Ritual nostalgia

the emblemic deity - the ghot 
by Subhrangshu Chatterjee

This time of the year is drenched in nostalgia. Always.

Puja Chronicles: the memory and the questions blend ...

Be it Deepabali/Diwali or, Halloween, the fearful and the dreadful are not kept at a distance. Each is a celebration of the duality of existence - of light and of darkness. The legends behind each is varied. The legends associated with Diwali include the mythical return of Rama to his kingdom after a period of 14 years; the mythical slaying of the demon Narakasura by Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu); the return of Bali (the demon-god slayed by another incarnation of Vishnu- Vamana) from the nether-world, to dispel ignorance; the celebration of goddess Lakshmi and that of goddess Kali. Each of the myths involves the victory of good over evil, light being the symbol of wisdom, knowledge, wealth and goodness. 

Of all the rituals that I have seen, I feel intrigued by three specific rituals. 

The first is the act of praying to the goddess Alakshmi (see the post regarding this here). 

The second is the the lighting of the 14 lamps on the eve of Deepabali, which is said to be a custom that started when lamps were lit as the mythical Rama returned to his kingdom after 14 years. I didn't know of this myth for a long time and created a significance of it in my mind. I believed (and continue to do so) that the 14 lamps lit somehow signify the 14 generations of ancestors who preceded me. I had no idea of myths involving Halloween celebrations then. In the presence of the pumpkin being 'Halloweenified' by K_ and A_, I thought of looking up the legend behind the celebrations.

I was in for a surprise when I realised that the legend of remembering the ancestors, that I had thought of as the explanation of the 14 lamps-lighting ceremony as a child, is eerily linked to the beginning of the custom of Halloween celebrations! Traced backed to the Celtic custom of celebrating Samhain, Halloween has its origins in the belief that on this day of the year, the border between this world and the Otherworld becomes thin allowing the passage of spirits into the human world. The spirits that could harm were repelled by carving out hollowed faces in turnips (pumpkin was adopted at a later stage for the same function) and placing them at the entrance of the house/ at windows; and, by wearing costumes that were repelling. The lamp placed within the hollowed turnip/pumpkin is symbolic of the souls in purgatory. 

It left me perplexed and humbled to feel that the Alakshmi, the 14 lamps and the carved face on the pumpkin on Halloween are connected by this inherent idea that the positive and the negative co-exist simultaneously. Life is not a shade of black and white. When the prayer to Alakshmi is offered, the act is that of humble request to the 'goddess of misfortune' to leave. When the Halloween pumpkin is lit with a candle, it is not to ward off the spirits of one's ancestors. Goodness and evil, darkness and light, hope and frustration (and all the antithetical ideas that can occur in your mind) co-exist in a strange sense of simultaneity. 

The idea of simultaneity is also evoked in the act of worshipping goddess Kali, which is the third ritual that intrigues me during this festive days. Kali has a terrifying form. The mythology of Kali is beyond the scope of the blog. You could have a look at  the wikipedia article on Kali. To an individual who does not understand the complex symbolism, Kali appears to me to be the confluence of all the oppositional ideas. When in the battlefield, the mother goddess, in the form of Kali is fierce. Her form can repel an individual. All that the mind tutors to believe as bad and ugly is present in her form. In popular iconography of Kali, she is naked; her tongue hanging out as she steps on her husband, Siva; she wears a garland of severed heads; and carries in her two hands a sword like weapon called kharga, a severed head while the other two are in the abhaya mudra (a gesture bestowing fearlessness) and varada mudra (a gesture bestowing blessings). She is usually depicted as dark skinned. The apparent opposites blend in this iconography. The violence of expression cohabits with the benevolence of bestowing blessings. 

It is possibly this simultaneity of the opposing forces/worlds that makes Little Miss Muffet of the household so excited to celebrate Halloween. In her innocence, she does not find the difference between what the adult world would designate as 'good' and 'evil'. Perhaps, this is the wisdom, that, inclusivity is more potent than exclusivity; maybe,this is the 'light' that dispels the 'darkness' of prejudice.

As the season of Halloween and Diwali passes this year, this humble blogger continues her journey towards that light ... an apprentice journeying to realise the celebration of that 'sound' which was 'noise' before....

 (Concluded)

Image: candles lit at the Esztergom Cathedral in Esztergom, Hungary @ self.

Puja Chronicles: questions in the mind ...

There is a strange custom among some Hindu households that perform the worship of goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, on the day of the festival of lights. Before prayers are offered to Lakshmi, an idol made from mud, accompanied by the urine of a cow are taken outside the entrance of the household. Prayers are offered to this strange goddess, goddess Alakshmi and is requested to leave the household. Children of the household, beat bamboo sticks on kulo (an instrument used in villages for husking paddy/rice)¹ with all their might so that the bamboo sticks are broken. They sing a couplet in a completely out-of-tune format :

alakshmi biday hou / ghorer lakshmi ghore eso 

alakshmi go away / lakshmi of the household please return.

- a prayer in earnest by the adults, sung by innocents.

