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Chapter 1

Māriamman

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

—Simone de Beauvoir

First Meeting

My first encounter with Sarasvati was in 1975, while I was doing research for my doctoral dissertation. She did not fit into that dissertation, but what she showed me was more enduring, if less elegant, than what I was able to write about then. The dissertation was about Tamil views of the living body. The people who taught me their views on this topic were a scholar who lectured about Tirumantiram and other difficult Tamil texts, an octogenarian Brahman Ayurvedic doctor who described his work as nāḍḍu vaidyam, “country medicine,” and the women who worked in the fields owned by the doctor. The people who taught me were very different from each other, but their views were remarkably congruent, and so I wrote a well-put-together dissertation.

Sarasvati’s view was completely different from that of my other teachers. She lived with a spirit with whom she struggled, a combative alter ego who told Sarasvati to do things she did not want to do, and not to do things she wanted to do. When Sarasvati rebelled, the spirit punished her. Both Sarasvati and the spirit were female, but they were not the soft interior female that my other teachers spoke about. This spirit was hard as rock. Sarasvati was tough, and torn between living the life of a good married woman and the life of someone else, a life like that chosen by the spirit Māriamman.

The story of Māriamman (aka Rēṇukā Paramēswari) is centuries old, as, I learned later, was attested in a Sanskrit text. She was a woman betrayed by both husband and son, a Brahman woman merged with a woman of untouchable caste via the bloody murders of both. She came back to life as a goddess with the head of a Brahman and the body of an untouchable. She was angry and she controlled bloody diseases, most notably smallpox.

Some say that Māriamman was a much older goddess, pre-Sanskritic, therefore thousands of years old. She was and remains a spirit in control of the rain. But the disease of smallpox may have emerged earlier than Sanskrit, in the Neolithic, when the first cities appeared. A disease like smallpox needs large, close populations to continue, as everyone who contracts this terrible and terrifying disease either dies or is rendered immune. When a small isolated place with a small number of people in it is hit for the first time by smallpox, there remains nobody left to infect. To fight it, there was nothing for people to do but resort to whatever spirit they believed controlled it. Maybe there was a time in human prehistory when the spirits were kinder and gentler. Or maybe there was a time when there were no spirits at all.

The Māriamman that Sarasvati knew had renounced her family and children. But Sarasvati manifestly loved her children and grandchildren, both male and female. She was in addition an attractive woman and she liked to be that way. But Māriamman commanded her not to cook for her family and not to comb her hair or wear ornaments. Sarasvati obeyed the commands of Māriamman.

Some art, not all, as well as some theory, is autobiographical, in the sense that the idea for it comes from experience, from life as lived by the artist or theoretician. Einstein believed in unity and simplicity, in his own life as well as in the universe, and lived his life and developed his theory according to that belief (Holton 1988). Mikhail Bakhtin developed his literary theory as a model of the society in which he desired to live, a nontotalitarian society in which the ideals of Martin Buber held sway, and as a model of the kind of person he wanted to be. He could not describe this social and personal ideal as such, because he lived under the totalitarian regime of Stalin. So he encrypted it in his literary theory (Bakhtin 1978, 1981, 1984; see also Chapter 3 of this volume). Claude Lévi-Strauss (1978) found that the way his mind worked resembled that of the Amazonian people whose myths he described and analyzed.

Similarly, some gods, not all, are models of what their worshippers are, or aspire to be. The original Buddha was a model of what his followers aspired to be, as was Jesus, as was Mohammed. Māriamman is a model of what her worshippers experience themselves to be or aspire to be, as are some other Hindu gods, such as Ganapathi or Murugan.

Like all deities with name and form, Māriamman is a creation of human beings. Why did they create her in this form? Her worshippers say she has many names, many forms, and lives in many places. She is made by and of many people then. Her story, her forms, and her actions were created by many people, out of their own experiences and their own discoveries, and out of themselves. As Māriamman is unambiguously female, it is reasonable to conclude that she is made of and by many women. But it is said by some Western theoreticians that the mother goddess (including Māriamman) is a projection by men of what men imagine a woman, most of all a mother, to be.

Sarasvati, through taped interviews as well as through conversations, showed me something I had never thought of before, which was that the woman and the spirit she worshipped had been through similar life experiences, in particular, problems with men. Māriamman was, then, a model of what Sarasvati experienced herself to be, and Māriamman was struggling with Sarasvati, forcing her, to do what Māriamman in her life story had finally achieved. Māriamman had attained freedom by renouncing the ideal of perfect Tamil womanhood. Māriamman’s is a centuries-old Indian story, but it resonates with what some American women experience today: that you can’t have it all, that you have to choose. In one trance session, Māriamman (through Sarasvati, whose body she possessed on and off) engaged in a conversation with a young woman who had come with her mother. Māriamman aggressively asked the young woman, “Do you want life (vāṛkkai) or do you want work (vēlai)?” The young woman replied that she wanted work (vēlai), and she did not want vāṛkkai, which meant not only life but in particular married life. In Tamil, “life” or vāṛkkai is family life. Life outside of family goes by other names.

This young woman was now saying to Māriamman that she wanted to work and did not want to marry. The young woman’s mother evidently wanted her daughter to marry and had brought her to Māriamman in hopes that Māriamman would bring the girl to her senses. Who, when, and indeed whether to marry are not uncommon disputes between parents and children in Tamil Nadu, but usually the parents win. I don’t know who won in this case.

Sarasvati was intelligent and successful at her work. Unusually for a woman of untouchable caste, Sarasvati grew up in the Mylapore neighborhood of Chennai, had a retired businessman as a father, and spoke a Brahman dialect. Her first name was a common first name for Brahman women. Parvati owns power, Lakshmi owns wealth, Sarasvati owns knowledge. When I played the tape of Sarasvati’s narrative to a Tamil linguist, he asked in surprise if she was a Brahman. Brahmans in South India pride themselves on their mode of speech, which, among other things, differentiates them from lower-caste people. She was not, then, a rural Dalit woman. She was fully urban. But although she could “pass” as Brahman, she still, by birth, belonged to one of the lowest castes and had chosen their side when she might, with difficulty, have gone the other way. The path she chose was hard enough.

I learned from a famous Ayurvedic doctor who lived in the city that some people of untouchable castes learned to speak, act, eat, and appear exactly like Brahmans. That is, they could “pass” as Brahmans. The most famous singer of classical South Indian music, adored by Brahmans, M. S. Subbulakshmi, was said to have been born into an untouchable caste.

