64. Balaraman's Obsession!

"We have been visiting many temples. But God has shown no mercy on us" said Sukanya.

"If you start lamenting like this even while entering the temple, how can we pray to God with tranquility?" asked her husband Balaraman.

"Won't God know what makes me lament like this? Perhaps, God will understand the intensity of our grief better if we show our emotions and make an appeal to him rather than pray to him calmly!"

"Be quiet. We have come near the sanctum-sanctorum. Fortunately, there is not much of a crowd today. Let us have a hearty darshan of the Lord."

The couple prayed to God with intense devotion and faith.

They then did the pradakshina**, circumambulating the deity's abode in the clockwise direction. After completing the pradakshina, Balaraman went to the prasada counter, where dishes symbolically offered to the deity were sold.

"You will never miss buying and eating the prasada in every temple! You have an irresistible craving for food!" Sukanya chided him playfully.

"How can you be so ungrateful! Don't I have the habit of bringing you prasada whenever I visit a temple alone?" hit back Balaraman, in a friendly way. "This temple is well known for the Adhirasam***!" he added.

"You have by-hearted the information about which prasada will be delicious in various temples! It appears to me that the purpose of your visiting temples is only to relish the prasadas offered there!"

Balarama went to the prasada stall, bought two adhirasams and offered one to Sukanya. When he was about to eat the adhirasam held in his hand, he was transfixed by a sight he saw near the temple tank. 

On the bank of the temple tank, a young couple was sitting, eating the rice pudding packed in a plantain leaf. Their child sitting on its mother's lap jumped from her lap, took the pudding in its palm and squeezed it using its tender fingers. In the process, the pudding got sullied by mud. The child's father took a small piece of the soiled pudding from the child's palm, put it in his mouth and relished it. 

Balaraman was looking at this scene without blinking his eyes.

"What are you gazing at without even eating your favourite adhirasam?" asked a perplexed Sukanya.

"I was mentally putting myself in the in the place of that child's father. I would have found the soiled pudding squeezed by the tiny fingers of the child tastier than my favourite adhirasam!" said Balaraman, his voice choked with  emotion.

*darshan - the opportunity of seeing a saintly person or the image of a deity.

**pradakshina - Circling the abode of a deity by going around the four walls surrounding it in a clockwise direction.

*** Adhirasam - a kind of sweet.

Thirukkural
Section 1
The Path of Virtue

Chapter 7
The Boon of Having Children

Verse 64 (In Tamil)

amizhdhinum ARRa inidhE tham makkaL
siRu kai azhAviya kUzh.

Meaning:

The porridge squeezed by the tiny fingers

of one’s child will be sweeter than nectar.

(This is the English version of the Tamil story 'amudhinum iniyadhu' by the same author)

Verse 65
Verse 63