Lending an ear to daybreak

Mornings and I have had a lasting love affair. Ever since I can remember, I have been a morning person, usually up by 5. And I mean literally up on my feet. Today was no exception. Only I lay awake earlier than usual, not caring to leave the bed or look at my bedside clock. I decided to give the slippers a slip this time. There was an invisible audience clapping their hands at my decision to stay put in bed as I fought a tremendous urge to switch on the lamp and turn to the unfinished book by my side.

I sleep with my windows slightly ajar in winter. Yes, I have strange taste in ventilation. Summers are when I am cooped up within, listening to the soiree of the air-conditioners blowing away to an artificial assurance of chill. Winters are different. While I keep the house sealed off from evening visits of thirsty mosquitoes, I throw my shutters open at bedtime. So that I don’t miss out on the natural cool, the drift of a wintry mist invading my rest. And by then the six-legged vampires have given up trying to break into human realm. There is another reason though. I like the winter morning sounds.

I like imagining a tiny woman in a white robe, with silver hair and silver stilettos running on my shutter ledge, picking up a sweet rhythm as she passes. And sometimes fancy her slipping indoors as I pretend to lie asleep. No Jack Frost for me. O boy, am I messed up? What I mean to say is that I like the resonance and noises that travel through the silent foggy mist during winter. No silly ambient acoustics from droning fans or air-coolers shutting away the natural clamor – of life. Life abuzz at the end of a dark restful night. And I think the dawn is a whole new world altogether. My kind of world, so to speak. With silence in enough measures to distill the sounds you choose to hear.

I crane my neck to trace the source of light that falls straight on my pillow. I discover faint jangle of utensils coming from my neighbor’s kitchen window upstairs. With that the accompanying tinkle of glass bangles. I imagine wet hands bedazzled with red, blue and green caressing stainless steel pots and pans with lather. Someone is up ahead of me, it seems. I close my eyes. I try to focus on the sounds that come afloat from afar. Bollywood numbers wafting from a late night function at a neighborhood cultural club, which obviously has spilled over into the wee hours. The morning call to prayer in the local mosque – there is a strange peace to the bid, though I can never make out what they say. As if they summon believers to the house of god, to share the morning light together – the break of a new day. The sound of cooing pigeons flapping their wings, haunting the cornice of our identical houses, sitting aligned on the overhead tank after their ritual bustle is over. They chatter away as they wait for glass shutters to open and unknown hands litter window sills with their daily ration of cereals.

I sink my head back into the pillow, roll over and look at the sky. It isn’t yet blue but an inky grey. No sign of cloud too, or maybe there is, the fog doesn’t let me see through. I hear the sound of me yawning. Listen to the steady breathing of my son sleeping next to me. I pull the duvet closer, tighter around us. A tap leaking in a washroom. Someone humming a love-song. There is a couple who live next-block, a flight of stairs below. I can see a square of their bed if I push aside my bedroom curtain and pry, which I assure you, I never do. There are exceptions, of course. Like when I want to see their toddler play with his teddy on the bed, his feet up in the air. When I want to listen to the young parents’ baby-talk, urging the little mite to walk on the bed.

- “We will catch your fall, baby, nothing to fear, sweetheart. Come try, walk right into my arms.”

I can listen to their entire morning routine from my bed. Of the child waking the parents up, the mother warming up water to make the formula, the father brushing teeth, talking illegibly through dental froth, flushing his pee down the toilet, and the whole family stirring back to business. I time-travel back to when I was a new mother and although, we had little money, we had time enough for everyone in the family. We had similar cheerful mornings to wake up to. I smile at the memory – not too long ago in years, but somehow it seems like ages now.

Then there is my next-door kaku, whose snores permeate the thick walls of my en suite toilet. The snores have a surge and a drop – a peculiar resemblance to the rise and fall of tides. And come with an assertion that despite his age and ailments, he continues to defy the end. I offer a silent prayer in thankfulness. The old graying pair are substitute parents to me; oftentimes, dropping in at odd hours to complain about aching joints and rising prices. Shortly afterwards, as the dawn breaks into day, there begins the dull upward-downward grind of the elevator. The domestic helps reporting to duty. The security guard turning off lights on corridors. The milkman arriving with his cart. Newspaper delivery boy pushing the fresh print-roll through each collapsible iron gate. The sun demanding that I face the day with my characteristic nonchalance and wait for another daybreak to soak in the daily echoes of living.

Morning, here I come!

                                                        *********************

Picture courtesy: The Internet

Never too late to be a child! Happy Children's Day!

When I was sailing through school in the 80s and the early 90s, my life as a child mostly swirled around books, a handful of friends, an overprotective family of adults, and my home – a two floor affair with airy rooms, large windows and huge verandahs in South Kolkata. You could see the sky in bits and pieces of blue and white, through the sieve of leaves and branches that nestled into each other in the small patch of green adjacent to the ground floor bed room windows. And the garden floor would be a dappled carpet of sun and shade in the mornings.

Sleep-overs at friends’ or relatives’ were a strict no-no for me. Visits to plush malls were still far away in the future. Children's films released only too few to warrant a visit to the theaters. Eating out happened only once or twice in a year. All my outdoor merriment stemmed from that little stretch of greenery walled in by a brick barricade with broken glass shards cemented into the top railing. To ward off pests, my mother said. The garden had a big Shiuli tree, the flowers of which ushered in wistful Autumns with its tiny orange-stemmed wonders, an enormous Neem that carved out not at all a bitter canopy overhead and huge Hibiscus and Gondhoraaj trees, which poured forth perfumed evenings into my sheltered life.

