Amma’s mother Damayanthi, talking on Amma’s birth, says:

The baby looked at me with a penetrating gaze and a benevolent smile on her tiny face.

Amma took birth in a small poor fishing village, Parayakadavu in the Quilon district of Kerala. She was born to simple and pious parents Sugunanandan and Damayanthi. Before Amma’s birth, Damayanthi had two normal pregnancies, during which her body would begin to swell during the ninth month. The swelling was a sign that her body was preparing to deliver. But, when she gave birth to Amma on September 27th, 1953, the entire birth was silent and she felt almost nothing. Damayanthi looked at the baby’s face and was amazed to see the baby’s dark eyes looking directly into hers with a sweet smile.

Later, talking on her birth, Amma had said that she had no feelings of strangeness when she came into this world. Everything was so utterly familiar to her, and when one knows everything about the world one can only smile. She explains it as:

When one beholds the entire universe as a play of Consciousness, what else can one do but smile?