Sarasvati was, apparently, one of those of untouchable caste who could be mistaken for a Brahman, or could have been so mistaken had she not assumed the matted hair and unadorned appearance demanded of her by Māriamman. Sarasvati supported her family by working as a medium for Māriamman. Over the years, her clientele grew in size while she tended to her work, which entailed intuiting the problems of others and helping them overcome those problems. Some of her clients were Brahman women. Her sessions with clients were sometimes agonistic. Possessed by Māriamman, she would demand of her clients to say what they wanted, and would make them say it loudly. Through her tutelage, if one can call it that, some of her clients became mediums like herself.

Sarasvati did not speak of passing this work on to her daughters, however. She was more interested in passing it on to me. She spoke of the intelligence of her daughters, and how well they were doing in school. She saw that Tamil women were oppressed, and she worked in her own way to liberate them from the oppressors whose beliefs they had internalized, the men of their own families.

When I first met Sarasvati, in 1975, she was thirty-eight years old and I was twenty-eight. I was living with my husband and baby in Shastri Nagar, near Adayar, in what was then Madras. We were in the second floor of a bungalow on one side of a road. On the other side of that same road was what people called the slum—a settlement of mud huts. I was starting my research on concepts of the body in Tamil culture, casting about for people with whom I could study and from whom I could learn. A young American woman living in the same neighborhood told me I should go and meet a priestess who lived nearby. So I walked over to the hut in which Sarasvati lived, carrying my baby, who was about six months old.

After that first meeting, I visited her regularly, and got to know some members of her family. I called her grandson puli kuḍḍi (“tiger baby”) and my son yānai kuḍḍi (“elephant baby”). This was because my son, normal sized for an American baby, was so much bigger than her grandson, who was the same age as my son. I worried about the health of little Puli Kuḍḍi. I took Puli Kuḍḍi with his mother, Sarasvati’s oldest daughter and first child, to see a doctor because he had scabies all over his legs. The doctor sighed and said, “I can give him medicine, but the scabies will just return. These people live in filth. There is no help for them.”

At our first meeting, Sarasvati asked me questions, and I tried to answer them. I asked her if I could do a tape-recorded interview with her, and she assented, right then and there, but told me to come back a few days later. I think she wanted to assemble her thoughts.

We did the first interview, then the second, and Sarasvati sent her daughter Vasanti to help me transcribe. Slowly, word by word, we went over the tape. It took days; my knowledge of Tamil was sketchy, and Vasanti was manifestly bored. But I wanted to know exactly what Sarasvati had said. At a certain point, while we were transcribing, I looked up at Vasanti and said to her in my broken Tamil, “Your mother has an amazing mind!” Vasanti smiled.

I visited, with my baby, a number of times after that, watching the trance sessions that Sarasvati conducted, taking notes. But Sarasvati would not allow me to be just an observer and recorder. She wanted me to be part of what she did, to take a stand. I was shy and embarrassed, had no desire to commit myself to goddess worship, and did not know what to say. Māriamman was bold and insistent, however, and would not take my confused mumbles for an answer. She stated that I had come to her because I had “troubles with my husband.” But I said that was not the reason. I had come for research.

When I first met Sarasvati, I was married with one child, and was also embarking on a career. I was not a feminist and was not thinking much about gender issues at all. Both my husband and my infant son came with me to this difficult place. I did not understand, then, that ultimately I, too, a Western woman with many roads ahead of me, would have to choose between life and work—or at the minimum, would have to chop off vital parts of both my life and my work if both of them were to survive and somehow thrive.

Although I was not a feminist, Sarasvati was, and so were many other Tamil women I met, whether or not they had heard the word “feminism,” whether or not they could read. The knowledge that it is a misfortune to be born female was part of the air that all Tamil women breathed.¹ The knowledge that the gender system was unfair was obvious to them. We Western women had not come to that point yet, or some of us hadn’t. Simone de Beauvoir tried to convince us, but still we refused to believe. We believed we could wriggle out of our misfortune, that biology was not destiny, that we could reach the top of the professional world and also enjoy a fulfilling family life, with all parts of both intact.

Māriamman exemplified escape of a woman from slavery through sacrifice. In her life story, she went through a kind of domestic slavery and decided to renounce it. Ultimately, Māriamman confessed through Sarasvati, “for Tamil women only I will do much good.” I wondered then what Māriamman meant. I guess I was assuming that Māriamman, as a great spirit, had to be a universalist. In fact, she was enshrouded in the specificities of place, time, history, and culture. Most of all, a belief in the power of self-sacrifice is a significant part of the Tamil world. In this sense, Māriamman was and is very Tamil. However, Māriamman was also, in Simone de Beauvoir’s terms, both immanent and transcendent. She had attained, in her own word, freedom (moḍcam).²

When I returned in 1990 to visit Sarasvati, Puli Kuḍḍi was in his mid-teens, handsome and sleek. By then, the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a powerful Tamil militant group fighting against the government of Sri Lanka for freedom from discrimination) was at the front and center of Tamil thinking. I had not yet started research on them, and only thought it was crazy for the LTTE (if it was them) to set off a bomb in the Madras airport, killing many civilians, leaving shreds of bloody flesh all over the walls and ceiling. I imagined that Sarasvati, basically a peaceful woman, would be opposed to the Tigers. And maybe she was. But when I asked her what she thought of the LTTE, Māriamman, speaking through Sarasvati, said, “I wear different colors. Sometimes I am peaceful, and wear sandal-colored clothing. But sometimes it is necessary that I wear red.” I took this statement as a symbolic declaration on the part of Māriamman that she was in support of the LTTE and their violence.

That year was the last time I saw Sarasvati. Though she and most of her family were flourishing, a horrible thing had happened. Vasanti, Sarasvati’s eldest daughter, had died. She had complained of back pain, and then she died. The causes of her pain and her death were unknown. When this happened, Sarasvati told me she fought again with Māriamman, saying, “You were our protector. Is this the way you protect my daughter? By killing her?” To this question, Māriamman replied, “Who is more important? Your daughter or me?”

There is more. At the beginning, I was afraid to ask Sarasvati her caste, because it was impolite. But one day I asked. She answered, “Chakkili.” To me that meant “sandal maker,” and I thought no more of it. Later I learned that Chakkili was not only a caste name but a deeply derogatory term. In some parts of India the main job of Chakkiliyars was removal of human excrement, and some of them still perform that work. The history of antagonism between Paṟaiyars and Chakkiliyars is long-standing.³

During my research on the war in Sri Lanka, I learned that Chakkili is also a derogatory Sinhala term for Tamil. The implication is that all Tamils are as low and foul as excrement. The term Chakkili was most commonly used by Sinhalese for members of the LTTE, the Tamil Tigers, who renounced caste divisions altogether.

Another name for people of the Chakkili caste is Arunthathiyar, named after the unmoving polestar, Arundhati. The activists among them protest the fact that they must remove the contents of sewers, raw excrement, by hand, carrying it in pots or baskets on their heads. A person doing this work can pass out from the toxic fumes of the sewer and fall and die in the sewage. It is terrible work.