I remember my father fixing a swing for me in the garden that had one end of a rope tied to the trunk of the Shiuli tree, the other end to the Neem’s. It was nothing grand, a thick double rope with a heavy jute sack serving as saddle. I was skinny (oh yes, I was, once upon a time!) so the swing didn’t ever have to take much of a weathering from my bony butt. Butterflies, the varieties I no longer see around, would flutter their mosaic wings and wander from tree to tree, right under my nose, taking absolutely no notice of me. Ants scurried from hill to hill, scouring mounds for food. We had unusual cacti with pink flowers along with needles in the garden as well. I imagined the place to be my secret garden and would take my books there to read. I also had the habit of talking to myself - I had to fill numerous roles - forlorn heroine chained in a sylvan bower, damsel in distress waiting for her demon lover, fighter queen with flowing tresses, stern teacher minding unruly kids, tearful mothers, querulous hussif, so on and so forth. But the need for something real never diminished.

So you can well imagine that school for me had a special significance. A substantially REAL outside world, other than my secret garden. A school-bus ride in the morning, followed by a solemn assembly in the gigantic bus garage, singing prayer hymns in unison or sometimes just lip-syncing, cracking jokes at the teachers we hated, eyeing the new sari or the make-up on that one favorite teacher, nudging each other to grab secret attention for muttered gossip under breath, narrowly escaping punishment for not polishing shoes, or not braiding the locks, standing up on our seats holding ears for not bringing homework, looking at the watch to count the seconds to break time, staring with awe-filled eyes at the seniors, who by some miraculous stroke of luck always appeared stylish and poised, sharing mommy-made tiffin with famished friends, who were always, always hungry, reading, writing, learning, talking, listening, fighting, loving – my childhood was spent in the best school in the world. And out of those fun-filled days each year, two will always be special to me: Teachers’ Day and Children’s day.

The former was a big affair. My mother would bake cup cakes for my favorite teachers. I would spend hours making postcard greetings to express my deep gratitude and admiration for them. The whole school would come together to pool money for treats and presents for the teachers. Rehearsals would continue through months running up to the big day to prepare for the entertainment lined up for the teachers.

Children’s Day in comparison was a low-key affair. When we were littler, we were allowed to wear party dresses to school on that day. As we climbed classes, sprouted breasts, and came to know the worth of short skirts and plunging neck-lines, the school made uniforms mandatory as part of the Children’s Day routine. On a typical day, we would hear a bit about Chacha Nehru, who apparently had great fondness for kids, despite being a philosopher himself – take that! Then wait for packets of sweets, samosa and toffees. My packet, as anyone else’s would always have edible grease marks on them, and as long as it took me to open it, I would keep guessing the contents. Was it a vegetable chop, or a samosa? Was it a kaju barfi or a gaja? Simple modest treats, yet so precious. The teacher dispensing the treats would be greedily watched by our sisterhood of starved souls as she would smile and nod through the seats, filling each outstretched arm with the gastronomic delights. As we gorged on the goodies later on, we would badger our teacher to sing a song or tell us a story. Some would oblige, some would just give us a free period. Whatever it was we would squeal in delight, as if the gift of that one song or that one 45-minute session to do as we liked was the greatest joy in the world.

Life was simple, our pleasures simpler. Haven't we heard that enough already?

Children’s Day doesn’t come to me anymore. It comes to my son now.

I asked my son this morning as he was getting ready for school: Are you not excited? It is Children’s Day today!
He quietly said: Maybe they will give us some shoddy candies, who cares?

And I wonder if I am still a child within myself raising a grown-up backwards? I had just three dolls to play with, and a red plastic tea set. My story books were loaned from neighbors and libraries. Some were my own, of course, bought once in a year, during my annual visit to the book fair.
My son has a room full of toys, gadgets and books. I have learned to say ‘no’ to his demand for new stuff, and yes he doesn’t ask as much anymore. He understands the price of things now but perhaps will take time to appreciate the value of the same things. I guess he understands somehow that he wouldn’t have to wear hand-me-downs or borrow toys and books like his mother did.

For him Children’s Day is just another day, while every year even now, his mother takes that starry-eyed memory-filled walk back to her girl-hood on this day. However, here’s me hoping that my childhood becomes contagious enough to rub off on to my child, and to your child, and to all the adults in the world.

Happy Children’s Day to the child in me! To the child in you!

It is never too late to live a happy childhood!

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As I was posting this blog, my son hopped in, sporting a wide grin, showing off his latest prize - his Children's Day gift today. Here's a shot of his happiness. I am as excited as he is, or even more, if that's possible. I guess we make a weird mom-son duo, right?

For a change, the boy is happy with his Children's Day gift from Mrs Basu, his class teacher.

A toy bike, with eraser tyres

The bike on my laptop

My first storyteller

I grew up under the affectionate care of a child-minder at home. In Bangla, my mother tongue, it is the usual practice to address our nannies respectfully as “Mashi” (aunty). I called her “Didi” (elder sister) simply because my mother called her that. She was perhaps as old as my mother.

Didi had no name. Or maybe we just didn’t know of any. Most of the domestic staff who traveled to my part of the city from Didi’s part of the village called her “Rano’R Maa” (Rano’s mother). She was a widow in her early forties. Her only living relative was Ranojit, her son, who was a rickshaw puller by profession. Didi was always dressed in white khudder sari with a small black border, and wore black rubber flip-flops. She was very short, dark-skinned, almost the color of polished ebony. Her soft oval face was framed by jet black curls of hair.

She came from a village in the outskirts of my city.

And she came with a bag full of stories.

Folklores of the earth. Myths moored to the smell of rural Indian soil.

Of the many stories she had told me, one that stuck in particular to my mind was that of Chander Maa Buri (Old Mother of the Moon). To my little brain she fed the story of an old woman, who sat inside the moon and spun on a wheel making milk white yarns. I really cannot remember with exact clarity if it was her own silver hair that she spooled into threads, or was it the puffy cloud she picked from her neighborhood sky. 

