Happened to see!!! (story)

This is an incident I happened to see. The word "see" need not be taken in strictest sense. There are incidents which one happens to see when at young age, which were beyond their ability to comprehend then, however as he grows up he "sees" them better. Anyways, irrespective of whether I was a witness to the incident or not, let me describe what I grasped over these years from the incident.

People who follow my blogs might have known the locality in which I grew up. People of lower middle class and poor live in our locality. It was once upon a time "agraharam" where only brahmins lived, but not any more. However few brahmin families continue to stay there. Also that locality had many mechanical workshops, lathes, "pattarais" (smithy) etc and the street is aptly called as workshop road. The owners of those workshops live in good buildings and the workers live in the huts. I will say the neighborhood is a "slum" but also has some pukka houses of brahmnins and 2 or 3 storey buildings of worshop owners. I was around 6 or 7 then, living in one of those pukka houses.

My neighbour was a near total deaf "subamma", 84 yrs old, brahmin "patti". She was all alone until her widowed grand daughter, "parvathi" joined her. Parvathi was of age 32 or 33, she had a daughter of 4 yrs old named as "meena". I used to spend in subbama's house as she would give me "aval pori' etc. Also I enjoyed playing with meena. Subbama was very orthodox woman (aacharam) and she is very ardent devotee of godess kamakshi. She lived in her little pooja room and hardly had seen come out of it. People beleived she had the grace of goddess and would ask her to bless their children on their birthdays. Parvathi was making a earning by doing some tailoring to the local ladies. Always she was working on her tailoring machine.

One day I heard parvathi was cursing the rickshaw puller "vairam" to one of her customers. Vairam was one of the "rowdy" in our locality who used to sell "ganja". These things I came to know in later years. she was weeping and was saying that she felt very helpless as there was no one to stand by her except for the old "patti". I understood that vairam was disturbing parvathi by his rude behavior and I hated vairam without knowing what he was trying to do.

It was one of those rare rainy nights. The power was off. I decided to spend some time with meena and went to her place. There I saw vairam, drunken and was saying somethings in harsh tone. I did not understand what he was saying and why. Parvathi was crying and shouting at him to leave the place immediately. Subbama was inside her pooja room, probably sleeping as she used to sleep very early. She would not be hearing anything, in any case, as she was deaf. Suddenly vairam was approaching parvathi and parvathi was trying to escape. There I saw a rarest sight. Subbama was out with her stick raised. Her eyes were spitting fire. She was standing there like goddess durga and ordered vairam to leave at once ("Velila poda Rascal"). Vairam stunned to see her, fell on her feet and pleaded her forgiveness. Parvathi hugged her grand mother and started crying. But subbama was her natural self by then and was consoling her by saying "as long goddess kamakshi resides in my house no injustice can happen". I silently left the place.

Wonders of wonders vairam was not seen any more in our locality. People thought it has got something to do with subbama but did not know what exactly happened. However subbama lived for five more years from then. One day she called us and informed she wanted to leave this world. As long as she stayed in her house, her Kamakshi would not let her go. Hence she wanted to join a local hospital where she would die peacefully. She got herself admitted to a clinic in our locality and at the same night she left the world peacefully. Parvathi started taking care of pooja and people thought subbama did not die and she had entered into parvathi. Nobody ever troubled parvathi any more.

Note1: When hrinya kashibu asked prahladha "in which pillar your hari resides"?, the Hari wondering where the child could be pointing his finger, made himself available as "nrusimha" in every pillar. I believe these bhagavatham stories totally, as I have "witnessed" a demonstration.

Note2: Again, it is a mixture of real life incidents, Imaginations and wishes.