts ,when this child comes and asks for his share of love ,grandmother experiences the lost bliss of her past life.The stones that touch those soft feet ,still pains her heart.She says:

Your grandmother knows
Nothing is destroyed
Everything exists in human forever
In my old heart there are
so much of riches ,still
for your hands too
to play with
and throw away…
The love and creativity stored for generations of humans to play with,to grow up,and to inherit is eternal in the grandmother’s heart,just as in the heart of our earth.

Learning to swim

A child thrown into a flowing waterbody to learn swimming.It is the poet.Around ,the opened blue mouths of dancing waves.She is drowning and coming up ,slapping the water with powerless limbs,and still looking at the horizon where the golden toy is shown as a reward ,..She has only one solace.I am at the end of the sari stringof my mother.If I am too tired she will take me back.I will be back on her bosom.My each vibration of shivers reach her through that sari-string.The child then thinks.Why does mother trouble me so much.She asks.
Is it not time for pulling me up?
This play is cruel.I will never learn to swim.
But in the end the play was not in vain.Slowly she could control the waves and get over them.She could swim with and against them.To fight with them is joy ,and the feeling of I-ness is important and then,she understands the drowning,the complaining and the security of the mothers sari are the childish things.The pain of being slapped by the waves,the numbness of limbs in darkness,the revolving in whirlpools –everything became a festival.Then all the fighting days were over.The wisdom matured.Knowing no fights,lying face up on water,the waves as a swinging cot below,the water became the thousandhooded serpant Anantha .The life moves as if a weightless flower ,and the old difficulties and their memories become honey in that flower.The fights and the I-ness were unnecessary ,something within tells as if a manthra.
Then she remembers her mother .Waiting for her return at home.The evening lamp lighted by her as a guide for her return.She smiles to herself.All the efforts,the fights,the successes and the learnings are nothing ..nothing…
Balamani Amma wrote this poem in 1958.The imagery used of the mundane life(samsaarasaagara)as an ocean of difficulties,and human beings efforts to get over them,and memorizing them at the twilight of life with wisdom are noteworthy.The same ocean of life can become a bed of thorns,a bed of roses for enjoying pleasures of life,and a bed of wisdom for a yogin.The three stages in life of the same soul.Balamani Amma has the mundane life as the serpent cot and her soul as Vishnu .

Arghyam.

Arghyam is something we give to the guest of honour.The sakthi of Vishnu is pictured here as the Goddess of welfare ,waiting at the doors of Bhaaratha(India) and she has seen the history of mankind ,from past yugaas ,since she originated from the churned flood waters .Her kind eyes sow the seeds of arts .All the grains and fruits of the universe’s civilizations are brought to her feet by all the uru.(Uru has two meanings.Ships and body. Here all forms of life,and all the ships of the different civilizations ).The universal sakthy as well as the sakthy of Indian ancient civilization are mentioned by using this word.
Beyond ,whenever a poor and artless land cry in different languages,requesting for richness and for arts,Devi gets up from her stoneseat and responds to their cry.She walks along the same path traversed by the hungry ,toiling class fighting with fate of illluck.Then,in the bosoms of rivers arise dams for her feet to touch.Metallic machines may be ugly to look at.Yet made in the heat of human life,she gives beauty even to them.The poet wish that to make her padmapaada,men are creating dams in rivers.Let beautiful sogt lotuses be bloomed within hearts of human beings for her to sit forever is her wish.She says it is not enough if her form is engraved on coins and these coins reach nook and corner of the country.She has to be there in every soul forever.Otherwise in human hearts ,poverty ,powerlessness,dirt and disease of lack of love will gather.The base of a kshemaraashtra is the human mind .Therefore the poet asks the Devi:-
Come.Mother…
As power,dharma
And divine art
And bliss
Into our hearts
Forever.