Arunthathiyar activists promote literacy and English-language learning for Dalits. They consider that, in India, learning English is essential for success. They search for and publicize white-collar jobs and university scholarships for which Arunthathiyars are eligible. They also publicize violence done against any Arunthathiyar. They protest the fact that Arunthathiyars are too often beaten, murdered, and dismembered with impunity.

In 2011, an Arunthathiyar woman, elected Panchayat president in a village of Tamil Nadu, was beaten by men who did not want to take orders from a Dalit woman. Four reporters, at least one of them himself of Arunthathiyar caste, visited the place of the beating, took notes, and wrote a report. They plan a documentary about this incident. The full report is too long to repeat here, but it includes these words.

On the street next to her house, at the turning past Karuppansamy temple, they attacked her. Opposite the library she had built, upon the road she had laid, they stopped the auto. The auto driver leapt out and fled. They clamped her mouth and eyes shut. They had already broken the streetlight on the road to ensure perfect darkness. They pulled her head back by her braid. They cut off the braid. They cut off an ear. They hacked at her, all over her body.

In photographs, she stands bold, straight and beautiful, radiating confidence and strength.… In every picture, she stands straight, shoulders square, her courage writ large upon her posture.

In hospital, she lies on a stretcher, both her arms and legs, her body covered in bandages. Her head shaved, the scar of the lost ear turning a sickly yellow, a blood stain on the bandage on the left hand, her sister holding up the bandaged right hand because it hurts too much to put it down. “I am afraid now,” she says. Krishnaveni, the brave. Krishnaveni, the strong. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, the woman who was given the title of Vīra Peṇmaṇi (Heroic Woman) by the women of her village. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, first woman panchayat president in the state to be attacked with such cold-blooded brutality. (Jayanth 2011)

A message one may draw from this article is that powerful women of the lowest castes live in danger in Tamil Nadu. In fact, all women of the lowest castes are in danger, whether they speak out or not. The protection of a powerful deity may or may not mitigate this danger.

The Narrative

The narrative comprising the bulk of this chapter is a translation from Tamil of my tape-recorded interviews of Sarasvati/Māriamman.⁴ Although the interviews were conducted in 1975, Sarasvati may be in the same neighborhood, doing the same work still. She is, or would be, in her later seventies today. What is certain is that mediums for Māriamman practice now in Chennai, as Māriamman is a popular god, and spirit possession continues to thrive in urban as well as rural areas of Tamil Nadu. What I write below remains in the present tense.

The central portion of Sarasvati’s mud house is a shrine for this deity. It contains an image of Māriamman—a triangular black stone with an angry face skillfully carved on it, with gleaming metal eyes and long fangs. Weekly the priestess adorns the image, first rubbing oil on its face, then painting it black with ink, red with kumkum, or yellow with turmeric, carefully outlining the eyes, then wreathing it with flower garlands, putting on its jewelry, and laying a clean petticoat in front of it. She performs this ceremony with all the absorption of a young person before a mirror.

She calls her mud house a temple, and neighbors and visitors also regard it as such. At the time that I met her, she lived there with her husband, ten children, three sons-in-law, four grandchildren, and several buffaloes, goats, and chickens. Although, through her skill as a priestess and healer, she had acquired some material wealth in the form of saris, stainless steel kitchenware, and livestock, she said that she could not move out of the mud hut because of the tradition that mediums of Māriamman live in poverty. That was then. Later she built a larger house in the same spot.

On Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, or whenever someone arrives with a special request, she calls Māriamman to come upon her. At these times, and especially on the full moon and other auspicious days, her house will be crowded with supplicants. Several hundred people may come to her in a single day.

When she is ready to call Māriamman, she leaves the house, bathes, and returns, and sits cross-legged in front of Māriamman’s image. She closes her eyes and breathes the smoke from the camphor burning in a plate of ash before her. She yawns and is silent. In a few moments suddenly she shudders and lets out a roar. This is Māriamman. She caresses and scratches her body and tousles her matted hair. If someone has brought butter she smears it all over herself, eating some and giving the rest to visitors. She may stuff neem leaves in her mouth and wash them down with turmeric water. She laughs loudly, and begins to speak in a sign language to one of her sons-in-law or daughters sitting nearby, who interprets her gestures to the visitors. The gestures state who has come with what problem, and what the outcome will be. After this she whips her head around and around as in a bolero, scattering drops of water from her wet hair all over the room. Then she begins to speak, stating each visitor’s problem and calling the visitor up to her. There is a tightness in her voice as though she is in pain. She speaks with each visitor, ascertaining his problem and promising to cure it. At the end she emerges from the trance by opening her eyes.

People come to her for mental and physical illness, for demon possession, or for family problems, or because they cannot find work, or they are not doing well at school, or they cannot find a husband for their daughters, or for other difficulties. Māriamman will give them ashes or lemons (both cooling) as medicine, will touch the afflicted with her hair (which conveys her power) or will blow ashes upon them or brush them with neem leaves (sacred to Māriamman and used for all skin afflictions), or she may perform more elaborate ceremonies for them, or she may simply promise that she will make everything well. When she is out of trance also, the priestess may perform similar acts of healing. On festival days, she organizes celebrations for Māriamman. She also performs pūcei (puja) or worship ceremonies on behalf of individual patrons who wish to secure Māriamman’s blessing.

Although this priestess is particularly popular, there are many like her in Madras, men as well as women, though the majority are women. Similarly, the majority of the devotees of Māriamman in this city are women, who follow their own volition in coming to her temples. This priestess’ strongest supporters are well-to-do, middle-class, high-caste women, who give the priestess gifts of clothing, jewelry, and money and seem to value her friendship highly, though the priestess is of an untouchable caste and lives in what the wealthier people of the neighborhood call “the slum.” During trance sessions, the possessed priestess may sometimes be seen teaching one of her followers to enter a trance, coaching her in growling and spinning her head, and exhorting her, in the voice of Māriamman, not to be afraid. At least one of the priestess’ middle-class Brahman followers has now herself become a priestess to Māriamman and a successful trance healer, in opposition to the wishes of her husband, transforming the structure of her family to serve the needs of her new profession.⁵

Māriamman is often pictured as a beautiful woman seated on a throne made of a many-headed serpent, and at her feet, a disembodied woman’s head, Māriamman’s own head, which acts as an oracle, like the stone in our priestess’ temple. Therefore, when Māriamman speaks through the priestess, she sometimes refers to herself as one who has two heads.

