Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): UnBiography

PC: From Orissa Post

 

When I started reading Puranas, I noticed there is no “one” story of any mythological event nor a single coherent origin story of any character. What was even more fascinating was characters seemed to morph into someone else.

In Markandeya Purana, there is one story of the great battle with Mahishasur with a Goddess initially called Ambika. And soon there is another story of a great battle of Goddess whose name quickly shifts from Vishnumaya to Parvati as Shivaa to Ambika who emerges from Parvati. In this battle, she doesn’t fight Mahishasura. Instead she fights with Shumbha Nishumbh.

Wait, weren’t Shumbha and Nishumbha brothers who were general of Mahishasura? And who is Raktabeeja? Is he a general in Mahishasura’s army? Is he Shumbha and Nishumbha’s boss or are they not connected? Is Raktabeeja Mahishasura’s younger brother or twin brother or father reborn as brother?

The goddess undergoes umpteen name changes through both stories. Because she sent Shiva as a messenger to Mahishasur she became Shivdhuti. At some point she is Chandika. And of course Durga. But only in passing.

Sometimes it is Parvati becoming dark to Kalika and sometimes in the midst of battle, the goddess furrows her brows in anger and Kalika emerges.

There are dozens of other goddesses, either emerging from the main goddess or feminine form of a god. There is also this belief that from the body of Goddess Durga, Ashta Matrikas (eight demi-divine feminine forms) emerged and from each of them 8 Yoginis emerged making a total of 64 Yoginis. If you wanted to hold this fast in our traditional notion of hierarchy, it doesn’t sit true. Temple after temple, goddesses morph and transform into each other based on geography, culture and historical contexts. Class, caste, and narrative of the mystic entwine so thickly with social histories that one has no clue about whom to worship or not.

In the description of various battles of Goddesses and asuras, one has no clue of the size of the army on either side. One has no clue about the exact size of the weaponry or types. The story might suddenly burst as crores of asura soldiers with tens of thousands of weapons fighting a legion of goddesses. I found myself confused about the size of the goddesses versus asuras. And after each round of battle, another set of crores of asuras strangely show up. And one begins to wonder what the population of asuras is.

This morning I heard from a friend about the battle of Goddess Lalitha and Bhandasura which is supposed to be the longest fight. Interestingly in this battle. Goddess Lalitha laughs and Durga is said to have manifested on her lion. And somehow Mahishasura also gets killed in this battle.

Asuras are often praised for their ability to do severe penance and for their worship of different gods. They are also acknowledged for their Vedic knowledge, skills and valour. No one is considered as truly and wholly evil. One can’t help wondering where exactly things went wrong.

In the meantime, Devas are often portrayed as fallible. There are many stories around Lord of the Devas, Indra which portray his weakness. He is sometimes envious of the penance of sages and sends temptress. He sometimes he steals other men’s wives. At other times, he is fearful of somebody’s growing strength and find ways to disrupt their life. Sometimes he is ashamed. Sometimes he needs to be humbled.

Not even Trimurtis (Bramha-Vishnu-Shiva) are portrayed as infallible. Vishnu has received multiple curses which he uses as opportunity to do some good somewhere. Shiva is gullible and gets tricked into giving boons. Bramha for all his work in creating the living Universe doesn’t get worshipped anywhere.

In this complex, baffling, shape-shifting narratives of origins and events, one loses the need for “facts” or single truths. Or for any sense of certainty. The same event may repeat in another form or a context may highlight one story as the relevant one. And it is all okay. What matters are the patterns that are disrupted or patterns that are protected.

 

Modern Age Biographies and Memoirs

There are a greater number of biographies and memoirs published than ever before. More humans attempt to document their lives and write-narrate their life stories. It is understandable. After centuries of stories being dominated by the powerful, wealthy, “victors” and rulers, the narrative field has opened up.

This has ushered in diverse stories from lived experiences that have been so far in the shadows. It is a beautiful thing to keep remembering that for every story we know, there are so many others waiting to be shared.

However, this is not enough. If the content of the stories fall into same patterns of fixed categories, linear threads of cause and effect, around similar hero stories, of short time and narrow boundaries – in essence, we are reading different forms of the same story.

One of my favourite writer-thinker-advocate is the late Gloria Anzaldúa. Her writing shook me because one couldn’t tell when her memoir had turned into a recall of a myth, when material met the spiritual, when clock-time reality blurred into a geography of an old culture. She drew from the nahuatl language a word— “nepantla”, in the middle to explore the stories of the borderlands of experience.

In India, Shashi Deshpande sinks into the pauses and unsaid to weave out a narrative of liminal spaces. Elena Ferrante swims in the paradoxes that are the material of the personal mind space. Nora Bateson’s film biography of her dad Gregory Bateson, An Ecology of Mind, does exactly that – spins through the ecology of life for a multiple description of her dad in sometimes unexpected forms. Even the narration is seeped with her dad’s ideas.

I am sure readers have many more examples of biographies and memoirs that change the cartography of us in the world.

It would be nice if there were more experiments around self and history and the world. More of me-ing in our change-ing Universe, blurring edges between self-pain and world grief, obscuring clock time and chronology, moving deep and wide. A narrative of the dance of life on earth.