The grandmother of Malayalam poetry thus makes a seat for her on heartlotus for the Devi.
The flower of soul with beauty and varna,gives a worldview which is the form of wisdom .The flower is the nectar of life blooming from the ocean of light in the depths of which lie the seeds of all life,and piercing the darkness of water ,it forms the great universes.After sometime each heartlotus loss its fragrance ,and petals.But it gives form to several new seeds and new flowers and the same fragrance and colours are perpetuated.The thoughts,words and deeds of each human life ,of each generation is seen as this perpetuation of life by the poet .What we enjoy is only a single ray of the internal light of universe.It is to this universal energy ,the poet gives her Arghyam and inviting it to be eternally present in her heart.

The sickbed

In 1966 came the poem To a daughter.In 1959 came the poem Again.For a boat ,to do repairs ,it has to stop its journeys over water and rest on a sandy beach.The sickbed for the poet is such a resting place ,and the Karmadevatha(Goddess of karma)have given us this opportunity to increase our praanasakthi(power oflife)from time to time.The boat travels over water.Human life over the ocean of samsaara.How is this rest period a saadhana for wisdom for the poet ?In several ways.
1.To understand the truth that the world runs not by the power of our little toyboats
2.To enjoy the rhythm of life as an observer ,not as a participant
3.To gather the white soft flowers of life in our small handcups
4.To keep the pragna without any coverings,in front of the perfect energy
5.To understand the knower/the soul as truth and the real I separate from the body with pains and pleasures.
To a daughter was written when Madhavikutty was in a sickbed.In 1975 when I was in sickbed she had given me Arshagnaana ,and Angle of repose to read,and also a note about sickbed and its experiences in her life(which is added at the end of this chapter).
But the poet knows that just like the moments of quest for wisdom,busy practical life also is lovable for each individual.There are no duties for a sick woman.The blue arch of beauty in front.The divine moments covered in golden sunlights,the murmer of breeze searching for the end of spacetime,the sweet dreams of the wishes of the loving people,only one is missing.The silly (as everyone always complains)household duties.But the sick woman is crying for just that.The things she had been complaining throughout her life….
My tears are for those
Did my sadhana became
In vain,again?
How beautifully the psychology of human mind is picturised?

Raindrops

Like pollengrains..like broken threads…like pearls ..the new raindrops .The poems of Balamani Amma are also like that.There are raindrops that come with power of a whirlwind,as stones thrown,with rebellion,with desires etc etc…But both brings life .When the horizon was darkening ,some unknown desire ,some unknown light and heat has breathed these raindrops into the breast of earth.The greatness behind them is eternally present in our life.

When summer comes
When light spreads
When peace of silence fills
When changing bliss’ wings
Spread in atmosphere
,in my soul ,waveless
Deep,pure with time
The eternalgreatness
Behind Raindrops,
Reflects ..

When such a greatness reflects in soul we find the yogic mind of Chyavana.Chyavana understands the body is only a speck of gold in the midst of a vast universe.Chyavan ,the rishi is the poet,who sits turned away from what goes on around.In a momentary imagination He/She misunderstands the prison that had grown around him/her(the athma)is the perfect truth.Then to that mind,as a innocent girl Goddess of beauty enters in one fine morning.With her breath ,the old soiled outer cover is broken.With the expanded first desire ,sitting within the hiding of the body,the eyes of man watch and drink the sweet beauty of earth newly revealed to his eyes ,covered in the colourful attire of spring.Enjoys the purity of atmosphere that penetrates the pristine thoughts.See the light of a sun sinking into own soul with a hitherto unknown bhaava.The heart is the ocean and the soul the sun in the imagery.The question naturally arise-Why didn’t I see this beauty of my soul before?The question itself removes all the worldly covers which are only temporary .
There are pains natural for spirituality .It is impossible to enjoy perfect bliss with out knowing what sorrow is.In the moment of awakening Chyavana experience that pain as a toy of grass (darbha)which is sharp ,in the hands of that innocent Goddess of beauty.Mahanarayana Upanishad has seen the grass of Darbha as the worldly life .Here also the pain and loss of eyesight leads Chyavana to a worldly life with the girl who inflicted that pain.The great rishi was made just a weak,blind and naked human being ,by a little girl.Those who are called by God has to the path of light,has to search in darkness to see light,the poet commends.We see Maaya who serves,and pleases the soul as friend,servant and wife in Sukanya the little girl.If Chyavana is Brahman,Athman,the soul,Sukanya is his sahadharmini ,his consort,his body.Without that power Brahman cannot find truth.Prakrithi showers flowers in front of him,leads him by hand,and makes every day to day activity beautiful just by her presence.Only then Brahman become perfection.
Those men with courage enter great heights and forget the pains of life in the journey.Then Chyavana becomes eternally young and inflenced by power of wisdom,the consort of Sukanya.She is his Goddess of communication(samvedaneswary)who gives him both pain and pleasure .The lost vision is regained by that knowledgeand the secret of creation revealed.This Indian yogic knowledge is forever in Balamani Amma’s poetry and hence her poems become pure and lifegiving like the raindrops to a parched soul .