Even as smallpox has died out, the popularity of Māriamman of smallpox has grown in recent years, as is evidenced by this priestess’s success, and on a larger scale, by the newly flourishing condition of a large temple to Māriamman near Madras, the Karumāriamman temple at Tiruvērkāḍu. Karu means black, because Māriamman herself is black. The temple at Tiruvērkāḍu has become one of the wealthiest temples in the Madras area. Since the early 1970s (about the time of the eradication of smallpox in Madras) the whole temple has been rebuilt, together with beautiful ornate temple cars and stone sculptures created by top artisans from out of state, a large tank, and a new monastery. On Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, buses to the temple at Tiruvērkāḍu are packed with people, as is the temple itself, so that it is almost impossible for all but the most aggressive to get in.

The worship of Māriamman in modern Madras is a blend of Brahmanical and lower-caste, non-Brahmanical components. The Tiruvērkāḍu temple has Brahman priests, who perform Sanskritic ceremonies for Māriamman. But associated with this temple, living separately from it, is a medium like our priestess. Our priestess also lives near a small, Brahman-operated temple to Māriamman, and such associations are the norm. South Indian Brahmans are strict vegetarians, but the mediums perform animal sacrifices to their own temples.

Our priestess is of an untouchable caste, but like some other Madras untouchables she knows the Brahman lifestyle perfectly and is able to imitate it down to the smallest detail. Unlike most untouchables, as herself she is a vegetarian. She was raised close to a Brahman neighborhood and her first name is a Brahman woman’s name. Her speech contains many Sanskrit words and borrowings from Brahman dialects. She is proud to have Brahmans among her followers. But in the state of possession, her speech and comportment alter radically. She belches, yawns, scratches her body, rolls in the dirt, and kills chickens by biting through their necks and drinking their fresh blood.

Māriamman is said to be born of earth. The small hillock that she was born of is enshrined at Tiruvērkāḍu. Women have a saying, it is better to be born as mud than to be born as a woman. Earth is the strongest and humblest of elements; it bears everything, accepting excrement, yielding fruit. People also say that Māriamman has a form of wind, that is, she has no solid body of her own and must take the body given by people, either by possessing them or by entering the stone or earthen images that they make for her. Wind is the embodiment of motion and restlessness and is associated in popular thought with free-wandering spirits and unsatisfied demons, and contrasted with the peaceful higher deities. Wind is also the form of breath and of the soul. It is invisible, and so its color is black.

The name of the smallpox deity, Māriamman, has different meanings. Amman means “mother” or “woman.” Māri means “rain.” The rain is cool, and Māriamman likes cool things, foods that are supposed to cool the body, such as milk, coconut water, buttermilk, turmeric, lemons, neem leaves. It has been suggested that she is named after rain because the pockmarks she leaves look like the craters left by raindrops in the dust. But smallpox is a disease of heat; it used to strike during the hot months, and people believe that it is caused by excess heat in the body or by the heat of Māriamman’s anger. The month sacred to Māriamman, when a large festival is held for her, is Āḍi, July–August. This is an inauspicious month, when nothing is supposed to be started, so no new houses are built, and young couples live separately during this month to avoid conception. The smallpox deity is said to hate the sight of a married couple. She is said also to hate the sight of a pregnant woman.⁶ According to the report of a Madras physician who studied the epidemiology of smallpox in that city, pregnant women who contracted smallpox invariably contracted the most lethal form of the disease (Rao 1972).

A homonym of the word māri is māṟi, “changed,” so that Māriamman becomes “the changed mother.” This is the interpretation of her name that our priestess chooses.

The origin story of Māriamman is an old and well-known one, with numerous variants told throughout Tamil Nadu. In one famous version of the story she begins as a Brahman woman, whose name is Rēṇukā Paramēswari, as noted above. She is married to a famous ascetic named Jatharagni. She is a perfect wife, possessing perfect chastity, as a consequence of which she has certain magical powers. She is able to hang her wet sari to dry in the air without a line. When she goes to fetch water, she is able to carry it without the aid of a pot, by forming it into a ball and rolling it back home.

One day when she goes to the river, she sees in the water the reflection of a beautiful male deity flying overhead (some say this deity is a divine musician or gandharva, some say it is the sun, some say it is an airplane pilot). She remarks to herself in her mind that he is beautiful. Then she tries to roll her water into a ball and return home. She finds that she is unable to roll it up any more. Because of her trivial and momentary mental lapse, she has lost her perfect wifeliness and with it her magical powers.

She returns home and her husband sees what has happened. In a rage, he orders her son to kill her. The son pursues her with his axe, while she flees, taking refuge in the hut of an untouchable woman. She embraces the woman in fear, and the son enters the hut and beheads both of them with a single stroke of his axe. He returns to his father with news that the deed has been done. The father in turn grants him a boon. The son asks that the mother be restored to life. The father acquiesces and the son returns to the decapitated bodies and revives them by putting the heads back on. But he switches the heads, attaching each to the wrong body. Rēṇukā Paramēswari awakes to find that she has her own head but the body of the untouchable woman. She returns to her husband, who sends her away because she has an untouchable body. Thereafter she dwells in the forest alone, but in dual form. In this form she has been worshipped by Tamils for many centuries as Māriamman of smallpox.

Not only the smallpox deity but other deities as well receive massive support in Madras. One of these is the Catholic Veḷḷāṅkanni (“the White Virgin” or “Virgin of the Tide”), who is famed for her healing and other boon-granting powers. Near the Veḷḷāṅkanni temple, a Vaishnava temple has been built to Lakshmi. Visitors to one temple may also stop at the other; there is evidently no rivalry between them.

Each of these large temples seems geared to urban, middle-class tastes. Māriamman is portrayed in posters sold at the Tiruvērkāḍu temple as a smiling, doll-faced, pink-skinned lady, despite the lion she rides on and the adjective karu, “black,” prefixed to her name. In the smaller temples and in the villages, however, the angry demeanor of Māriamman remains unhidden.

The blackness of Māriamman represents not only her anger but also her fertility. Often in pictures she is colored green. Her greenness is complementary to the redness of her male partner, the great deity Siva, whose name in Tamil means red, beautiful, and auspicious. Among Tamils, who are mostly dark brown, a light-skinned person is described as red. By the same token, the greenness of Māriamman represents her darkness. Green and black, the colors of vegetation, are the colors of Māriamman. Red and white, the colors of animal life, are the colors of Siva. Paradoxically, animal sacrifices are offered only to Māriamman, never to Siva. Siva’s whiteness also symbolizes his purity, the purity of fire; Māriamman’s darkness symbolizes the fruitfulness of water.

One of the most important attributes of Māriamman in India is her possession of many forms and many names. Thus the temple at Tiruvērkāḍu is decked with dozens of large paintings portraying the multiple forms of Māriamman, and the newly built Vaishnava temple is called the Ashtalakshmi temple, the temple of eight Lakshmis, each of which is given an equal place in the temple, like the many paintings of Māriamman in the Tiruvērkāḍu temple, and unlike the hierarchical arrangement of deities associated with the temples to the male gods. The multiplicity of Māriamman suggests not only that she embodies the changing nature of all life but also that she is found in all women, and that all women are equal.