But spin she did. Like no other.

Plucking out clouds or hairs in strands, Buri would twine them into a yarn. This was as endless a process like the earth’s revolution round the sun, as eternal as the continual switch between night and day, as infinite as words rolling into a stories.

It never came to me to question the practical impossibility of sitting down in the moon, where you were supposed to fly without six times your heaviness added in gear. Of course, she was the mother of the moon and clearly commanded greater gravity than us mortals? 

Didi’s round eyes would grow rounder as she stretched her hands outward to show me exactly how big the spinning wheel was. And then her hands would go further up in the air to signify the mass of snowy white tresses this lady had flowing from her head. Buri was also sold early to me as the one goddess to be appeased if I wanted good strong hair. 

I was in awe already. Not because a head-full of hair meant any achievement to me. But more because the sway this hair-goddess held over Didi. 

I didn’t know the art of spinning tales back in those days and fell for this homely yarn with a love that is akin to the love of the miraculous, the impossible. To reinforce the existence of her Buri, Didi brought me dandelion puffs as evidence. Right from the head of the tress mistress, she said. Since Buri never braided her hair, was it not natural that tiny puffs would drop and drift like snowflakes?

And they did drop and drift down to us. Especially during the autumn months. Of course, my child brain did not see the logic behind their seasonal arrival. And the moment I saw a puff floating in the air, Didi recommended in all earnestness, I was to run after it. Chase it down for dear life and stick it in my own hair. That, she said, was a sure shot recipe for thick, glossy, flowing locks. Also, the ghostly white puffs were so ethereal in their appearance, that they confirmed my faith in Buri and her ancient hair-raising spell. 

I did as told.

Years later when I grew up, I realized that Didi actually believed in her story herself. Not for a moment did she doubt the presence of Buri and her homespun hair. Buri was so real to her, that she would push a puff into my mass of curls as soon as she caught one between her rough fingers. Her life revolved around her own narratives, the only vestige of a life she had left behind in her ancestral village.

Can we live without stories? I don’t think I can. We all have our respective spindles to hold the threads of our world together. We twist our realities around spools of fairy tales so that life becomes that one bit easier to live. Sometimes memories buried deep inside the crevices of our minds, forgotten bits of history - personal or impersonal - all merge together until no clear divide between imagination and reality exists. 

The art of storytelling has had a sustaining role to play across cultures. Spinning stories every night had kept Scheherazade of The Arabian Nights alive through one thousand nights. Just as spinning gold thread out of straw had ensured the miller’s daughter her life in Rumpelstiltskin. In Greek mythology, the three daughters of Zeus and Themis – Clotho (spinner), Lachesis (allotter) and Atropos (un-turnable) — are the white-robed sisters of providence, who spin human destiny on their wheel. So while Clotho brushed and spun the yarn – the life of man, Lachesis measured the length of yarn/life given to each mortal. The youngest, Atropos, the goddess of death, did the final cutting of the yarn, ending the life her sisters had been spinning. Women, as I see are mighty good spinsters then. 

What appeals to me as a curious gift attributed to women is their continuous spinning of tales, yarns, narratives, even the metaphorical thread of events called Life. Out of a formless mass of fiber, straw, hair, and cloud or fluid amorphous moments, they give birth to a perfectly tuned thread, which is weaved to give us the 'fabric' like story. Like a miniature life. Like perfectly formed babies. Mini human forms born in perfect but just reduced proportions of length and breadth.

My babysitter, in that sense was my first storyteller. 

Even before Thakurmar Jhuli happened, and the Grimm’s Brothers and Hans Andersen took over my imagination. So when I tell my son a story, I remember Rano’R Maa with a lot of love, my petite Didi from an unnamed village in Bengal.


She gave me my first yarn.

Of fasting-feasting wives

Yesterday I walk into my office and a very pretty face beams at me, putting up two mehendied hands for me to see.

Wow! I say, they look lovely! When did you get them so decorated? I ask Prachita, my colleague, who is an engineer and also a marketing expert in my organization.

 “Yesterday was Karva Chauth, na?” She smiles.

“But isn’t your man in the US now?” I ask.

“Yes, we broke the fast together over Skype.” She explains.

Karwa Chauth Mehendi on hands (Source: Internet)

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A few days ago, recovering from the afterglow of the Pujas, I had written an article on Sindoor Khela (the annual vermilion bash of married Bengali women, when they say goodbye to the Goddess Durga). Expressing my thought that any compulsory sign a woman is forced to carry of her marital status signifies subversion of her identity as a human being. Having said that, I also wrote that wearing or not wearing any such sign is completely a matter of personal choice and if I am willing to gun down a woman for wanting to flaunt her sindoor, I am just the other face of the dictatorial patriarchal coin. Or maybe just as bad a matriarchal battle post!

 A lot of interesting debate took place on my article as I sat reading impressive academic stands on the usage of “sindoor”. And given the fact that I have some highly capable friends, many of whom teach in esteemed universities, or practice in international hospitals, their arguments were far from being just empty anger against tradition or even its opposite – blind faith in any convention. As always, I gained a lot of knowledge from just reading their comments and was sad when everyone went home at the end of it.

This week, when some of my friends celebrated Karva Chauth, I was intrigued to find out the origin of the ritual – slammed down by imperious feminists for being anti-women. Really? I asked myself.

If Karva Chauth was that bent on bringing women down, why was my globetrotter friend Sutapa Agrawal posting pictures of her pretty face behind a sieve? Why was my school senior Reshmi di, a writer and a woman of great substance, all dressed up and posting KC party pictures with her beautiful and accomplished girl-friends? Surely there was something that made all these enlightened women happy about KC? And happy they all were – though all of them are perfectly capable of seeing through any vicious scheme behind any ritual designed to bring their kind down. 