In the medical college

Whether in a thapovan or in a medical college the sound of Balamani Amma’s poetry is its spirituality.The students have no time to listen to the beauties of spring .They are immersed in hard study.Their eyes are wet and hot with compassion.Yet they are determined to pierce scalpels into the icy flesh of cadavers.They have a aim.The help of humanity.Probably the cadavers may be asking them in a silent language-“Can you grasp the artistic secret of this nest ,just by counting its threads(nerves)?The bird sitting in a corner plays and unwinds the threads within seconds.Can you stop that play ?Who kindled the intelligence,who renewed each and every atom of life,who prevented dirts to accumulate in blood,who gave nourishment to every nerve and cell,from the day when this was just a beanseed in mothers uterus to the day the soul left and I became not I but a body only?Why is this great plan?Without knowing these whys and hows,who can learn the secret of life and health and death?”
But ,then the poet says,even then my sons and daughters,you will not fail in your aim.May be slowly by learning the secrets of this body ,you may learn the secret of the soul also.In this way,Balamani Amma gave us(the medical students/turned doctors )a hope and a goal to achieve too.
Every day comes in wearing golden silk garments through bright clouds.The sunlight throw flower carpets on earth.The pillars of each house is covered with the yellow turmeric of sunlight.There is a prayermat of it on our doorsteps each day.And on such days,I used to wake up with a vision of Balamani Amma sitting on her prayermat chanting Lalithasahasranaamam in her soft voice.Those bygone days’doors are opened by the floodlights of my memory when I read her poems.What should the scholars say to the new generations?And how it should be said?In the school of Nalapat Narayanamenon and Balamani Amma there is no doubt about this.To say that ,one soul has achieved the perfection ,and there is no need for others to try for it and achieve it is fanaticism,says Balamani Amma in her poem.Obedience and discovery are different ,she says.It is not by wearing another’s garment,but by making ones own dress that a soul becomes what it is..May be this unni,on her lap,so innocent and soft,might have to face pains and pleasures in that journey.In this old house of universe which is our heritage(Prapanchatharavattil)are hundreds of rooms.To find out the secrets of those rooms,to climb up each ladder,every human child learns by holding the hands of its mother.But its footsteps are watched not only by her,but all the ancestors of the human race ,she says.
With every step
Your growth internal
Is watched with delight
By ancestors
Who knew the five elements
Who don’t need a help
to move forward
who are never worried
who moves in homes,inside
and outside
who can kindle and light off
the starry heavens
those who keeps your path
whether you know it
or not.Therefor,my son,
Go forward.(Purathekku 1961)

The elders are not the child’s elder brothers here.Because ,the the last part makes it clear that they are the ancestors who control the stary heavens.And they are eagerly watching over to find the inner growth of the child as their successor to take the torch of wisdom forward.
From 1960-61 Balamani Amma used to write to me regularly.She was 51 and I was 13-14 at that time.My attempts at poetry and literature were looking forward to get a helping hand from her experienced mind.She watched over my progress just as the ancestors did in her poem.What beauty!what colours and sights in my journey!!!It was not pearls or silk skirts or land that I expected ,but the word of wisdom,the blessing of her word as a protective armour.And she gave it to me freely and happily till she lost consciousness in her old age due to Alzheimers disease.

