Light Reading: An Ashram in Bromley

This column aims to illuminate dark corners as we grope our way through a world bereft of meaning. Featuring human interest stories from our capital, Light Reading will investigate groups, movements and people who have found bright spots of hope, solace, and sanctuary in unexpected ways.

Bromley is not the sort of place you expect to find God.

Its focal point, The Glades, is a classically soulless Zone 5 shopping mall, occupied by the usual suspects: Clintons and Claire’s, Accessorize and Ann Summers. And yet it is here, dwarfed by a cluster of council blocks and flanked by a football club, that you’ll find the MA Centre, Southeast London’s very own ashram.

I have never been to an ashram in India, but the word (meaning monastery or place of retreat) conjures up images of gilded temples winking in the sunlight. The MA Centre’s main hall is accessed by walking through their large car park. Once you’re in, it looks like any multi-use conference venue. There is a ‘bare bones’ feeling about the place, and not in the artistic Japanese minimalist way. Yet behind this low brick structure is a lush vegetable garden, where I see kale, chicory, beetroot. A little greenhouse stands at the end. A squirrel springs atop the fence. There is also the recently finished Amrita Mandiram, a kind of meditation cabin for the volunteers and devotees who come here. For visitors from afar there is even a guesthouse, with neat, pleasant bedrooms. But who are the devotees devoted to?

MA Centre’s main building, Amrita Hall

The MA Centre, which opened in 2019, is one of the many satellites of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, who goes colloquially by the name ‘Amma’ (‘mother’ in India). Dubbed the ‘Hugging Saint’, Amma spends hours embracing people as a gesture of love to humanity. When I sit down with Michael Sofroniou, one of the volunteers, and ask him how to define Amma, he replies, ‘Depends who you talk to. Her closest disciples think she's God's gift. Other people say she is a saint. And, of course, there’s people who are not moved’.

In place of the cow shed where she began her teachings there is now a mega-ashram complex with skyscrapers.

Amma’s story is pretty wild – especially if you take her flamboyant biography at face value. It is not a book that would impress Western sceptics, replete as it is with incidents like Amma saving a village from a bloodthirsty snake by prayer, healing a leper by licking his sores, and embodying the Supreme God Krishna. All attempts by communists and black magicians to subdue her divinity ends in triumph for Amma and misfortune for her enemies. But if one looks beyond this, there’s a lot to take away.

Born in a remote fishing village in Kerala in the 1950s, from early childhood Amma felt a spiritual calling. Whilst her life was consumed by household chores, she worshipped through song. Her young adulthood is a lesson of inspiring resilience and unflinching compassion. ‘She gave an interview once,’ Michael tells me, ‘Explaining that where she grew up, women were expected to be as silent as the walls.’

Amma’s urge to help the poor and find spiritual fulfilment was at odds with her parent’s desire to marry her, and there were many harrowing years of familial mistreatment. ‘They thought she was breaching the customs’, continues Michael, ‘once she started hugging people, particularly men, everyone was up in arms. It was a scandal.’ But slowly, slowly, a group of followers built up around her.

Today, The New York Times describes Amma’s world as an ‘empire’, and deservedly so. In place of the cow shed in her back yard where she began her teachings there is now a mega-ashram complex with skyscrapers, and a vast, peachy pink Kali Temple that is just shy of 49,000 sq ft. There’s the 100-acre campus of her university, two state-of-the-art hospitals (one in Kerala, one in Delhi) where treatment is subsidised for the poor, and, of course, the other ashrams, of which there are 25 in Europe alone (there are no less than 10 on any continent, and nearly 50 centres just in India). On a two-month tour of the USA she was accompanied by 275 volunteers. She is estimated to have hugged 35 million people. The Kardashians’ following has nothing on Amma’s.

The Kali Temple in Kerala (image copyright belongs to Amma.org)

‘She started by going from house to house, often stealing a bit of her family’s food and giving it to someone who really needed it. It was on a very local level,’ Michael says. Nowadays, the projects are rather bigger. ‘Amma’s template is to have a sliding scale of resources and affordability,’ he continues, ‘She’s built 47,000 free houses in India, but she sends someone to check finances. If a family haven’t got any money, the house is free, but they are required to help build it. She says this gives them a greater connection, a vested interest. Those who can contribute a little to the housing cost, do so. It goes up in levels.’

‘I was able to see her for the great humanitarian she is, but also understand the real-world application of her spiritual values.’

A simple mantra sustains this entire infrastructure. In one particularly powerful address at the 2008 Summit of the Global Peace Initiative of Women she worded it thus: ‘Today, people think only of what they can get. We should not think in terms of what we can get, but more in terms of what we can give’. This may sound like the hackneyed platitude of some world leader. But it hit home for me, because of my knowledge of the MA Centre, and the people who have been so moved by Amma that they try to live by this philosophy.

Michael, who is a British painter - tall, courteous, erudite - met Amma in 1987 in France, where he travelled with his wife and a poorly three-month-old. ‘We got on a plane, we didn’t have any money, and we arrived in the middle of the night. Yet the minute we walked in, we were blown away. She has this incredibly powerful presence.’