I was eager to find out. And here is what I found.

Karva Chauth is a one-day festival celebrated by Hindu women in North India and Gujarat in which married women fast from sunrise to moon-rise for the safety and longevity of their husbands. Sometimes, unmarried women observe the fast for their fiancés or would-be husbands. (Remember Kajol in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge? Ah, the romance of it!)

Karva is another word for 'pot' (a small earthen pot of water) and chauth means 'fourth' in Hindi (the festival falls on the fourth day of the dark-fortnight, of the month of Kartik). There is no strict consensus on the origin of the ritual. I found out the following likely reasons behind it:

1.       Around end October many of the mighty rivers in the Northern part of India dry up after the deluge of monsoons gets over. Military campaigns and long distance tours being impossible during the rains, it was only at this time that men of the households would venture away from home in search of livelihood . And women/beloveds/fiances, who would stay back home for months on end waiting for their men would observe the ritual to pray for their safe return home. Sweet, is it not?

2.       The north of India is predominantly wheat eating. Being the largest consumer of wheat, north India is also the largest producer of wheat. Karwa Chauth overlaps with the onset of the Rabi crop cycle in India, when farmers would plant wheat in the fields. Big earthen pots (Karvas) would store the wheat and women would fast in their homes (since the men would work out in the fields in the sun and couldn’t go without food through the day) to pray for a good harvest. Still don’t see anything demeaning to women in here!

3.       The interesting bit comes now and is my favorite. Earlier, teenage girls got married and went miles away from home to live with their in-laws in remote villages. Telephone/email/Facebook had not yet arrived. Venting out ineffectual anger on status updates were still not the vogue. To make the new bride feel at home, a cute custom of befriending another woman, usually a bride from the same village, but not related to the in-laws family, as kangan-saheli (bangle-girlfriend) or dharma-behn (god-sister) was started. (Cool that they actually thought about young brides in those days so much!) This relationship between girlfriends was sanctified in a small ceremony and they would confide in each other in all matters of the heart. Karva Chauth started as a festival to celebrate this special bond of friendship between the brides and their god-friends. They would dress up together and have fun at the ritual and look at the moon together, while not having to work the whole day. The notion of praying and fasting for the husband came much later and is secondary. However, the husbands would anyway play a role in the ritual, because it was only after getting married the brides would be able to carry the frolic out. So the girls would celebrate their husbands thankfully for bringing the blessing of a new girlfriend in their lives. They would buy news Karvas (clay pots), handpaint them and put girly items like bangles, ribbons, henna and shringar (cosmetics) inside before exchanging the pots.

4.       There are mythological origins to the festival too. There is a story of queen Veervati and how she lost her husband being tricked by her brothers to break her fast, etc. And there is this story about Draupadi, who was advised by Krishna, her sakha to do a Karva Chauth for the safe return of Arjuna. Indeed there is a lot of power given to women, who can either end or bring back their dead husbands’ lives by undergoing a simple fast. Don’t you think?

Well, so much for the origins. Now, how is the custom observed in current times?

Women celebrating Karva Chauth together (Source: Internet)

Today, a typical Karva Chauth day begins with the mother in law making sargi (early morning meal) for the bride, and all the bride ever does on Karva Chauth is eat her fill of that meal and relax through the day waiting to dress up and have fun with her girlfriends in the evening. Newer versions of the ritual don’t even include a fast! Women eat vegetarian food through the day. Some eat chocolates and drink Horlicks! Also, with the monsoon harvests being over, there is no dearth of homemade sweets and treats to gorge on. Masti unlimited, what say?

Happily, no one believes that fasting will actually enhance the span of lives. I asked a male friend, Ashwin, if he would fast for his wife on Karva Chauth. He said:

 “Of course, not. I don’t believe fasting for anyone will elongate their lives. Most of the time, I am fasting anyways, because when our cook doesn’t show up, I don’t get to eat. My wife will much on cereals and nuts, as she doesn’t know how to cook. I don’t like to eat dry food. But she will remember to ask for an expensive gift on Karva Chauth, as a prize for a half day fast. I oblige because I love her and it touches my heart to see her take so much pain of going without eating for so much of an hour!.”

Media and advertising campaigns have also a lot to contribute in bringing KC in global focus driving millions of bucks around this one festival urging men to buy some of the costliest of gifts for their “fasting-feasting” and pampered wives. So in an interesting twist of presentation, the festival becomes an oriental version of Valentine’s Day – and truly, the essence of both KC and Valentine’s Day is the same – celebrating love and togetherness for a day, when the rest of the year, couples are too busy with careers, housework or childcare to “demonstrate” their love for each other.

Relationships are changing every day. To complicate matters, we have the stern gaze of feminists at every corner waiting to swoop in and make a fresh meal out of every tradition. Without waving their angry baton at each and every bit of legacy that we have, where is their raison d'être? I have friends who work in NGOs to help under privileged women. I don’t see them charading on Facebook attacking feminine rituals ever. But then the world is full of angry young women.

Now to allay this existential crisis for these self styled feminists, I ask a question:  if women fasting, depriving their bodies of nutrition through days to lose pounds of fat (which is medically totally unscientific I tell you!) can be a matter of choice, why can’t a woman's one-day fast for the long life of her husband (also unscientific!) be equally a matter of choice? You think this KC is an evil because it is forced on women? Well then, do women get married forcibly? Some yes, but not all. If marriage is an institution of choice by now, why can’t any ritual associated with marriage be the same?