The poem of Mother(Ammayude kavitha)
In 1961 she wrote the poem of the mother.The same year as my letters and poems were bombarding her with doubts and new poems.She writes.Amma has no time to waste.Amma is getting older.Has to write so many books.Amma is trying to embed the temporary nature of this body within the ice of fame.Amma has already traversed the plains and reached the empty mountaintops.Then the darling comes with a little hand which wants to lessen the pains of Amma’s hard work.She reminds Amma about her olden days.She binds a net of love around which is stronger than a wall.She makes it mandatory that Amma’s fet should move according to the rhythm of her first footsteps.She disturbs and changes the day to day activities of the old mother.About her Amma writes:
You have separated from me
As a moonray from a grassblade
With bright mountaintops
In your eyes ,as goal
And inky pen
In hands
Stands in the path of eternity
Immobile and sad….
And the creative urge of the daughter reaches her as a farcry from her own past.When that cry breaks the concentration and the meditation of Amma’s night hours,Amma remembers her own creative urge as a teenager,and the daughter is seen as herself,as an observable bit of the self.She feels that this new generation is a moonshine and not a grassblade to be ignored.The places of moonshine and grassblade shifts in Amma’s eye.Then she remembers that the smile of the girl brings the truth of light to her poems .And the ecstacy of the art is less than her loving embrace for mother.She keeps away the books she has to finish in her hearts corner and finds time for the daughter.When I read this poem (in 1961)and read her letters to me pregnant with meanings,my eyes moisten with love and gratitude and bliss of being loved .

We are taught that old age is the burialground of love and bliss.In its ice ,no leaf will show its green in human thought.But what a wrong idea!It is in old age your love lengthens and measures the entire earth and universe like a lengthening shadow.In every thought there are several white roses in old age.Winds are soft ,not in morning but in evening .Only then the heat of earth is reduced and earth awakens to a new consciousness.The softness of mind is increased in old age.The soft mind watch the new generation with alove and compassion unparalleled.

In the first stage of life-infancy-the poet was watching the mornings red fruit and she had the support of her fathers strong arm.She saw the beauty of the creation in her teens.Then reaches the urban citylife with her husband and see the winning glory of youth .The egoistic man can enjoy only the flower grown in a pot outside his door.She wonders .The city is complex and different from the simple village she is so used to.From satisfaction ,her journey was to desires and fulfillment of desires.She sometimes exclaims at the urban desires-
In your heart’s storms
Will my small boat
Sink or move?
The head of the poet is used to bow before the creation of universe.By habit it bows in front of the city also.She says even this dirty city’s body is cleansed by the Holy waters of life.The light and soul sits in darkness and body.Village gives arghya with a wick and city with a electric light.The root of human civilization is village.But city is its branch.The branch is lucky because only it bears the fruits of future.The eyes that see blemish even in moon,is finding fault with everything.Who am I to count the thousand and one wrongs of the city?Thus ,Balamani Amma survives the urban life by her selfanalysis and purity of mind.Even in the passionate colours of the city she is able to see the whiteness of purty.

How does a poet visualize her own poetry?Balamani Amma says:The experiences with beauty and swiftness of lightening become eternal in poetry.Poetry wears the diamond diadem of dry tears,and the jasmines of life long blossomed and forgotten as memoirs,and poetry has the fragrance of divine altars of soul,and covers the body with the waves of inner moonshine.Even if the sensory mandal aof the poet is lost by death,her life and ideals live through her words.But how would the next generations see it?The emotions the world of experiences created in me,the atmosphere of my inner mind where there is always space for hot ovens and for the loved ones,the creative bliss of heaven made each day with clouds ,virgin sunlights ,and fragrant jasmines –Will they be able to enjoy these ?The poet expects that they should experience them through her poems.But she knows many may not be able to enjoy it that way.For those who are led by a swollen ego,and breaking away all domestic ties of love,running busily to achieve many things-For those children her words may be just some ricegrains scattered after the ancestral rites ,on the rivervalleys of world civilizations.An archeological find,a remnant of ancestral worship to be remembered only on death anniversaries.She is aware of that possibility.Such abeautiful similie is never used by any other poet in Malayalam,as far as I know of.And this is what is happening to several poets and ancestors make this similie a predictive one too.

