So Lord Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the epic Bhagavadgita – meaning, he would assume physical form from time to time to protect the virtuous and punish the wicked.
Mother seems to modify this statement something as follows, demonstrating through her actions:
‘Paritranaya Sadhunam
Vinyasa Ayacha Dushkritam
Several incidents that one comes across in her life right from her childhood bear testimony to these two facets of Amma in the above statement.
To make the illustration brief we shall restrict ourselves to a few incidents from among several, which are striking as well as revealing.
The very first incident that occurred when Amma was hardly four years old and soon after her mother’s demise while in Bapatla, concerns the reinstatement of a pious and noble gentleman who lost his job as the priest of local Bhavanarayanaswamy Temple, through the intervention of Amma. She appears as an elderly woman to the Chief Trustee of the Temple who removed him from the job over a hasty misunderstanding about the priest’s complicity in the supposed disappearance of the gold ornaments of the consort of the presiding deity of the Temple.
The second one, also about the same period involved the transformation brought about in a wicked fisherman who robs her of the gold ornaments on her person and pushes her into the sea when she ventures all alone to the beach in Bapatla. But to his dismay and engulfing fear he finds himself pushed into the sea but saved by the very hands of the small lad smiling and standing at the shore with her outstretched hands beckoning him as The Mother.
In a similar way, she brings about transformation in the conduct and lives of two police constables confronting them when they try to rob her of the gold ornaments, finding her wandering alone in the post-dusk hours in Bapatla. She teaches them with the authority and command of a supreme personality as to the duties of the police and how they should conduct themselves and the value of integrity in their lives. Their lives have changed ever since encouraging them to lead a path of piety in the worship of Amma.
Syamala’s rendezvous with Amma is an interesting episode highlighting here how Amma provides protection to the pious and virtuous. Syamala, a widow from her very early age is noble and endowed with divine blessing from her childhood. With nobody to care for, is brought up in a tough environment in her step-mother’s house. She comes across Amma in a cinema theater in Tenali, when Amma was 12 years old, and Syamala immediately recalls the divine face that used to appear to her quite often. Amma sees to it that Syamala reaches Bapatla and with the concurrence and support of her grandfather, arranges for her daily living and life of safety and protection.
Relatively more recent incidents relate to the transformation brought about in two wicked persons in separate incidents and under different conditions. One is a thief who ventures through the thorny bushes to enter Amma’s thatched hut during mid-fifties to rob the gold ornaments of Amma at mid of the night. Amma silently goes to him and caresses him with love and gives some ornaments, accompanies him to the outskirts of the village without being noticed by anybody and returns quietly back to her hut.. This person returns after a couple of years to perform puja to Amma, who told some of us after he left just then.
The other relates to one of the bigwigs among the locals in those days, and who plots to eliminate her (factional feuds were prevailing then in the village). He offers her milk mixed with poison as if in reverence, she being the wife of the village head. Amma drinks innocently pretending to be not aware of it. When his plan does not succeed, with Amma remaining as normal as before and coming to know of her divine qualities through the experiences of some of the other locals, he realizes his folly and deeply repenting over what he did, he started offering her a glass of pure milk every evening, sending it through his daughter symbolic of his reverence and a means of worship of Amma.
Throughout all these incidents and several others we are not only made to realize the essence of the statement given in the beginning, but also provided a glimpse of the all-encompassing attribute of motherhood in Amma. It is worthy of note here that the two facets of the Divinity as Mother are manifest even right from her childhood. It is also to be noted that Amma declared that since she is the Mother, it was her responsibility to cleanse her child even if it comes smearing mud or fecal matter all over its body. Similarly, it is her responsibility to set right the child straying away on a wrong path by her own methods.
Thus, with the aspects of taking care and protecting the virtuous and bringing in transformation in the conduct of the wicked are the glorious attributes of the Mother of all.