Interview I: How She Became a Priestess

I was born in Mylapore.⁷ My age is thirty-eight. At sixteen I was married. I have two younger brothers, one younger sister, and I am one. I am the oldest.⁸ The oldest in the family is me. My name is Sarasvati.⁹

My father had a big business, a store. You know toddy? Liquor. That trade.¹⁰ That is gone. Afterward, the Hindu [newspaper] office, he worked in the Hindu office. He is retired.¹¹ He retired in sixty-seven.¹² Now he is just in the house. Two years have passed since Mother died. Two years have passed. Now there is only father.

From a small age, from the age of eight, I had devotion to the gods. Often I would eat only once a day. In the person of the mother I had much desire. In the person of the mother only. Murugan and the mother I liked very much.¹³ Often in the house I would fast. Friday and Tuesday I would go to the temple without fail. In Mylapore, the Kaṯpakambāḷ temple, the Muṇḍakkanniyamman temple, the Kaṯpakavalli temple, I would go there. After marriage, in Maṇḍaveḷi the Piḷḷaiyār temple. Every Friday I would put oil there, circle the temple and return. I did nothing else. In my sixteenth year. From the tenth year, some difficulty came to us. Then Kumāri Kamalā, the cinema actress—have you seen Kumāri Kamalā? She dances Bharat Natyam. In her house, our husband worked for her, as a driver.¹⁴ He was working as a driver, and my father had no work; it was very difficult. After that, the two of us, we followed our desire and got married. In my sixteenth year, as soon as I came of age, in my sixteenth year, the marriage took place.¹⁵ That happened, and in fifty-three Rukmaṇi was born. In fifty-three, May twenty-sixth. After she was born, the next one in fifty-six, this one, Vasanti, was born.

I had much devotion, I had very much devotion to the gods. Nevertheless, I thought that the mother was only in the temple. If she came into someone’s person (possessed someone) I had no belief in that. If some shaman beat a drum and danced and all that, I did not like that, I had no belief in that at all. I would come up to them and tell them. If someone becomes possessed by a god, they are pretending, it is not a real god.¹⁶ If I heard the sound of a drum and saw them dancing like this, I would wave my head and make fun of them.

In sixty-four, nine years ago, eleven years ago, we went to my father-in-law’s house to shave the heads of all the children.¹⁷ Thinking that we should go to that place and worship Māriamman, make an offering to Māriamman and worship Māriamman, he took us to that town. When we went, then too I was fasting. But I did not think that the god would come into my person. Then the priest of that town decorated the image of the mother and called her, trying to make her come into someone’s person.¹⁸ She did not come. She did not come upon anyone’s person. I thought, “O Mother, who are you? Are you a god? If you are a real god, you have to come into anybody’s, somebody’s person.” So saying, we prayed. When we prayed, in my family she came upon my person only. When she came, no one believed. Everyone said it was a demon that was in my person. Not a god. Everyone said there was a demon in my person, there was no god in my person, they said.¹⁹ Then the mother said, “If you want to know whether I am a demon or a god, put fire in my hand and see. If I am a god, I will carry that fire.”

Thus speaking, I held that fire, and put it on my head.²⁰ Then they said it was a god. Everyone believed. From then on, for this many years, if anyone had a demon, or if there was a sickness in the body, or if they were without children, for everybody she would cure it.

After that, ten children were born to me. Six girls, four boys were born. After Māriamman came, five children were born. When Māriamman came into my person, she said, “For five more years only you will have a married life. You may be with your husband. For this long, children will be born. If you have more than five [more] children, I will have no more connection with you. In the family, without a single desire or attachment to your husband or children, I myself will come to your house, I myself will suddenly come. To you I will give in this way my tangled hair and my appearance and all.”

That is what that mother said. I must not cook in the family. I must not serve meals to a group of people. I must not go to a wedding. If anyone dies, I must not go to that. My whole body will catch fire and burn. After that, however we want to be, that way we will be. I do not put on wet [ritually pure] clothes, I have no Sanskrit Veda, I have no learning.²¹ I do not know what that mother’s history is. I do not know. But she, for everybody, whatever history they want her to tell, whatever cure or atonement they want her to give, whoever has whatever disease of the body, for all of that she will make a way.

[Interviewer asks if she remembers afterward what occurs during the state of possession.]

There is no recollection. If that mother comes, and after an hour says, “Will you ask anything?”—that I know. But when words are said, they come to me only in the form of feeling. I know that we say these words, but afterward, how we say them, how it happens, that I do not know. The feeling of it comes.²² The feeling comes, when she ways, “I will protect you,” that feeling comes to me.²³ Then the thought comes to me, “We spoke this way—will it be true?” But it will be true.

In dreams she will come directly. She has come countless times. Just the day before yesterday she came. That temple must be built. It is this kind of very small place. Everyone brought stones and cement. I was thinking, “By means of whom will this be carried out for me?” The place you are in now, can it be like this, without convenience for the people who come and go? Then she came, wearing a white sari, making a lap like this she was seated, holding a pot.

She said, “This pot will only fill halfway. No one in the world can fill this pot to the brim. If you pour gold, if you pour silver, if you pour rice, it will only fill this much. It will not fill completely.²⁴ Don’t you worry. I am having a person make preparations. They will come and build this temple. Don’t you feel sad. I am going to do good for everybody. Therefore I will make a group of people come, I will build and give you a temple.” Thus that mother spoke.

[Where will the new temple be?]

This same one! This here! This here! It looks like we are building something of stone, doesn’t it? Everyone bought cement and gave it. A few people, five, then, a hundred, two hundred, everybody put some. We are keeping it all in one place. But how to build a temple? Can I build it? I am living with eight children. Only one person is earning. I give them food, I buy clothes and things for the children, I have given three daughters in marriage, I have to see to that. How can I alone build a house? My husband gets a hundred, two hundred rupees salary. Can we eat on two hundred rupees? A group of people I have made better and done good for. For that, if everything is built and given, okay. If there is power [śakti], anything will happen. If there is power, it will happen by itself.

[What is power?]

She asks what is power. An illness comes … Now what have you come here for? You have come for research. If you go thinking of that mother, you will complete all your research perfectly. “O Mother, you must make everything happen. When I go, whatever you want me to do I will do.” If you pray like this, whatever you need, she will do and give. Then you, following your wish, give me a gift. If I make everything better for you, you give what makes you happy. Then how, that gift, that is that mother’s power.²⁵ It is the power given by that mother. I could do nothing. I have Māriamman herself. Karumāriamman. All power is one female only. Mothers have many names. For every town, a deity. For every deity, a name. For every name, a power. Some deities will not speak when they come into someone’s person. They will not open their mouths and speak. When they come into the person of other people they will speak. When Māriamman comes into someone else’s person, they will bite and eat a chicken. They will take camphor and put it in their mouth. She will not do all that in my person. That is a different power. But in my person, the power of that mother, whoever has a need, whatever is on your mind, she will say exactly. She will bring it about. There are different powers, but as long as she has been in my place, what has happened to me is just this.