Rhythm of universal dance
In infancy when fear enters children’s mind as imaginary figures with yellow leafy headdress,seednecklaces and human borns ,and skulls ,Amma was lost in her own world of rhythmic dance of universe,though her hands were embracing her children’s bodies.Therefore she didn’t hear her child’s feeble voice uttering
Amma,I am afraid.
These cruel people will
Take away Unni.

When she awoke from meditation she heard the cruel world of sensations taking away Unni from her.Unni’s footsteps were rhythmic and speedy as that of the sensations.She could hear the cry from behind a curtain.The sorrow of that feeble body ,which left my lap unprepared always fills Amma’a soul.When she takes the pen,the pained mind of the child appears.Does the child understand her feelings?Only when the child becomes amother and her children taken away from her,she understands her mother.
Poetry is the rhythm of the dance.The rhythm of dew on banana leafs,the rhythm of a dove’s wings,the rhythm of Amma’s bangles,the rhythm of a temple bell….The rhythm of bliss.But many mothers tell that world is painful and watching a flower or moon is waste of time.For many ,loking after a cow is just to get its milk.Those who show compassion will become poor.Those who have imaginations are mad people.Thus adults destroy the natural rhythms of childrens minds.The sound without the rhythm is only a noise ,the husk devoid of the inner seed.The spoken and written word without poetry is only the husk.But people use only that husk .
One can make a bouquet with ideas just as with flowers.Words with maturity give a sweetness just as mature vegetables give taste after cooking.One can light a lamp in human minds as well as in the ancestral house’s inner chambers.Balamani Amma congratulates women of the modern age who understands these and who has ability and willpower to do these.(written in 1963)The treasure of a soft heart is within them .It was in these years that Balamani Amma gave me Muthuchippi(first book by Sugathakumari)to read and enjoy .

The horoscope

Every child is born with a birthchart .In one stage of her development poet finds her birthchart.Written in an ola(palmleaf)it is a sign of that moment in which or from which her consciousness as a seed awakened from eternity.A picture depicting the spacetime of her karma’s temple made with the walls of the nine planet’’s colours.We cannot remember our birth moment because we were not conscious of our birth.But imagination can grasp it easily.The face of mother blissful even in pain of creation.The worry and kindness of friends and relatives.The birthchamber ,narrow as auterus with a lamps golden light unshaken.The waterclock swimming inwater ,to record the correct time of birth.A crying tiny mouth.An eye that drinks the light of earth for the first time.The heart filled with past memories like the past moonlight.The powers of light and darkness competing to enter the small nest of a human soul.In the beginning of the yuga,the birth of early man in the dark forests we imagine.Just like that we can imagine our own birth too.
Later on life gives thickness to our skins.The food we eat destroy the past memories of past life.But the fragrance of those memoirs make up the fragrance of this birth .The palmleaf shows the secret of that to the poet.The firy waves in her heart eternally gives that message too.Yet,ignorant men think everything is my ability,my doing.The birth moment is the truth that comes from depths of existence with nectar of eternal life.Every child is a seed of his own world.It is not only his/her eternal bondage ,but also the message that if we want we can get out of that bondage .
The books are another source of inspiration what makes the poet what she is.They are for her the fragrant atoms of the honey of the expanding worldflower.The books are purifying her thoughts,and looks after her growth .They sit in the small almirah of the ancestral home where the mango trees spread its shadows,and in the pooja room with Holy water of Ganga,and ashes in a koovalacheppu on an aavanappalaka.They carry the vitamins for her intellect to expand.Wherever and whenever the life brings difficulties ,they give her liberation from pain and keeps her creativity unscathed by injuries.

The Creator’s sthithapragna.