I was always intrigued by this phenomenon. Why do the rituals demand a prayer to the one who is unwelcome, a prayer to the one who is associated with filth and misery, a prayer to the one of misfortune? Deification of the negative forces is not uncommon in Hindu mythology. But why pray to it, before the prayer to the goddess of wealth and prosperity is performed? 

*****

Halloween has always seemed ominous to a child, feeding on Hollywood interpretations of it. This year as K_ marked out the eyes, the nose and the mouth on the pumpkin, I looked on and thought, why the pumpkin is made to look dreadful on Halloween? (Either way, it is dreadful for all those who dislike its appearance on dinner tables in different culinary versions) Or, to cave in the question - why is Halloween thought to be dreadful at all? Why do kids dress up (and yes, some adults dress up too) in something sinister and hop around the neighbourhood asking for 'Trick or treat!' ? Why celebrate something that evokes fear in the minds? Why is the Little Miss Muffet of the household so excited to see A_ carving out the pumpkin so that it gains that fearful dimension? 

Halloween at home

1 'kulo' is defined as "winnowing fan; a bamboo winnowing fan; a multipurpose household implement; a  

    sacred adjunct to almost all folk rituals and ceremonies in Bengal" in 

    the The Quilts of India.. Nov. 5 2010.

To be contd.

Puja Chronicles:A memory

On the eve of the festival of lights or Deepabali/Diwali (deep/dia=an oil lamp), 14 earthen lamps are placed on a round tray. We sit and talk about all the trivialities as we make the cotton wicks (solte) by rolling the cotton between our hands. With the wicks ready in the lamps, we vie for the opportunity to pour oil into the lamps. And then we light them. one by one, as the oil-soaked-wick starts being consumed and starts emanating light, I always remember a Tagore song Ei korechho bhalo... where occurs the expression:

Aamar e dhup na porale, gondho kichui nahi dhale 

amar e deep na jalale dei na kichhui alo ...

If I do not burn my incense stick, it doesn't spread its scent 

if I do not kindle my lamp, no light is emanated ....

To be contd.

Image courtesy: yummy4tummy.wordpress.com

When the pebbles taught the soul ... Noori Ganga's Philosophy

 Ganga descending from the heavens

The cool breeze is blowing across Har-ki-Pauri. The ghat (the river side area) is lit with a thousand twinkling flames that are flowing across the Ganga. Prayers for plentitude, for health, for peace sail in those little boats of fire. Looking out to the busy riverbanks in Haridwar, one will notice the bustling devotees eager to wash off their bad karma in the Ganga. They stand in a singularly identifiable posture-hands folded at the chest, eyes closed and the lips making arbitrary movements. It makes one wonder, whether, organically, the river is more polluted by all the sins that it washes off from the soul, or, by the filth that it washes out from the bodies of the modern metropolis. There is however little time to ponder on this philosophic proposition since the water of Ganga has started receding. We watch in amazement as the flowing vital river gradually reduces to a trickle, till its bed is visible. It is not the wrath of the Gods that has taken away the mythical bestowal of the Ganges from the earthlings. It is but a temporary situation caused by the technical functioning of a dam, a human endeavour with machines. That however does not take away the charm of philosophising about it!

The penitent figures gradually get replaced by several kids and teens, running along the river bed, waiting cautiously for the water to recede completely. They are the paisa collectors. The five rupee coin that you had thrown in the Ganga this morning, wishing for a raise in your salary, is now his. They fight fiercely over the territory each will cover. From the bed of the river, that once flowed down the jata (patted hair) of Lord Shiva, now provides them with 'survival' money. As the evening light recedes and the land of the lords fall asleep, these busy hands continue to search the pebbles and their glistening corners for a coin or two. 

The evening, that saw the drying of the river to the white-and-light-brown-stained pebbles and rocks, melted into the morning light. The morning brought with it the scorching sun and the curious onlookers. What now lies before me is the route that the melted waters of the Gomukh glaciers had chosen a couple of thousand years ago, maybe. 

As I set foot on the pebbles and the rocks that usually lie uneventfully at the belly of this ancient river, I feel tremors of myths and histories rumbling under my feet. Several artefacts are strewn across the river bed. Who knows to which age this statue of Nandi (the companion of Lord Shiva) dates back to? Who knows what god or goddess was this four-legged deity in some lost temple of the yesteryears? Which was the era in which Ganga changed her course, making those houses of the gods vulnerable to temporality? All these redundant questions clatter in the mind as I walk across the  noori Ganga (pebbled Ganga). Murmuring winds blew across the expanse. They echo voices from the past...telling tales of grandeur withered by time ... from the present ... the curious tourists randomly picking artefacts strewn  across the bed ... from the future ... the rambling waters that will flow again in this course and will wither more eras and their cravings to transcend time.

People call Haridwar the seat of Hindu pilgrimage. To me, on this very day, when Ganga dried, I realised in this bustling city of religion, a law of life in its resplendent purity. What we may be in the times to come are but  hypothetical ideas. What is, in this moment; what I am , in this moment is true to my being. There is no before or an after. It is all in the NOW.