[You said once before that you don’t eat meat?]

Yes, I must not eat it. The reason … I have suffered much trouble. In the year seventy, marrying off the eldest daughter, we suffered much difficulty.²⁶ There was no food, there was no clothing, there was no comfort in the house, there was nothing. When I was suffering much difficulty, crying and crying and crying and crying, and I had to protect eight children, in this town there was no one of my heart.²⁷ I was in a separate house. He had his religion; I had a separate religion. And so many children, three girls had come of age, the whole group of children had to eat, all were school children, I had to buy books for school, I had to educate them, didn’t I?²⁸ Then, with all those children, how to survive? At that time, from your country, from Germany, that woman came. Through her help, Vasanti was educated. But that woman went back to Germany.²⁹ After that, only Vasanti was educated. She came to the front in her studies. But she only studied to the ninth grade. We did not have the means to educate her further. Thus having all these troubles, I was crying. We married off the eldest daughter and stayed in her husband’s house. He earned a salary, and for the sake of the children, eating only one meal a day, somehow we remained. Then my relatives all saw me and would not speak to me at all. “She has no money” [they said]. And with all these children, I was filthy; no relatives would come to my house. They would not even ask how I was doing. So much trouble I have suffered. I was alone with the children. Then Vasanti, Mallikā, Selvi [three of her daughters], and I went to work as construction laborers.³⁰

Even before that, the mother was in my person. If someone’s body is unable, she will come and protect them, everyone. If someone has a trouble, she will make it better. One Friday I wept, “If you are like this, why are you sending me to such labor?” I bought some poison. I was going to give it to all the children and we would die. I would give it. We could not stay in that town. There was no one to help us. No one came forward to protect us. So instead of this slavery, we all must die, I thought. So I bought bedbug poison and was going to mix it in their coffee. Thus one day I carefully bought it, and put it away, and lay down to sleep. All three or four children, without even coffee, silently lay down to sleep. Then weeping I lay down.

Then a snake came by way of the rafter. There was a stick there—now we have a bigger house, then we had a small house—it came by way of the stick, it went to the place where that mother was, and circled her picture. Māriamman herself. First it was seen as a snake coming, then that disappeared, then like a little child, wearing a sari and a jacket, she came running pitter patter like a little child, wearing a necklace, with her hair all braided, and flowers, saying, “Don’t you cry. Tomorrow I will protect you, don’t you cry. Tomorrow a woman will come to you, she will give you a hundred rupees. You cook and eat well and fill your stomach. That woman’s husband has suffered much and has separated and gone away. I will give him protection, from then on I will keep you well.”

Thus that child came and spoke. “Don’t you cry, don’t you cry.” Wiping my eyes. “Don’t you cry, I will come and protect you.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Don’t you know who I am? Look at me well,” was all she said.

When I looked again, a woman of your height. In her hand a spear, a red sari, a red jacket, in her hand a fire trident.³¹ Wearing a red sari with a yellow border, running to me she said, “Don’t you cry, I will protect you, I have come, you will be happy. All those people who don’t come to your house, who don’t speak well of you, who don’t give you comfort, they will all come to your house seeking you. I will keep you well; I will give you your own house; I will find good husbands for your three children; I will give you much money; I will give you cattle. Whatever you want, you believe in me, I will bring it about.” Thus speaking, that mother disappeared.

From that day on—on Friday I had lain down crying, that night I saw the dream—the next Sunday a woman came, her husband had left her sixteen years before. In Alwarpet. Then that woman had gone everywhere to the temples, her husband had not come back to her house.

I knew the servant girl who worked in her house. She told her, “If you go to this place, that mother will tell you what happened to your husband, and will make him come home. But she has many children. Māriamman comes only in that woman’s person. In the house there is no god [statue] at all. That woman has been there for three years. Before that there was no god or anything.”

That woman came. She brought good money, much money. As soon as she came, I asked. She said, “I want to ask Māriamman. That mother Māriamman must give me some answer.”

So I said okay, and bathed and returned and asked Māriamman. She answered, “In three days I will make your husband return. A prostitute has got your husband. A girl, a Malayāḷi girl has got him, has performed sorcery on you, and has separated him even from your language. I will heal that sorcery, and will bring your husband and join him with you.” Thus that mother spoke.

As soon as she said this, that woman became very happy. She took out a hundred rupees and put it in my hand. As soon as she gave the hundred rupees, Māriamman was gone. After that I went and cooked meals for the children for two or three days, and it was that way. On the third day, her husband came. That woman’s husband returned.

As soon as he returned, one of their children, a big boy, went crazy. His intelligence was not well. He would not brush his teeth. If he went to defecate, he would not clean himself. A boy who had finished high school. It was as though a madness had seized him. Then this mother healed him. The doctors said it was a brain disorder.

But when they said that, this mother said, “That is all untrue. That is all untrue. That Malayāḷi Brahman, that Malayāḷi girl, she went and did some magic. I will give protection.”

So saying, she brought that boy here, said a spell over a fruit, rubbed it on his head, poured the juice on his head and made him well.

Because of that they became very happy, and they gave me six hundred rupees. They brought six hundred rupees and gave it to me, and said before everyone, “You make an offering.”

As soon as that woman’s husband returned, this mother said, “From the time that I protect you, only I can end all your troubles. No one at all will protect you. No one will heal you. Only I will protect you.”

After the family was all well, this mother said, “For your sake, I have brought your husband back to you. You buy me a yellow sari, buy me a māṅgalayam³² and put it on me. Only then will your husband stay with you until the end, without parting.”

Thus she asked. After that, they brought the māṅgalayam and put it on her. After that, she cured many troubles for them.

I had many debts, having borrowed a little from everybody, and I was afraid that someone was going to come and ask to be repaid. Then, at that time, that mother brought various people to me and I healed them, and through them she made me well off. Today, I am a woman of her well-being.

[What kinds of people have come to you?]

Many. It is impossible to say who. Thousands of people have come. Last night there was a girl seized by a demon. They put her in a taxi and brought her here from Mylapore. When they took her to a doctor, he said that someone had poisoned her. They said, “No, a demon has taken her; that mother will say it is true.” So saying, they carried her and put her down here. Examining her, we found that it was a demon. As soon as that mother gave her a lemon, that girl was healed. “From now on, nothing else will happen; take her and go,” she said. The girl got up nice and healthy and went. Then they put ten rupees in my lap and said, “We came without telling the doctor. You did well.” So saying, they went.