And since nothing in India goes without the pop whiff of Bollywood in it, let me also point out a contradiction in how we perceive our women in films. Hindi mainstream films have over the reels, romanticized the character of a love smitten heroine fasting for her would-be/actual husband (mind it, a guy she has chosen for herself against her parent’s express wishes), who incidentally also fasts for her. So the same canvas or screen that shows the heroine choosing her man in act of rebellion also shows her fasting for the same man. How does the first act become an exercise of choice and the second a convoluted social construct to nullify all her freedom?

In our post-modernist milieu, when women are taking great strides in every male-dominated bastion, is it not foolish to assume that they don’t know their mind yet and are just being coerced to follow a meaningless ceremony?

Karva Chauth may be sniggered upon by many, but that does not take away the socio-cultural dynamics of it. Once restricted to the north, it has now taken over the entire nation as a festival of bonhomie among women. I used to raise cynical eyebrows at Bongs for throwing Sangeet and Mehendi parties before their marriages. No longer. I understand how rituals pervade geographical boundaries and enrich each other. And it is interesting to watch a similar evolution of KC across the years too.

My understanding of Karva Chauth is limited still, but I understand this that respecting women has got nothing to do with bashing up an ancient custom. As long as it doesn’t hurt or harm anyone, and acts as a great enabler of a community coming together for innocent fun – however frivolous the excuse maybe, I am willing to give it my nod of approval. Sometimes some people would revolt without a cause and the contradictions pointed out by them around “sindoor khela” and “Karva Chauth” are more apparent than real.

Apurva Purohit, CEO of Radio City 91.1FM and an IIM Bangalore alumnus says:

“No mother-in-law, no relatives and certainly not society, need have a point of view on this decision. It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with anyone! Including so called modern day feminists who suddenly decide to write articles on the retrograde nature of the fast and snigger at women who are following this tradition. To my mind they are being just as judgmental and censorious and quite as intrusive as the mother-in-law who forces her daughter-in-law to keep the fast! The burden of tradition bound expectations is just as onerous as the mantle that gets forced on us to be contemporary ‘with it’ women who scoff at all things that our mothers did!

And frankly why should anyone have anything to say about a subject which is essentially between me, my husband and the moon? Right?”

Right, I say. Let the choice remain with the women.

Women celebrating KC in Kolkata. (Source: The Hindu)

Sindoor khela

Ouch! Reeks of irony, especially when played by educated and financially independent women of today, does it not? How can compulsion be fun?

Sindoor or vermilion (for my non-Indian friends) is the traditional red powder or vermilion, conventionally a must-wear for Hindu married women, who smear it along the mid parting of their hair. A sindoored woman carries the signal that she is off-limits to any other man, because she is already possessed by one of the species. Not wearing sindoor implies either widowhood or a clumsy divorce or plain Jane spinsterhood. Thus a significant part of the Hindu wedding ritual, smearing sindoor on the bride’s head is widely celebrated as sacred - and photographed all over the world. We have heavily dramatized Bollywood and Tollywood flicks based purely on the virtue of sindoor. We have rural enactments called Jatraa in West Bengal that have staged theatrical portrayal of sindoory yarns and its importance in a woman’s life. 

All in a very streamlined manner, designating the wife as “marked” for life to a single man – you like it or not.

So now you get the picture, right?

If you are owned, and are willing to flaunt the legality of your owned-ness as a red blotch on your forehead, you are a good woman. And you are saved. Period.

Now, the tricky part of it rests with women like me. I do not belong to any women’s lobby or any activist club; neither do I endorse feminism just for the sake of being fashionably progressive. I live in an unequal society and I know it.  I try my best to remain gender-neutral in all my judgments – as far as possible.

I see my single female friends being harassed with the perennial question: “When are you getting married?” I see my friends, who have been separated from their spouses being asked on a loop: “So did you find someone right this time?”

And it somewhere disgusts me that to a large part of my society, marriage still marks the lot that would guarantee perpetual bliss. The truth in some cases is far from that, I have seen. That again, is a different issue altogether. Many of my friends have chosen to remain single, mostly because they want it that way. Similarly I have friends who have settled down in matrimony (arranged very properly by dutiful parents via Shaadi.com or Bharatmatrimony.com or Anandabajaar Patro-Patri), even after a PhD in Women’s Studies, which involves intense research into women’s rights and suffrage, social constructs of femininity, the politics of feminist ideology, etc. And study or no study, your day to day life will show you evidence of violence against women, sexual harassment at the workplace, gender inequality among siblings. But then all this has nothing to do with sindoor.

I digress.

What I am trying to say is marriage should be a matter of choice. And so should the wearing of sindoor. Do you agree?

Being brought up on heavy doses of theories on women’s rights; having read bits of "feminist critique”, "gynocriticism", and “gender theory”; having explored my own world in the light of my readings of various feminists; and having lived my life as a woman in a man’s world, I find “sindoor” very demeaning to my existence. As a result, I do not use it as a mark of my own marital status.

But I do find it odd that I land up every year on Dashami at my local Puja pandal to take part in the Sindoor Khela.

I can almost see you snigger at my hypocrisy.

What is Sindoor khela then? And why do I find such stupid satisfaction in playing a crimson buffoon with other women similarly marked as me on a special day of the year? 

Sindoor khela is a ritual of playing with vermilion to mark the farewell to Goddess Durga at the end of a six day long festivity. I am not sure if the custom dates back to pre-colonial times but perhaps the zamindars (rich land-owners) of the old Bengal had ushered in the practice to promote harmony among the women folk of their household.

Housewives proverbially attributed with cantankerous and ill-tempered rivalries had to be tamed into a workable camaraderie. Thus came the annual vermilion game, where women would touch each other’s forehead and cheeks lovingly with sindoor. And stay in peaceful touch for a year.

