An old Radha from Punnayurkulam

An old Radha from Punnayurkulam

Punnayurkulam.The remote village where Nalapat Narayanamenon and Balamani Amma were born and lived.No roads or lights.Only expanses of water and fields.There,once appeared electric lights.The poles and wires looked like nets of development catching the small village in its meshes.Then Balamani Amma wrote(Puthuvelicham):

A longlasting wish
Of my village
This firenest
For her…
Accomplished…

Children sang famous songs of “Neelakkuyil”in the courtyards of huts which boldly proclaim that there is salary for every job.All the old lamps and their memories came rushing to the poets mind.Later on a similar imagery is seen in the poem of O.N.V Kurup(vilakkukal).
The old panees with a slight smile ,walking shyly along narrow lanes,The candlesticks that protected the homes,The reddish light of homely brass lamps,the gas lamps of festival seasons ,Then….

The thousand lamps of golden hue
Inside which a temple
Where Gopalakrishna plays eternally
The chithrakoota of dancing serpants
Where they fix gaze on evening lamps
The floor of ancestral home
Where the marks of old lights
Still remain..
Those memories of old lamps which are keepers of deaths and births never lost to humanity.There are temples and snakeshrines still.There are songs of rhythmic instruments still.But in the light of new development they are not things of wonder of worship.The old children of the village are gone.They were,

People who didn’t know the burden of life
Because they were immersed in God
They were kind to everyone
Because they didn’t have much needs
They could enjoy life
Because they didn’t control spacetime.
They are replaced by new generations who have many needs and hence cannot spare anything to anyone,and feel that life is heavy and hard .The village saw the awakening of a city’s busy schedules.They can never agan enjoy the bliss of unselfishness and lack of desires.But the poet does not feel sorry for this.She says,all development has to come through pain,just like her Guru ,Nalapat Narayanamenon.
Roads came leveling highs and depths.Cars noisily said that nothing is unreachable .Amma looks at the old toys of her village,seeing both the loss and the gains of her children.Stll she can enjoy the bliss of peace in the old banyan tree.She is hearing the song of Vishnu’s Garuda vehicle even in the busy streets .This old Radha is not worried by the outward changes.(Ambalathil 1966)She is the universal mother who blesses the new generation for their achievements(Aashish)Whether village or city,Balamani Amma is feeling the shanthi of her own mind everywhere.Her words are heard as the words of a divine presence everywhere.What was that Krishna said?
I am playing my flute
For the strayed cow…
It is for bringing it back to the path ,that flute sings.The forsaken cow/calf is not to be criticized but brought back.
The word of Vishnu says through her that every footmark on his breast is a sreevalsa which was made by man .Though it pained him ,he is patient enough to bear the pain and show compassion to the one who inflicted that pain.The message of Krishna says,This is the Holy water which removed sins of dark forces and made consciousness clean.His flute’s music emerges from far beyond the spacetime of forests ,soft and sweet to reach her.Wherever the Mountains show their upturned hands of Namasthe mudra,she see the reddish feet of her beloved.Whenever she touch the water,she feels the silky garment’s wavy movement and the hot touch of his body.
Over the whirlpools and waves his naada dances and tells her,Take this beauty in..without hesitating…

In the halffilled mudpot of this Radha,the water jumps up and imitates his flutes voice.It murmers..Blis is in movement..movement..movement…
When he is in and behind,in every danger she is safe.Even in hot noon she doesn’t feel tiredness due to his breath.In every drop of water his bright shape alone…That eternal voice murmers….This river will never be dry…This home is eternal…That venugeetham comes from where…from my inner self from my head…from everywhere…
The intellect,mind and body ,and the external universe ,everything eternally produce that music alone…This Radha thus merges with her Krishna through that music ..that sound…
Every Athma is under Maaya.But safe with pure vaasanaa too.Krishna is a tapaswi who is eternal wisdom in Radha.When that friend comes and calls she has to leave everything and follow taking nothing except her vaasanacheppu(small pot of vaasana-the lingasareera)and the tapaswini in her is never forgetting this even for half a second.That is why she is aware of the play of creation and she cannot curse the next generations even if they pains her.Just as they pained Krishna.When even a virus experience pain ,the Athma in her as Krishna experience that pain.She is therefore able to sing about not only the greatness but also of the sins of mankind without cursing.
In her infancy this little Radha had brought water from a well and flowers from her garden for the eternal lover Krishna ,hiding in an idol in the temple.She listened to each swara in the travelers voices for his voice.But never did she offer her body .It was a offering of mind,intellect and athma and hence the body too,not the other way round.She offers to her eternal lover:

