The mango manifested in her hand!
Women all over the world have been able to balance their homes and their spiritual life. They have a blend of strength and tenderness which enables to manage their material and spiritual lives well. Their devout service to husband, family is full of love and God blesses them with extraordinary grace. They are examples for us to emulate and follow. Their lives teach us wonderful lessons on how to cope up with the twists of fate and karma. Karaikal Ammaiyar was an extraordinary Shiva Bhakta. Her unparalleled devotion to Lord Shiva brought about unusual changes in her life. Her love and surrender to Lord Shiva was so deep that she could accept the changes in her life with grace, embrace the turns and twists that life took and move onwards and upwards towards God.
The story of Punithavathiyar is given in the Periyapuranam – the collection of lives of great devotees of Lord Shiva. She was born in a very rich trading family. Her father was a sea trader and had international contacts. But he was a great devotee of Lord Shiva and performed tapas to get a child. A girl was born to him and named Punithavathiyar or the pure one. She had natural love for Lord Shiva and from her early days spent time in singing about the glories of Lord Shiva and worshipping him. When she attained the age of marriage, she was married to another rich trader’s son called Paramadattan. Paramadattan was a good man and also a devout believer of God. He was a good husband and encouraged his wife in her bhakti of the Lord.
Punithavathiyar and Paramadattan had a good life. He loved wealth and earned well. She was a devout hindu housewife who did her duties well, fed the devotees of Shiva as service to the Lord and did her daily worship of the Lord. One day her husband entertained some businessmen who gave him a present of two mangoes of a superior variety. He asked his servant to carry the mangoes home and leave them with his wife. Punithavathiyar received the mangoes and as was her custom and habit, she washed them and offered them to Lord Shiva in her pooja or worship room. Soon afterwards, a holy man came to her home seeking alms. He was a Shiva devotee and was singing the name of the Lord. Punithavathiyar welcomed him in her home. Since she had no cooked food ready, she offered him boiled rice and one of the mangoes sent by her husband, which she had offered Lord Shiva.
At noon, her husband came home for lunch and had his meal. He ate a mango along with his meal with great relish. It was very sweet and delicious. He asked that she bring him the other mango too as he wanted to have it. Punithavathiyar bowed her head in dismay and went to the puja room. She prayed to Lord Shiva to protect her from her husband’s anger as she had given away the precious mango without seeking his permission. As she prayed, she felt a mango materialised in her hand! Offering a quick thank you to the Lord, she rushed to serve the fruit to her husband.
The second fruit was a divine blessing from the Lord. It was incomparably sweet and different from the first fruit the husband ate. So he asked her from where she got the fruit. As Punithavathiyar never hid anything from her husband, she told him the truth. He scoffed at her and said that he too was a Shiva devotee and the Lord never blessed him in this way and that she was telling lies. He asked her to pray to Lord Shiva and get him one more fruit. Punithavathiyar’s faith in Lord Shiva was total and she stood there in full surrender and with folded hands and prayed to the Lord: Give me one more fruit, else my words have no value to my husband. At once another fruit manifested in her hands and she gave it to her husband. As soon as he touched it, it disappeared! Her husband understood that his wife was a divine being and therefore he felt could no longer live with her as his wife. A new twist came into the life of Punithavathiyar. Her bhakti and the grace of Lord Shiva left her in this unusual crossroads of life.
(continued in the next blog)