Then would follow stuffing sweets into each other’s mouths. They would embrace each other as another year of wait for the Puja started. All in good spirit, I tell you.

This may be the history behind Sindoor Khela. But what is the current significance behind the ritual for me? Nothing much really.

I am not overtly religious. But I still go for this annual game with as much zeal as I would go for Holi, the festival of colors. The only difference here is the single color of choice. Red, it is.

I know very few women of my society. I pass so many of them on my way out to work. I see so many faces rushing out to drop their children off to school, some running to catch the metro for work, some again whooshing me past in sedans of all brands. I know a few names. I am forewarned, some are querulous, some are slander-mongers, so beware! 

And yes, though I am not paying much heed to these warnings, I am wary of unmatched wave-lengths, of disconnected thoughts, of unaligned tongues. I am a loner most part of the year, and I’d rather savor my own company than any other unsavory ones.

But every year, I am proven wrong. I see so many gorgeous women – by their own rights liberated Maa Duggas. I find one with a nippy wit. Another quiet observant one, who enjoys conversations in silence. I see an energetic muse, quick to the beat of the dhaakis – never needing any encouragement to get up and dance – and that too after she has done all her household chores, taken care of children and ageing parents-in-law. I find a woman, who loves to be called “didi” and actually fits the bill quite nice. Another with a helping hand. I see women rising up at the crack of the dawn, to prepare for the Pujas and retiring past midnight after order is restored. 

Gossip, oh yes they do it with fondness. But what is girl bonding without some malice-free innocuous gupshup? That just adds the color to their faces, the twinkle to their eyes. The necessary wax to seal in the honey within. The busy bees. So lovable, all of them.

They are the reasons why I so eagerly wait for the ritual. I get to know a new person every year. Maybe not just too well. But who ever claimed to know it all anyway? I get hugged, embraced, sometimes sucked into a vortex of warmth. I connect, even so in a transient bond. Then again, aren't all bonds just that? Bidding time until they move on to newer relationships.

And our ritual is not just for married women. Even men play at it. You see shy guys trying at first to hide from the onslaught of the Lady Scarlets. Defeated, the hapless ruby red men retaliate sometimes, with handfuls of sindoor themselves. So it is a miniature Holi for all you care. People come together. We get photographed. Superficial, you say? You bet it is. 

But as long as I am not expected to wear sindoor all year round (except as a cosmetic that goes well with a red sari just as red lipstick would) I am willing to go the superficial way.

And all the way it is!

***********************

My encounter with the third sex

Have you ever encountered the third sex?

I have. 

By encounter, I mean physical touch – sudden and unforeseen. Here's how.

A few days ago, just before the Puja rush took over the city, I was on my way to Golpark to a tailoring shop. I had dumped a few saris to be hemmed along the sides. Also, I had a few matching blouses to collect. It had rained earlier in the day and the evening was damp.

Golpark, as the name suggests has a round green patch as an island in the middle of bustling traffic on all sides. I have often passed gardeners working at the overgrown shrubbery, which surprisingly sprouts a sparkling statue of Swami Vivekananda from its belly. Just across the road stands the Ramkrishna Mission, founded by the legendary Indian monk in the memory of his mentor Sri Ramkrishna Paramhansdeva, the Hindu mystic priest. The statue is a token of respect to the disciple.

Image courtesy: Internet

There is a library inside the mission. I used to be a member of the library once upon a time, as a student of the Jadavpur University department of English. The membership was more of a signature gesture to belong to a group that went in solidarity looking for books on the mahogany shelves. Having realized that there was little that the building housed that could be of use to me, I quit going. Not of course, before being warned by the librarians that sleeping in the hall was not allowed!

Anyway, so here I was on the 5th or the 6th day of October this year (my memory always fails dates), marching along the road opposite the mission. To give you a clearer picture, there is no road exactly opposite to any here since Golpark makes a perfect circle with roads going round it and then moving out in several directions, just as spokes emerge out of a wheel.

So I was walking down the other side of the mission, a footpath that is crowded on one side by local florists. That is the place you would usually want to be if you are looking for a quick bouquet of home-grown flowers – rajanigandha, golaap, bel, jui, podmo, etc. White for a funeral, red for a wedding, and maybe pink and yellow for birthdays. And as I said it had drizzled all day, lending a heavy humid air to the surrounding. Add to that the fragrance of the flowers, now sporting pearls of rainwater on them, glistening in the street lights. The footpath is laced by shops on the other side – stationery, sweets, watchmakers. And passers-by. Incessant footfalls of pedestrians, people crossing the street, people waiting for the bus, people shopping, beggars, vendors, all kinds of faces to watch.

As always I was preoccupied in my head and was looking down at my feet as I walked. It was a stop I had made on my way home from work, so was listing my to-dos for the following night. Also, I have terribly tiny feet, and I am in perennial danger of being off balance on pot-holed roads. And potholes, they are aplenty on that particular track. I was double careful of not landing up on the poor flowers to my left.

Now here comes the climax of the story.


As I had almost gained a certain amount of rhythm to my walk, I was forcibly bunged in my track by someone. I suddenly felt being pulled away from the road, with two very strong hands clutching my own. I looked up to find myself staring into the eyes of a beautiful man wearing a sari (we call them hijra in India). She (yes, I call her a ‘she’ as she would only prefer it that way) was clad in sequined black chiffon. A heavily made up face with one day old stubble, a perfectly chiseled nose, under ached, penciled eyebrows and a scarlet pair of lips – there she was holding my arms in a vice like grip and smiling an angelic smile.

Image courtesy: Internet

My first encounter with the third sex.