 ‘So, when you ask us what we’re doing here, the truth is we’ve been inspired by her. She will hug people - I’ve seen her regularly do it for 14-15 hours - without a break. When you see that kind of care and love you want to be part of it.’ All the volunteers at the Centre are unpaid, they have other lives, but as Michael points out, ‘We’ve taken on board this idea of service. I don’t see myself as a great servant (that sounds very grand, doesn’t it?!), but at the basic level Amma is saying even a smile can be spiritual practice.’

Amma is known as ‘The Hugging Saint’

I meet Joolz Aparna the first time I come to the MA Centre, dragged along as a fluke by a family friend. Warm and softly spoken, Joolz shows us round as the mixed crowd of Indians and Westerners sing Bhajans and eat prasad (food that has been blessed) in honour of Amma’s 70th birthday. They are celebrating in absentia.

A visiting Swami symbolically feeds a little bit of cake to the huge portrait of Amma on stage.

There is a huge cake which they let the little children cut, to their absolute delight. A stunning chorus leads over an hour of devotional singing accompanied by musicians on traditional instruments; I find it more enjoyable than expected for the novelty and upbeat tempo. Afterwards, there is a free vegan feast. A visiting Swami (religious teacher) symbolically feeds a little bit of cake to the huge portrait of Amma on stage. I love the Surrealist touch.

I spoke to an Irish woman who said she had driven for 30 hours to be there for Amma’s birthday. She was putting up at a Holiday Inn. Another attendee, who struck up conversation in the food queue, said his friends had dragged him along to a Puja (Hindu devotional ritual) during a difficult time. He had been an avowed atheist… but wasn’t sure anymore. He felt peaceful at the MA Centre. It had given him confidence whilst he pursued a long-dormant dream of moving from marketing to scriptwriting. As it grew darker, lots of twinkly lights lit up the garden. The crowd was chatty; they swapped job advice, parenting tips and holiday plans.

‘When I met Amma there wasn’t an earth-shattering moment’, Joolz shares, ‘But then I wouldn’t recognise a great Yogi or master because it wasn’t part of my culture growing up. It took a while to develop a relationship.’ Then, while Joolz was visiting Amma's ashram in Kerala, the 2004 tsunami struck. ‘It was Amma’s response to the crisis that shifted everything for me.’ Thousands of people were evacuated from the ashram and housed overnight, then Amma led the rebuilding of homes for those who had been displaced. She was instrumental in mobilising local relief efforts with the state government.

‘It was a flash of insight,’ Joolz continues, ‘I was able to see her for the great humanitarian she is, but also understand the real-world application of her spiritual values.’ After that, Joolz started volunteering. The lesson she learnt was: ‘compassion in action’.

 A mirror whose dusty surface has been wiped clean.

The second time I visit, to conduct interviews on a rainy day, I meet Vakees, originally from Sri Lanka, who lives with his wife on the property. He’s a locum GP for the NHS and has organised for the local health authority and resident AGMs to use the space. Here are people, from different walks of life, offering what they can.

As Joolz, who manages the PR pro-bono, goes on, ‘For a while I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing groundwork in war-torn areas. But Amma has shown that whenever you are giving of your talents, you grow. People can feel helpless, but through small acts anyone can make a difference.’

If Amma’s worldview - that love and kindness can solve the world’s problems – isn’t revolutionary, it’s nonetheless a message humanity has still not absorbed. And whether Amma is a spiritual figure, humanitarian, or artful mercenary (as some journalists insist on portraying her), she has succeeded in inspiring others to such an extent that they are paying it forwards across the globe.

Volunteers helping serve food at the MA Centre

Beaming with enthusiasm, these volunteers share how they use the centre for outreach to local communities, such as a befriending service to combat loneliness during Covid, vegetable growing workshops, and free meditation and yoga workshops. I am particularly impressed that various practices have been adapted for secular people, showing an emphasis on wellness that doesn’t have to be exclusive to Amma’s cultural background. It is rare to find religious leaders who are willing to cater to, rather than convert, the non-observant.

Her techniques have been exported to prisons and corporate headquarters alike. When I try the IAM20, which is a 20-minute-long combination of breathing exercises, yoga postures and guided meditation, I feel like a mirror whose dusty surface has been wiped clean.

Despite the West’s obsession with meditation and other Eastern practices, there is a tendency to become scathing when the idea of a guru or of God comes up. We have to unpick everything; prove with our superior science brain that they’re not really enlightened. 

But it doesn’t matter if Amma is a divine being or not. For the volunteers who run the ashram, they have their example. ‘We feel very lucky to have found something we feel is real,’ Michael sums up. Part of their mission is to pass on this light.

To explore the Centre there’s no need to believe in Amma, religion in general, or Hinduism specifically, you can even question the effectiveness of yoga should you have the urge. But there is a community here, a window to a culture, an opportunity to do a rewarding activity like gardening, a chance to try out meditation without forking over a fortune, a sanctuary to visit if you are interested in spirituality (Swami Shubamritananda Puri visits regularly to give inspiring and practical talks). They are even developing the venue, with plans to add a commercial kitchen, community café, and massage area.

Frankly, I would rather be at the MA Centre than playing rat race at an overpriced work lunch or scrolling uselessly on Instagram. There’s got to be more to life, and there’s officially more to Bromley. 

For more information on the MA Centre, please visit their website, or reach out directly via email

For more information on Amma and her other initiatives, please visit the main website