When the day ends
And moonshine spreads
You came into my life
Oh,Anaadipurusha,
Let me offer my thrimadhura
Of mana,vacha and kriya.
It is the three sweets of mind,words and deeds that she offer to her eternal lover.This purity is seen in Ammalu’s offering too.Ammalu was the aunt of Nalapat Narayanamenon.Not a famous person.But who never married saying that she is wedded to Krishna ,and lived the life of a radha ,making poems on him.(None of which survives).The poetry of Balamani Amma is therefore pure like a vedamanthra cleansing ones Atma and intellect.This radha is seeing God even in the feet that touches her head .(Mazhuvinte katha)Though her view we too find the uselessness of the mundane things and greatness of a divine life.The mundane things become just a shadow of the real transcendental life.How soft are the moments when the Antharyami comes in to get the bhiksha!How beautiful!The tapaswini then says ,all the waters from my kamandalu will stop only after reaching your feet.The fragrance of divine love in heaven and earth..the divine music everywhere of a rare sanghama.
The palaces are just playhuts.Only a blue body ,eternally beautiful and omnipresent matters.In every head that rise with an ego,he places his soft feet…(Mahabali)
The poet sings..
In the creative mandala
Awakened by your feet
Let me know myself as a atom…
Then ,her yagna is perfected.Krishna appears to this Radha with,
Yellow garments
Touching the dust
Rhythmic bliss
in each footstep
Krishna..
My eyes are full
Your blueness flows
Everywhere
Vanamala dancing..
Your beauty is more
Than I expected..

There are two distinct groups of people.
1 those who say that they cannot digest Adavaithavedantha
2.Those who are thinking only of its scholarship and ignore its love and soundaryalahari
Both these have to read the poem Nishkramanam by Balamani Amma.(1974)She looks at the soft and scholarly heart of Sankara as a mother looks at her sons personality.Bondages are in our mind.Those who break bondages of home and reach the ashrams are then bound by ashrams.The selfishness,desires for power,coldwars..every bondage is there too.Guru Sankara watching the disciples bound by these,hear that his mother is in her deathbed.
The poet says:
The wounds,the burns the severe pains
Fill heart as the dawn’s light
The fragrance of breastmilk
Comes near
Crossing the crooked paths of
Past lives..
If I visit the woman who purified my heart in infancy with her kindness will my austerity be uprooted?That question breaks off even the bondages of sanyasa rules from his heart.And that great son with flowing tears sitting near his mother see Universal mother in her too.
I saw in that drowning boat
The universal mother
Who had put down her oars..
What should I do for you,mother?The hurt consciousness in her eyes rise to her son.”Dear child,I wont ask you to come back from your chosen path.But,let not your speeches give more hurt to more mothers..”Do not attract more disciples to sanyasa by your speeches.That will create more mothers like me who are the loosers.The children that goes away from parents are not sanyasins alone,we must remember.The sanyasins leave homes for a greater goal.Householders go away in search of more luxyury and riches.There are a few things they leave behind ,says the poet..The forsaken family ties,thoughts that cling to past memories,pain of solitude,The thoughts of a thinker who see these in his own home is awakened in BalamaniAmma’s Sankaracharya .He asks:
Is it absolutely necessary for one to create ashaanthi in several minds ,to get shaanthi oneself?When man finds out shanthi without ashanthi in anyone the path of ahimsa opens.Is Ahimsa weakness or strength of humanity?For rishi,it is strength.But will a person who has tasted flesh agree to that?When such doubts arise in intellect the poet says
Even an athma in search of absolute
Place its feet at the doorsteps of hell.
To suffer the himsa of the world the people who follow ahimsa has to suffer great pains.It is like pain of hell.They suffer it not because they are not capable of combating it.But their hearts do not allow to combat,their love is their bondage which prevents them from giving the same coin back.
A person gives the most loved object to divine mother.When Sankara cut the bondage to his mother to enter sanyasa he did that.When he obeys his mothers last word also he is doing the same.The promise that no more new ashrams and disciples will be added is a sacrifice of a life mission for him.The question of whether such a promise was taken by Sankara is immaterial here.Poet writes from her imagination .It is recreation of life and ideals through her vision.
The Radha in Balamani Amma is a yogini equivalent to Sankaracharya.The one who rise to the Guru state by total selfsacrifice.
In this respect she is different from the usual radhaas we meet with among writers and literary people.