A sthithapragna is a yogin always turned to Brahma experience ,as in the second chapter(Samkhyayoga)of the Bhagavad Geetha.The poet says,when the winds of earth touch the jeeva, the Goddes of Sanathanadharma awakened in her consciousness.Its dress is being changed every day(every birth).But the dharma,which is truth and ahimsa has never changed.Because of that even in the noise of mechanical world,she is able to enjoy the Sound of Sankha itself.When we forgets that the root of every jeeva is always One,let that shadow of Sanathanadharma elongate and get bigger and bigger,,she prays.
The bridge of the sorrows of life from one night to another,Down in the lake of smoke of desires,just our own face is visible.The unending unknown in front,Everywhere in the atmosphere lightenings..What is there here for the poet’s jeeva to aquire?The visions on this travel are inscribed on her poems.The day to day visions of mornings ,turn to another solar mandala in her creative world.A unni comes and lovingly embrace the body.These are the three things ,the three experiences (poetry,each days sunlight,and unni’s love)which makes her feel that she has achieved everything.The abilities in her are the poetry,motherhood and brahmaanubhoothi.The world ,though full of sorrows has given the soil to blossom them.So she is grateful to the world.Wherelse is a mature grown creator than who feels the beauty and greatness of these experiences?Every creator understands once that his/her creation is not perfect.When every new creation is sacrificed and search for a new one is on,in the expanse of water ,He visualize a lotus supporting himself.The stalk of the lotus is explored to find His own root.From where did I originate?where is the root of my support,this lotus flower /universe?That search ends up in the finding of the creator of the creator.The creator then wonders:-
The white flower of universe
As if bloomed in eternity
In far off times.
And who am I?
A pollendust within its petals?
Or a small bee enjoying its honey?

That is the great creator in a multiverse.What about the human creators?The seeds are gone for the new creation of the world and perpetuation of races.The rind dry and shriveled remain without anyone.The old parents of each generation of men and women are also creators.Creators of new memories and histories.
When the city is full of dust and of the noise of great jaatha,amma sings:
Why should the trees of thapovana
Rooted in my jeeva shake heads
In impatience?
Why should my mind cry for
The new worlds where their shadows
Doesn’t reach and give peace?
But the mother has faith in the ability of new generations.They will create umbrellas for themselves.Then even if away from the shadow of the trees of her thapovana,they wont feel the heat of the world.Why should I fear when the thousandheaded dharma just removes its skin and changes into another?For her the erosion of values is only a removal of snake of Ananthadharma.A temporary affair.In fact the umbrella of Anantha is reflected in thapovana tree and in the umbrellas also.There is no end for dharma.The umbrella and the bed of Vishnu creates different yugadharma by its changing skin.This knowledge keeps Balamani Amma always a sthithapragna ,whether in a city or a village.

Kaamadhenu for new generations

Man can perform austerities amidst machines just as in the solitude of forests,amma declares.Now we see poets living in the comforts of city life criticizing cities.Man lives on earth and complains that earth has become a hell.This complaining character is absent in Balamani Ammas poems.For her poetry is a thapasya.Nothing external becomes obstacle to that activity.Through every expanded flower,every jeeva ,enjoying different types of lives,the eternal self spreads His wings even in the rebellious fallen from heaven people.In that creativity ,man turning his telescope to future,with bright consciousness has to see the universe as a single nation.Has to forget the deadly weapons.Amma does penance for that bright day.
It is the same housewife who lighted lamps in the temple who spreads electric light in homes,educational institutions ,factories and everywhere.The light has not changed.Only the places changed.Yet,sometimes the poetic mind craves for the fields which are not hidden from view by multistoried buildings.The villages where the sowing songs of first creation were sung sends her fingers as sunrays to Balamani amma .The lesson that riches are ripened in softness of soil is taught by the murmer of paddyfields.The paddy is compared to Sankaracharya who gave the heads willingly uttering Bhagyasooktha to the killer,by the poet.She says the farmer is the luckiest man because he is the father of those great souls.The fields are plates of earth where for the first time a farmer started to do agriculture.From that day,the hunting forefathers kept away their habit of killing and took to agriculture.The life from forests to villages happened with that.Even if mans life has reached the moon,the astronaut still depends upon his sustenance for the sathwik yagna of the farmer.Without food where is jeeva?Without jeeva where is culture?where civilizations?
Under the canopy of jeeva’s sahasraarapadma,the secret vibrations of creativity makes the poet calm both in village and city.She says:
When the day ends and worlds of stars open
When the airy mandala makes silky beds
When the tired bees disappear
The song of peace spreads around..Soham soham..
And the endless consciousness of the poet ,clings on to the eternity’s sari as a child.

