← Treasure Trove of Sri Bhagavan’s Grace

Manni — Janaki Ammal

The year might have been 1948. Sri Bhagavan was reclining on stone sofa in the New Hall in front of Sri Mathrubutheswara Temple. A good number of devotees had gathered in it.

A Brahmin widow in her fifties with clean shaven head and draped in a plain, white saree, prostrated before Sri Bhagavan. He immediately sat up and called His sister, “Alamelu! Manni vandhu irukkaa paaru! Yingeyey irukka chollu! Nee gavanichchukko!” (“Our sister-in-law has come. Make her stay here. And see, that you take full care of her.”) He uttered those words with a sense of reverence and inner joy!

Sri Bhagavan’s elder brother Nagaswami got married at the very young age of sixteen to a thirteen-year-old girl. After a very short time, Nagaswami died. His young wife, Janaki Ammal was now a widow. Her parents being fairly rich, they came and forcefully took her to their native village — against the then prevalent custom in the Brahmin community of the widow continuing to stay only with her husbands’ family.

Consequently, no one from Sri Bhagavan’s family had seen her after that. Now, it was forty long years later that Sri Bhagavan was seeing her. Everything about how she looked had changed — she had grown wizened and dressed in the typical attire of a widow. But despite all that, Sri Bhagavan recognised her the moment He saw her!

His insistence that ‘Manni‘ should stay there in Arunachala has great significance. Because of this, Janaki Ammal dropped her body in Arunachala and was released from taking any more births — Sri Bhagavan, thus, released her from the cycle of births and deaths!

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Sri Bhagavan giving darshan in the New Hall – ( Ganesan can be seen in the foreground, right )