“Ei sundori, dosh ta taka de na ekta sari kine pori” she said in a baritone heavily accented into a feminine drawl.

(Hello my lovely, give me ten bucks. Will buy a sari).

The fact is ten bucks will not ensure a sari, nor will any amount of begging on one single day. But reason had abandoned me and I was in a trance.
After what seemed like forever, I opened my wallet (yes, I don’t carry a purse) and brought out a ten rupee note.

“Arek ta dosh taka de na,” came the same inflected tone.

(Give me another ten rupee note).

I meekly obliged. Giving her another note.

She had released my arms by then and was blinking at me with extreme coyness. I quickly became aware of eyes watching the brief episode on the road side theatre. The shopkeepers were smiling at me, some had gathered around to watch the fun.

Maybe she realized that as much. She made a hasty retreat after touching my forehead and muttering a blessing in audible gibberish.

I was blessed!
The price being twenty rupees.

Now why am I writing this? This is nothing unusual now, is it? I have seen the third sex beg at traffic signals. Sometimes rolling down car windows I have given them money. I have even smiled at them.

Shakily.

Every time, making a mental note that the next time I come across one of them, I will speak to her and try to know their kind better.

Where does she live?
Why does she beg?
Does she even have a family?

Now when I had my chance, where was my bravado? Where was my tongue? Why couldn’t I touch her and bless her back? Why did I keep staring at her as if she was non-human? Why was I so scared?

Are we so unsure of the gender-less? Is all our social communication centered on the male-female construct? Is the world only mainstream for ‘normal’ people like us, who pretend to be great humanists outside but are really cowards within?

We are uncomfortable with anything that cannot be compartmentalized, categorized. We live gendered lives. We play roles expected of our genders. Boys are conditioned not to cry. Girls are told it is okay to cry, as it demonstrates their legitimate feminine-hood. All our relationships are weaved within and without this divide in mind.

I am no exception. That is why I didn’t know how to address this gorgeous person I met.

Coming home, I googled “eunuch” to find out more.
Research surprised me.

As much as they are repressed currently, they were historically not always so marginal. Some of the ancient civilizations have records of the third sex rising to huge power, sometimes leading the army in wars, sometimes guarding the door to the king’s personal chamber. And then found, how even in the height of their power, they were easy targets of a male-female dominated society. Mostly castrated, they offered the least risk of producing any heir, so no dynasty to usurp the throne. Sex-less, they were trusted with guarding the harem full of royal wives.

Of course, there was brutality against them in ancient times too, I shudder as I read more. Castration was punishment against several offences. It was used against prisoners of war to create forced laborers. More often than not, I learned, eunuchs are born as perfect males – only that they choose to cross-dress – accepting themselves as women trapped inside male bodies. However, disfigured or irregular genitalia also ensures access to the tribe – though castrated ones still believed to be the purest form of the “hijra”.

They are considered auspicious in popular culture. They offer comic relief to the bystanders. They dance, sing, come uninvited to weddings and birthing ceremonies. In many cultures, they are invited to bless the new bride or the male child. Being sexless, either by choice or by biology, their libidinal energy is believed to have channelized elsewhere – their power to blow miracles into lives.

I wonder if the energy can be channelized into better things. 'Hijra' is a Hindi loan word, derived from the Arabic root 'hjr' in its sense of "leaving one's tribe". I am thinking if the tribe here is the tribe of normally gendered folks, born with regular genitalia? Or folks who behave as the civilized human world demands them to behave? Or dress according to the codes handed down?

The KamaSutraa calls them tritiya prakriti, the third sex. So where does that leave us? A close second, or is the coinage strictly attributable to Beauvoir alone?

We women, the second sex. My charmer at Golpark, the third sex.


Equality, you seem to have evaded us all!


***********************************

In defence of the biggest bong bash

You don't like Durga Puja?

Hmmm...I understand your disenchantment with all things flimsy and frivolous, your apathy for a country steeped in poverty and yet spending crores for a mere festival.

Let me write a few words in defence of Durga Puja and all the mayhem in its name for you.

Chandidas Pal is busy giving final touches to his idols in Kumartuli, the potters’ colony in North Kolkata. Bhabesh Pal works in Baishnabghata, under polythene sheets serving as roof to his Durga idols lined up for the finishing strokes. The smell of wet soil, straw and incense sticks envelop you as you stand watching the gods and their pets take shape under the skillful fingers of the clay sculptors. A young man in a lungi stands a few feet away with a satin cloth in his hand, waiting. Moments later, he helps Bhabesh fold the cloth into pleats of the exact measures. Then you watch mesmerized as the pleated sari is nailed onto Durga’s sculpture as effortlessly as you would drape a sari around yourself. The same process follows for Lakshmi and Saraswati. The ones for Kartik and Ganesh are relatively easy, since all they wear is the fabric as a dhoti around their middle.

An artist at Kumartuli (Source: Internet)

Great hordes of artistes come to the city in flocks to do what they do best. Modeling figurines of the gods and goddesses, ahead of the festive season in West Bengal.

Do you think they come for the money alone?

You are wrong.

The sheer love and passion that mark their faces as they mold the clay feet, as they stick the false curls of hair, as they paint the benevolent eyes and lips of the models are unmistakable. And the love-affair runs through generations.

The artisans have a head contractor, an artist himself, who help them find these jobs at various workshops. 15-20 artists work in each workshop under the supervision of the contractor. They get paid on per diem basis – ensuring they have enough to take home, even after they have bought their kids new clothes for the puja in their village.

Not just in West Bengal.

Artists like Sanatan Pal have been going to Delhi and Andhra for the same purpose for the last decade. Pal along with his three sons and his nephew work on the idols in Delhi and come home with enough cash to go a year round. With more and more Pujo organizers willing to experiment with new styles and themes in modeling their idols, it is never a boring job for the artisans. And they are not afraid to learn new nuances and techniques.