Without a bird’s song
Without colours of green leaves
Without taste of honey
Without the touch of a child
Can one remember a life!!
The five sensory experiences are included in that existence.The imagination naturally enjoys in the afterbirth stories.In the stories of famous worlds of lights.The light of consciousness traverse the boundary of timespace in such meories and stories.But ,remember,we do this sitting within the boundaries of timespace,within boundaries of five senses.
For new generation poets BalamaniAmma’s poetry is always a kaamadhenu.A kaamadhenu with udder dripping with love for entire universe.It is hungrily standing within the self of man.Even after drinking the milk of this cow,children quarrel for petty things and make war.Seeing this Amma’s udder gets dry.

Psychology and social sense

Who lights torch for earth?
Sun or moon?
If 4 coins for hundred balls
How much for six dolls?
To make up family
Amma and achan alone?
So what about my grandfather?

The questions of a child in Balamani Amma’s poems depict todays educational system,and child psychology.The child stops all questions when exams are near and become silent.Amma notices that change.How many problems are there in a small mind?
As an ocean murmuring vedic chants,as meditating earth,the poetry of Balamani Amma has drops of ecstacy within to awaken a Gurupoornima in each child.
What are the rebellions of the youth?
To the breakfast which didn’t quench their hunger,to lessons which are not learnt even after Herculean efforts,To a small house,to relatives ,to the rules that restrict…
But in the climax of the rebellion the fallen person by stonepelting is ones own mother.Nobody remembers that.The moment of hatred and rebellion is the moment of forgetting the mother.Even in that moment the mother calls:
The silent soft lamp
Calls from her room
How can I see you
I am so close to you
And on my hands is your blood,
Says the children.But Amma never curses the young generation.
The traditions,my-ness
The chains
The younger ones
Trying to liberate from chains
Only awaken my interest.
There is only songs of love in her heart.No songs of hatred.The loveless act is painful even if it is from a child.
She says:
Boys can pain us with slaps
Girls with words.
The words creating pain are not good.The kind torch of mother spreads light to servants,Koina and to Vietnam.The wars of the world will naturally cease if we listen to those lovesongs from the heart of the mother.The story of a banana and in the bathghat are poems expressing such kind thoughts.
The bird that nested in head in old age is not a eagle but a dove for the poet.When she came the usual routines became sweeter.She removed the hardness from mouth(harsh words and teeth)made canals of kindness in dry cheeks,closed ears to arguments and criticisms of others,and the poet prays.Take away all those.But keep the eyesight which see bliss and eternity in the morning sun,in boks and in children.She always remembers the touch of chidathmika which had given her awakening .When the darkness of death comes,the Goddess like the poets mother keeps a lamp for sandhya.She kindles a star near her .(Veyilaarumpol)Balamaniamma remembers Gandhi (Paathakam).The memories of Gandhi are in a corner of ancestral house amidst broken charka ,in dust and dirt.People have forgotten the manthra of ahimsa.They are listening only to the winning noise of himsa.The new generations feel bored with stories of Gandhi.But they too proclaim that they are seeking truth ,and are in the path of ahimsa.Is it possible for man to immerse his legs in blood and become great?
For some life is a garden of flowers.There are thousands who have never seen that garden.Those with broken hearts ,who wants a moment of rest from this hard life of labour,those who feel that there ins nothing for them in the lap of time,..The poet asks :Have you ever listened to the desires that make burning fires in the corridors of a hospital?There are no cases there,but men and women.Have the doctors seen this difference?
I know the smell of death
Burning the essence of praana
The dear burden of life
Man embraces even in illness
The burning fires of desires
In corridors of hospitals…
When eyes are wet ,remembering those human beings,our own pains become secondary.Only those who think of themselves(selfishly)makes others their ladders,and put all blames for their shortcomings on parents and teachers ,and rebelling against them end up in forbidden paths,according to the poet.And for them life is painful.