If there is asthma [using the English word] she will cure it. That sugar disease [diabetes]. Cancer in the belly, that disease.³³ If the ears don’t hear, if the eyes don’t see, she will cure all that. If you say it, she will do it. If you say that she can, she will do it. If you say that she can’t she won’t. If something won’t heal, use a doctor to care for it. “By means of him, I will cure it,” she will say.³⁴ “If you cannot do it that way, then I myself will heal it,” she will say, and she will undertake it.

In an ordinary day, she will come three times. If we think of her and offer camphor, she will come as many times as we want. However many times people come to us, that many times I must bathe and be clean. I must not eat meat or anything like that. I must drink only plain milk. If I want rice or something, I will eat it. I must eat only what is prepared in the house. I eat only what is in the house. I must not go out and eat. I must not go out and eat in anyone’s house.³⁵ If I do eat, it will not stay with me. I will vomit immediately. My eyes will burn, a great dizziness will come. Therefore I must not eat. Afterward, when she comes, she will be angry. “Why do you eat in all the houses?” she will say.

[In the picture on the wall, your hair is neatly braided. Now you wear it matted …]

My hair was neatly braided. Five years ago, she said, “You must not wear flowers; you must not braid your hair; you must not put oil and all on it.” Now if I go to relatives’ house, or if I go to anyone’s house, ugly like this, they will laugh at me, won’t they? But it is a true deity.

People were continually saying, “So this is the way it is with you. You say you won’t comb your hair. You say you won’t wear a poḍḍu.”³⁶ They were continually talking like that. So when I went out I would comb my hair. Otherwise, those who saw me would think me ugly. I was continually doing that, saying, “I have my hair.”³⁷

And she was continually saying, “If you come in my person, you must not braid your hair, you must not wear a poḍḍu, you must not wear earrings, you must not wear nose ornaments.”

If I wore earrings, blood would come in my ears, my ears would swell. If I wore a nose ornament, much blood would come, my nose would swell up, I would get a great headache, my whole head would throb. If I wore kumkum, my forehead would swell until it was round. If I took it off right away, it would get well. It was just like this. And she would say, “I tell you that you must not braid your hair, you must not comb it, and you keep doing the same things.”

So saying, one night she came in a dream, she came in her own form, and she said, “If you adorn your face, my power cannot come to you. If bad men look at you with desire, my power will not seek that place.³⁸ If you do as I say, I will protect you.”

And so she made me promise that from then on I would wear no ornaments or adorn myself. But one day I did. And she came in a dream and said, “Now, instead of wearing my appearance, you adorn yourself. You watch. I tell you and tell you, and you keep putting a comb in your hair and braiding it. I wear my form that has no comb. I wear matted hair.”

So saying, she went. The next day when I looked, my hair was all matted. That mother has made me wear many appearances.

[You said that you must not speak with your husband?]

I must not speak with him. Before, we spoke all the time. Now five years have passed. You know that boy [her smallest child]? From the time that that boy was born, there has been no spoken word between us. Even if we did talk, there was no other enjoyment of the body. Even though we were like that, this mother came, and said, “Call your husband.” And he came and offered her a mango, and she peeled off the skin and gave it back to him.³⁹

Then, three years ago she tore off my marriage emblem and put it in his hand,⁴⁰ saying, “From now on, you must not touch her. You must not look at her or call her. From now on, between her and you there will be no relation of any kind. If anyone scolds her, if anyone does anything to her, I myself will punish you. Therefore, no one must touch her.” Thus she spoke.

[How does she punish people?]

Suppose someone scolds me, and I can’t take it and am crying. That person’s body will become unable. She will give them some kind of difficulty. However we speak of her, she will punish us in that way. She will do nothing else.

I eat only what is in the house. I do not eat anywhere outside. If I do eat outside, I eat in a Brahman hotel, but I must not eat on a plate. I must eat on a leaf.⁴¹ But now for a year I have felt no hunger. I have no desire to eat anything. Now it has been more than a year. To adorn her, to have that mother come into my person and to be continually doing good for all who come, that has become my only thought. If the children become sick, I won’t take them to a doctor; I won’t ask what they have. If anyone is in the house, if anyone speaks a little angrily, at first, from pride, I feel like I want to answer them with a beating.

[How does it feel when Māriamman comes to you?]

When that mother comes, our arms and legs tremble and shake. The nerves inside all tremble, and we cannot open our eyes. At the time when that mother comes, we must sit down and think only on that mother. “O Mother, you alone must do good for everybody.” So saying, first we must think of her. How must we think of her? “Ōm nama sivāya. Ōm parāśakti. Kāñci Kāmāḍci. Madurai Mīnāḍci. Kāci Vicālāḍci.⁴² Power with so many names who is one power, you must come in my person, and do good for everyone. To everyone without failing you must speak the truth.” Thus we must pray to her.

When we pray to that mother, the eyes will be closed, it will be dark to us. Who and what there is, none of that we will know. Then in our body a feeling will arise. Like a trembling, all the nerves will convulse. Only after that will we be aware that our whole body is trembling. If we try to stand up, we will not know how. It seems that it is flying of its own accord. Then our feet dance by themselves, circling round. She is creating a dance in our bodies. It is she who comes and dances, her power it is. When she comes and dances, then in whoever’s family is whatever evil, whoever has whatever trouble, whatever illness, whatever they want to take place, then in the person of that feeling, she will come and tell it. We cannot tell it. In that time, her wisdom is in our place. She will speak with our voice. Her voice cannot speak, can it? Our voice cannot speak at all. With her voice she comes and speaks to us. For three and three-quarters nāṛi⁴³ only she will be in our place. As long as she is there, that feeling is in our body. When she is gone, that feeling will subside. Then we will have our feeling. What happens after that, what has to happen now, we do not know. That is her power.

[What happens when a ghost possesses somebody?]

Ordinarily, if someone is seized by a ghost, a dead person, someone who has died leaving many children, that spirit will circle around in that family. It will not go out. Then, whoever it likes very much, in whomever’s person it has much desire, that spirit will seize that person. The way the feeling of the mother seizes one, in the same way the feeling of the dead person will seize someone. When it seizes, it is wind. It has no form at all. But in that child’s person day by day pain in the arms and legs, pain in the body, dizziness, it will not take food, it will take no responsibility in the family, it will dislike everybody, it will have no affection. It has so many characteristics. However she died, that feeling will dance in her person. Then her name, her address, how she died, how she lived, what she died of, how many days her sickness lasted, she will come in her own form and give word of all that. Then the feeling of this mother will come in my person, and will ask that dead spirit for a detailed explanation.

Now if in my person the mother comes, and in your person that spirit is attacking, as soon as the mother comes, that spirit of its own accord will come into your person. In the same way it will dance. When, in the same way, that feeling dances, the mother will ask you, “Who are you? How did you die? Of what did you die? Why have you come into this child’s person?”

