THE WEALTH OF MERCY

N the delicious interlude between Diwali and Dev Diwali, or Kartik Poornima, that's coming up on November 5, the thoughts of many devotees may frequently dwell on the abundance of Mahalakshmi. So, it seems appropriate to talk a little about her.

- RENUKA NARAYANAN

Perhaps what we miss in popular calendar images of Mahalakshmi showering gold coins nowadays is the compassion in her gaze. And if we looked again at Raja Ravi Varma's images of Sita Devi, the avatar of Mahalakshmi, we could see her soft gaze, which the painter intuitively captured and shared with us.

Valmiki highlights this quality of Sita's innate compassion in the Ramayana. Trijata, the only nice rakshasi in the Ashokavana, has a vivid dream in which she sees Sri Rama conquering Lanka. When she warns the horde of nasty rakshasis not to torment Sita further because Rama will come to finish them off, Sita's reaction is remarkable. She tells Trijata, "They are only employees, poor things, who are following Ravana's orders. I will protect them! Tell them they will come to no harm."

Queenly? Goddess-like? It's all of a piece if we consider the history of Mahalakshmi in Indian culture. Adi Shankara believed that the individual soul or jivatma was not separate from but part of the supersoul, the paramatma. The journey of human life was therefore the struggle of the jivatma to be reunited with the paramatma. Nobody could fight against malignant fate except by working off bad karma. But he said-and this 'but' is deeply entrenched in the culture-only Mahalakshmi has the power to rewrite a person's destiny through her compassion.