From Amma to Kamakshi Amma: A Pilgrimage of Continuity

May 10th, 2026 – Mother’s Day!

Every Mother’s Day, the world fills with photographs, flowers, memories, and gratitude.
But beneath all of that lives something far deeper and far more mysterious:  the invisible bond between mother, memory, presence, and the unseen continuity of life itself.

Some losses do not simply leave absence behind. They quietly rearrange one’s perception of reality. Losing my mother in 2014 became one such threshold for me.

What began as grief slowly unfolded into an encounter with space, devotion, sacred symbolism, synchronicity, and the subtle continuity between the visible and invisible worlds.

Coming from a traditional Indian family, the year following her passing moved through familiar rhythms shared by many households: monthly remembrances, prayers, rituals, and finally the samvatsarikam, the one-year culmination ceremony that honors not only the departed, but the onward journey of the soul itself.

My mother passed away in my hands.

In her final moments, inside the hospital room, I noticed something that even now feels impossible to explain fully, a Tulsi plant growing nearby. Earlier, during the days when Amma was in a coma, I had already strangely noticed its presence there. In the middle of a sterile hospital environment, the plant had quietly stayed in my awareness, almost out of place, yet deeply arresting. And on that final day, it drew my attention again with unusual force. It felt less like simply seeing a plant and more like being called toward it.

Without thinking too much, I rushed to it, plucked a few leaves, crushed them gently into water, and offered the Tulsi water to my mother before her last breath. She deeply believed in devotion, prayer, and the sanctity of such gestures. Somehow, in that moment, it felt as though life itself had arranged that final act of care.

Then came the moment of departure.

The doctor and my brother declared that she had taken her last breath. Yet what imprinted itself permanently in me was not merely the announcement of death, but an experience of space itself. Suddenly, the room around me: the bed, the walls, the relatives gathered nearby, all seemed to expand infinitely outward in a single instant. Everything moved impossibly far away. Vast. Boundless.

And within that immeasurable expansion arose one silent question: Where did Amma go?

That moment marked me forever. It was the first time I viscerally encountered the enormity of existence, not philosophically, but directly.

The months that followed carried many strange synchronicities, subtle moments, inward contemplations that often accompany grief. Then, slowly, it became time to prepare for the one-year ceremonies, the journey back to India, toward a city that had always meant only one thing: “going to Amma.” But this time Amma would not physically be there.
Before booking tickets, I remember pausing with an unfamiliar sadness: What does it mean to travel “home” when the one who made it home is no longer there? And then, unexpectedly, another place entered my awareness: Kanchi. The city of Kanchipuram near Chennai. More specifically, Kamakshi Amman Temple.

I had never visited Kanchi before. I knew of Kamakshi Devi through devotion and tradition, and I deeply revered Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, the Kanchi Paramaachaarya, great sage of Kanchi whose teachings later became meaningful to me through works like Hindu Dharma, etc. At that time it was not intellectual planning. The thought arrived suddenly, almost like an inner call to visit.

And then, as if to anchor that thought with deeper meaning, another memory surfaced unexpectedly…

Just before her final hospitalization, my mother briefly emerged from a week-long coma. For one astonishing day, she regained awareness and spoke to us. After a couple of days in the hospital, we brought her home, holding on to the hope that she was recovering.
But the very next day, she went into distress again.
I remember asking her gently if she knew where she was. And she replied: “Kalahasti.”

There was silence after that.
Soon afterward, an ambulance came and she was taken back to the hospital, where she eventually passed away.

Now, months later, as Kanchi appeared in my thoughts, something connected instantly within me:
Kanchi – Kalahasti – Tirupati.
A sacred triangle had formed.
And slowly I understood why the thought of Kanchi had come at all.

Since I could no longer go to my mother physically, my heart had unconsciously turned toward another form of Mother – Kamakshi Amma. Somewhere within, I surrendered to the possibility that Divine Mother herself would now hold the space my physical mother once did.
Not as a replacement. But as a continuation.

I asked my father to join me on a father–daughter pilgrimage through these sacred places before attending the one-year culmination family ceremonies.
I booked tickets to Chennai, arranged a car, and planned the route carefully: Chennai airport pickup, then Kanchi, Kalahasti, and Tirupati. From there, we would travel onward by train to Hyderabad, visit Amma’s apartment, and finally proceed to Pithapuram, another sacred dear place of Amma – Paada Gaya, in Andhra Pradesh for the concluding rites.

It felt important to honor my mother’s final utterance, ‘Kalahasti’, and to pray sincerely for both: the welfare of the family she left behind, and the mysterious onward journey of the soul itself.

Just before the trip, an unexpected crisis unfolded, massive floods swept through Chennai. It was November 2015. News channels showed submerged roads, stranded vehicles, and even airport runways disappearing under water. For a moment, everything I had carefully planned seemed on the verge of collapsing into cancellation.

And yet, something within resisted cancellation.

I called the taxi service coordinating our travel, and the person on the other end responded with an unusual calm: “The rains are subsiding. You should be alright.”

And almost as if in response to those words, the path began to open again.
I travelled.

The skies cleared the moment I landed. The roads, once shown submerged on news screens, had begun to recede into passability. Kanchi, though touched by the floods, received us quietly, not in spectacle, but in an unexpected gentleness of returning light.

Then came the darshan…

Even now, I struggle to explain what unfolded inside the sanctum of Kamakshi Amman Temple.

The temple was crowded, as it often is. Yet events arranged themselves in a strangely intimate way. A priest took unusual interest in guiding me and directed me toward a sacred spot associated with the temple’s deeper symbolism, the Nabhi, the umbilical center.

Only later did I learn from the sthala purana: history of the Temple, that Kanchi is regarded as a profound Shakti Peetham, associated with the navel center: the cosmic womb, the origin point, the umbilical connection of divine energy.

I had not known any of this beforehand.

And suddenly everything became overwhelming in its subtle coherence.

There I was:
a daughter grieving the loss of her mother,
having inwardly surrendered to Divine Mother,
standing at a shrine associated with the cosmic umbilical center,
being guided to touch and circumambulate that sacred symbolism.

In that moment, something wordless became clear.

It felt as though life itself was revealing: you are not abandoned, you are being born again.

The umbilical cord is our first connection in human life. Before language, identity, achievement, or memory, there is nourishment, protection, and unseen bonding.

And there, after losing my physical mother, I felt mysteriously reconnected to another dimension of Motherhood altogether.
Not metaphorically. Existentially.

That pilgrimage changed something permanently within me.

What began as grief slowly became inquiry. What began as loss became vastness. What began as longing became surrender.

On this Mother’s Day, I felt compelled to share this experience aloud, because sometimes the Divine does not announce itself through miracles that shake the world.

Sometimes it moves quietly:
through a Tulsi plant in a hospital,
through the final word of a dying mother,
through an unexpected pilgrimage,
through floods that part,
through a temple one never planned to visit,
through the touch of an umbilical symbol in a sanctum far from home.

And through these subtle movements, life gently reveals that love, motherhood, and presence are far larger than physical form.Perhaps the real invitation is simply this:
To live attentively.
To remain inwardly awake.
To recognize that existence is always speaking –
through symbol,
through silence,
through sacred geography,
through memory,
through devotion,
and through the immeasurable mystery that surrounds both life and death.