Goddess of wisdom(Gnaanadevatha)
Amma is Goddess of wisdom.Moon is her jasmine in cloudy hairline.Morning sun is her kumkum.She holds the lyre of peace.In dangerous cities,in dark worlds,in battlefields,in burning courageous hearts,in thorny shrubs of sacrifices,the touch of mother brings peace ..shaanthi.
In the beginning of creation she was daughter of ocean and gave a festival dress for earth.In the creation of consciousness she was Durga and marched in her red silk through the paths of arteries to fight against thamasic powers.Then finally she took the most beautiful form.The arts as peacock feathers ornamented her vehicle.Light thoughts as flags touched heavens.In homes of akshara(letters)where jeeva prepared the depths for her pooja ,she entered.And moved her fingers through her lyre.The song of universal peace and love…The earth worshipped her with every moment as a white mandaara flower.
These are the three phases of a womans life.The infancy and childhood as Lakshmi.The growth of consciousness in youth as Durga.The light soft divine thoughts of old age as saraswathy.In human life these three phases represent acquisition of wealth(economy and knowledge)arts and sciences ,and spiritual maturity .
In Banarus Amma sings as a sanyasin.
Every fly is part of that Great power
If I give pain to a fly
I am paining myself,the great self.
While she repeats the manthra of pithrukriya,the ancestors that come around are not only human but all animal and plant ancestors too.The poet does not waste time to beg for anything in the ancient temple of the Devi.Others are crowding the paths thinking there is no time.She just stands at the base of the temple loking in concentration at the Devi.Her inner self has lights of swings in every moment.She is not in any hurry.She has the soul of Devi within .So why hurry and why fear?
My passions burned
Spread in your feet as ashtagandha
Every lamp my wisdom lights
Increase your beauty
Whatever I touch is
Your finger
Whatever I gained is your prasaada
Then what else this happy body to search for!!
What else this singing mind to ask for!!!!

Prasaadam
When the mind makes a sacred thread with soft memories,poet see the blessing eye of the God within the temple upon her.How beautiful is the form of Guruvayurappan who bestow riches to those who need riches ,and energy to those who need energy ..What a beautiful prasaada ,the poet thinks:

Where ,my Deva,
In thought or in dreams?
What ,the fullmoon or
The halo around you?
In my heart
What was that falling?
The dewdrops of morning
Or the divine words?
She feels the soft touch of Guruvayurappan in darkness.The heart which listened to that swara becomes wider and more beautiful than universe.
The poet see his prasaadam in the several faces with smiles.A Gandhian who is hapy to see happiness in others than in herself.It is impossible to express her poetry and its ecstacy of Vishnudarsana with a small article.The ecstatic moments of the poet are pure and Holy like a thulsi.This is just an attempt to introduce her deep poetry to non-Malayalam speaking new generations.I do not pretend that I can ever do justice in that effort.
Just like her Guru,Nalapat Narayanamenon,Balamani Amma is a poet who has vision beyond the stars.From those transcendental planes she gathered the grains for us,her successors.In it,she added the sweet fruits and vegetables of her poetic garden.And the sweetness of motherly love.In her hearts heat she made this sweet pudding for us.Not only for her own biological children but all children of the world.Not for the present generation alone.But for those to be born in future too.
I hope the new generation will not neglect this message as the kavya(rice in pithubali)but as kaavya ,as the poet herself expressed her wish.
I am a lucky child who got the opportunity to taste her love both in daily life and in literary life.A maanasaputhry.This garland of wors I make to ornament her feet .In this Brahmamuhurtha ,I echo her words,my Guru’s words…

Amma,when I wake up in
The seven th yama of morning
You were asleep within
Your blue sari.
I enjoy the soft sweetness of your heart
The beauty of your moments
Your breath,fragrant with shaanthi
touches my head
I remember an ocean
Without waves….

Then you woke up
Smiled at me
And I get up and do
Chores as I had done
In past days.
And on my dining table
Pots
And on my house’s front
Toys of different types.

We,are continueing this play of day to day life .And the dhyana of a greater life makes us what we really are.