The Maid and The Mother

Me and my mother lived in a house. My mother will always complain to me about our condition. Our condition as humans and also as women.

Then one day we had a maid in our house.
I do not remember her arriving, she was just there. The strange thing is that once she was there, it felt as if she had always been there with us in that house. It did not feel like she came yesterday or last month. Yet I knew that me and my mother were alone before.

Then one day I saw her red lehenga skirt on the cloths line. I would call it "extremely beautiful." Having seen it while in my mother's room through the window, I opened by mother's closet and looked at the nearly hundred silk sarees hanging there in neat arrays.

"What are you looking at?" asked my mother.
"I am seeing whether any one of these sarees could match the beauty of that shirt. It seems that even as a whole, this closet will not match it" I replied. Being a wise woman, my mother thought about it. I could see on her face that she had accepted it but at the same time was upset about what it meant.

Later one day, my mother was complaining to the maid about her condition as a human and a woman. The maid listened without any emotion. After mother finished, the maid simply lifted her left leg above mother and placed her foot over the sindoor covered maang of my mother. Mother's mind settled and her face became light and blissful, her hands went to the gesture of namasker.

Soon, she kneeled and went down to panjaanga pranaam before the maid's right foot on the floor. Panjaanga pranaam is a way of submission by kneeling and then bending your waist and placing the forehead on the floor. The lifted left foot remained as it is. A few minutes later the maid bent her left knee and placed her left foot over mother's back, gently pressing it. My mother was held in place. Mother was under the hem of the maid's lehenga skirt. Wisdom, compassion and protection flowed down to mother from that red skirt.

Having seen this, I chanted. "Maa Dasi" repeatedly.
Dasi was the word for maid. It was the word that was given to me. Maa means mother.

Following this I heard a chanting.
It was the Maha Dasi Sutra. The great aphorisms of the maid.

At one point it said. It is a suksama maaya, a subtle illusion that makes the lady of the house think that she is in control, but in reality it is the dasi who is in absolute control and out of her compassion the maid lets the lady to be in control.

But if the lady becomes arrogant, the dasi will fold and place the lady below her left foot as effortlessly as folding a betal leaf and placing on her tongue to be chewed.

As I was listening to this. A thought occurred to me that the dasi is my true mother and my biological mother is an illusion.

Then the chanting, replied me.
It honoured my mother as the creator of my body. It said that during pregnancy, when the foetus in my mother's womb reached a certain state.

Maa dasi appeared seated on a vrishaba, a great bull. Later I realized it was her own masculinity on which she was stationed. She was dressed in her red skirt. Her face full of bliss. The womb of the dasi bloomed like a lotus and her breasts shook joyfully.

A speck of consciousness that is collected in her womb split from the pool and started its downward journey. It further said that consciousness from her head flows down through her hair and gets collected in her womb. The speck would always want to return back but it has no option to return. It had to make the downward journey.

This speck of consciousness merged with the foetus in my mother's womb once out and made the body complete.

The chanting then questioned me. "Who are you to compare the mothers? Who gave you the right to choose one over the other? What knowledge do you have to compare the lehenga with the sarees? You are a mere speck of dust at the feet of your mother. All you can do is to watch the sacred play between the dasi and your mother with awe. Settle at the the meet of your mother who has settled at the feet of the dasi."

I settled at my mother's feet.