When she asks like that, you will answer, “I had this same kind of desire. When she came to a certain place, I, my spirit attacked her.” So speaking, that which is in your person will give an answer to the mother.

Then the mother will say, “What is the matter with you? You have been here for so long. For you to go, what food do you want? Whatever you like, take it and eat it. You come with me.”

Thus that mother will invite it away. It will take it. That is the power of that mother. It is true that ghosts exist. It is wrong to say that they do not. The disease in the body that the doctor cannot cure, the mother has the power to cure. The doctor is second to Māriamman.

In this religion … for all religions there is a deity. Ordinarily for you, you are Christians, that is that Jesus’s thing, isn’t it? In the same way, Christians have three kinds, seven kinds. Those people who say hallelujah, who don’t wear jewels or anything, they too have belief in our deity. In your religion or in the Christian religion, however many mistakes you make, there is a husband. You follow your desires and make love with him and marry him. For ten years or five years they lie with him. If they write that they don’t want him, they can take on the next husband. You must know that well. They can take another on, can’t they? Then to your god you say, everything I have done is wrong. Creator, you forgive me. You take on all that sin. If you say that, your deity will take it on. Our god too takes it on.

At a small age, a child was married. Her husband failed and died. That child must be just like that to the very end. She must not wear kumkum again, she must not wear flowers, she must not wear beautiful clothes and jewels. The custom of that time. She must be just like that. Now even that widow can marry. One who is a small child can go to the next man’s place, her life must not be ruined, an ugly name should not come to her, for her too they make a life. Whatever deity made that wrong, it is wrong. If there is a husband, to follow one’s desire and want another husband, and be like that, is wrong. Our god does not like that.

For our god, we must make a prayer. For our god, if a child is sick, for that sickness to become well, for Māriamman I take a child’s skirt and place it [before her idol], and place kumkum, and I put a garland there, and I pray. That child will get better. After it becomes well, we must go and do as we said in that prayer. If we do not, the same kind of thing will happen again. Our god has that power. For our god you must light a candle, mustn’t you? A candle and roses. Just that, flowers and a candle for your god. For our god, we can do whatever we want. Every god has its way. For Māriamman, cuṇḍal [a kind of bean dish], sugar poṅgal [rice cooked in milk], they sacrifice a goat, they kill a chicken, they do all that. For your god there is none of that. For your god, killing a chicken and all, and coming as feeling into someone’s person, does not exist. Does it? Your Jesus does not come into anybody’s person. Only in that Bible, his birth in truth, in truth his coming and disappearing in light, because of that you put a cross [before his image] and pray.

This mother is not like that. In a town, when they put up an image of a mother, and perform a great ceremony, and make oblations, and perform worship for a god, the power of that mother will come into that place. That is a great temple.

[What people will Māriamman enter into?]

That mother will not come and celebrate in everybody’s person. She has a desire. The heart must be clean. Lies, thievery, a lack of charity toward people, if you have these qualities, she will not come. There must be charity. If there is hunger, for that mother you must do good. Mustn’t you? In a family, you must not cause any harm. Into the place of that kind of heart only, that mother will come and she will stay. If Māriamman comes, if that mother has come bringing pearls [pox], we must not call a doctor. We must not use a needle, we must not give medicine, we must not take pills. We must think of that mother, grind turmeric and neem leaves and apply them, and give good, cool substances. Coconut water, milk, buttermilk, varieties of fruit, we must give all this. We must not give hot spices. We should not give meat and all. Like that, for the mother. That mother makes pearls [causes pox]. In the person of a child, or in the person of an adult, following her desire she comes, because she feels attracted to someone she comes. She will not enter everyone’s person. Ordinarily, the kind of person she likes most is someone of an untouchable group. In such a person she has much desire. Into them she will come very often. She will come in a Muslim’s person. Christians—she recognizes no caste or religion. She will come in every kind of caste. But, only in your religion she will not come. Will she come in your religion? Has the mother come to you? In your religion she will not come at all. In all the other religions she will come. In your one religion only she will not come. Because … desire. We have a belief that in your heart is a god. Nevertheless, you will not use it. You will not use her power.

Now you are doing research to see what she is. Does she have a form? Does she have a power? What all can that power accomplish? This whole world, that is her power, isn’t it? The creation of man is her power. She has a power to create. The saying that the harvest of her life is peace, that is a power. Everything is her power only. Therefore, we are unable to accomplish anything. By our own efforts we can do nothing.

Those who do not have the devotion of Māriamman, they do not know belief in her at all. They do not know what she is or what her belief is. To those who have her belief, “If we make even a small mistake, it is just because we made this mistake that we must be like this?” So saying we must pray to that mother. Mustn’t we? When much trouble comes, when there is a torment that we cannot change, that will not go away, “O mother, you will end my sorrow.” But she will not come directly and give us money. Her way is this: for our living, for our earning, the way of clearing our debts, is that by means of her power, somehow or another she will show us something. If we go to this place, something good will happen. Her work will bring about good for us. If she seeks and gives us work, from that work we will be able to move forward. Because of that work, praise will come to us. Because of that, we will be able to clear all our debt and lead a good and happy life. Thus a word of feeling she will come and say. That word will be true. That is her belief.

She has a name, she has power, she has substance, everything is in her hands. We cannot stand opposite her and ask her who she is. According to the wish of her mind, whatever she wants she will accomplish. If someone says, “This is wrong. You are no deity. Where is Māriamman?” In that place, very close to them, she will not show her power. Patiently waiting, afterward she will show it. People will say there is no deity, they will not be good. The foods they eat will not be good, their family life will not be peaceful, they will have no learning, they will have no good customs.

[Even if someone has no learning, can’t he be a good person?]

A man who has no learning is poor, but he will have that mother’s devotion. If someone wants to do research in the world, they can do nothing. But the man with devotion, no one can deceive him. In any life, in any labor, he will have all wisdom. The reason is that he has that mother’s grace. Because he has belief, even if ten people come to get him, he can say, “Go away. My mother is here to protect me.”

Those ten people will think he is lying. One of them will say, “Let your mother come and speak in person. I’m listening.” Thus he will ask.

But what word is that? A word without action, a word of disbelief. But because the man who has no learning has belief, he will say, “My mother somehow will protect me.”

And what will the educated man say? “I have education, I have money, I have everything. What do I need a god for? I have more charity than a god. Do you have the luxuries I have?” Thus he will ask.

But how is this? Do you understand? The educated man will suffer disease, he will suffer torment, in his family a lawsuit will arise. He will not have wisdom at all. He will have money and luxury. But he will not have the stomach to eat till his stomach is full. She will cause a disease to arise in his body.