Same with the pandal makers. Pandals are not straightforward bamboo squares cloaked in coarse cloth anymore. I spoke to the ones who have come to work on our society pandal. It’s been a month now that they have made our society their home. They cook, clean, sleep, play cards and listen to Radio Mirchi right under my bedroom window. Sometimes I marvel at squeals of laughter coming from the top of the pandal, which they climb, as nimble-footed as monkeys to tie the bamboos up. In the Hindustan Park pandal, which is slowly taking shape of an old temple, I speak to some craftsmen, who welcome me inside the pandal to show off proudly what they have done. I can’t stop beaming. They are simple village men. They do not know the etiquette of the city breds. One boy grabs my hand and pulls me aside to show the intricate pillar they are working on.

Hindustan Park Puja pandal work  in progress, 2013

Then there are the dhaakis. I remember as a child, I had once remarked to my friend, Mamon, while watching the drummer dance to his own beats that the poor fellow must be so tired of it. My friend had reminded me quickly that he was doing what he enjoyed the best.

“Look at the man’s face,” she had said.

Drops of sweat rolling down his face, his clean white shirt was wet too. But the smile was infectious. He was dancing around like a man possessed. Other men of the local club were dancing with the dhunuchi as well.

Yes, surely he was a farmer in some remote village? Just ahead of the Durga Puja, flocks of these local percussionists migrate cityward. In Kaalighaat, they line up the road, beating their drums, hoping to be picked up for the four-day-long festivities. Organizers all over India also make a beeline for the Kolkata dhaakis and bring them over looking after their travelling, boarding and lodging expenses.

The dhaakis playing in a band

Now they charge up a sum between Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 for just 4 days. Something they would never dream of making by just poughing the fields of Birbhum, the village in West Bengal where they mostly come from. It is a hereditary profession, most men turning dhaakis only during these occasions like Durga Puja, Kali Puja, and Jagadhatri Puja. Some even work as labourers and rickshaw pullers all year round.

“Didi, there is no dearth of work back home but we can’t earn as much as we do here” - Manik, our dhaaki from last year had said to me.

I can go on endlessly just to explain to you, how this one festival comes as a benign blessing to the poor in my country.

Electricians, who light up the streets and the pandals; the truckers, who deliver the idols right in time; the bearers, who lift and carry the heavy idols to the pedestals and then back again to the Ganges for the immersion; the bamboo providers; the concept artist behind the themes; the musicians, who play at various Pujos; the painters and designers, who work on the Puja adverts and hoardings; the textile weavers, who work non-stop to provide the shops with the right amount of products; the sound engineers, who make sure the decibels hit just right; the goldsmiths, who work overtime to present the new jewelry designs just before the season arrives; the pujaris, who do the actual worshiping; the fruit vendors, who supply the fruits for the Prasad; the florists, who bring in the huge garlands; the thakurs, who work up the bhog; the street food sellers, who lace the roads to feed the hungry mouths out pandal-hopping; the chai-wallahs, the ice-cream man, the candyfloss man, the phuchka-walla,the alookabli-ghoogni walla,  the men at the egg-roll stall, the moira at the sweet shops, the road side volunteers, who help to steer the crowd – the beneficiaries of the Pujo are endless to count.

Oh, and did I forget to mention the tourism industry that flourishes at this time too? :)

Lights, sound, crowd and action!

Most organizations also carry out charity activities during the Pujas. We do this at our society and know of many that also follow this ritual. For a country as poor as ours, I know nothing ever adds up to the huge resource gap that has been created. Centuries of colonization, following political upheavals, the wars, the partition, the current corruption – all have added its share to the current mess that my country is in. Add to that the ignominy showered on women in the shape of rapes and infanticides. Does it not ring somewhere as hollow that we worship a female deity, while we fail to protect our women from the demons inside our borders?

You bet it does, but it also means that somewhere there is hope. We recently had an anti-abuse campaign with the Durga idols carrying marks of violence with battered lips and eyes. We have had a huge media uproar to the Delhi rape case. Women have taken to the street to protest against the Park Street rape case. We are seeing women empowerment on the rise even in villages. Rapes, which would otherwise go unregistered earlier, are being noted down at police stations. Women are no longer ashamed of walking into the OC’s chamber, demanding that an FIR be written for rape.

The Abused Goddess campaign (Source: Internet)

We still have casualties. Remember rapes happen in every country. Some come in the news, some don’t.

Should that stop us from celebrating the power in women?

My city’s pujo is not a personal matter of mere merry-making to me. When I match my jewelry from a shop that sells hand-made stuff by handicapped craftspeople, I know I am adding someone’s special touch to my finery. Pujo is not just a waste.

It is an industry that supports millions of poor artisans in my country. It gives them a platform of expression, an edifice to show off their art to not only to the pandal hoppers, but to the entire world. We have prizes announced in various categories for the best pujos – by many brands. Every prize is a token of the appreciation for their art. Mostly it is mythology, folk lores, and legends that is represented through rural art everywhere – so in a way, it is ensuring that the coming generations don’t lose touch with their ancient agrarian roots. And not just Hindu myth. I remember noticing the entire story of Buddha’s life etched in terracotta in one of Jodpur Park’s pandals in 2011.

Cool, is it not?

Last month IBN news announced that West Bengal's Durga puja industry is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 35 percent and is expected to touch Rs.40,000 crores by 2015 from its current size of Rs.25,000 crores. I know that some amount of that will trickle down to the ones who need it the most.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bengals-durga-puja-industry-to-touch-rs40000-crore-in-2015/420706-3-231.html

I can’t stop smiling!

Bring it on!