Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Complete Links

 

Navami Kumari Puja in progress

This year’s Navratri vows were varied and very special.

I had felt I wanted to offer a hibiscus flower to Mother everyday of these nine days. It turned out to be a beautiful way to connect with my neighbourhood. I learnt about different trees and plants in my area. Today when I close my eyes, my area is no longer cement construction with cars. I first see the greenery—the many fruits trees and flowering plants and small bushes and leaves of so many kinds. Inadvertently, I also became acquainted with the birds in the different trees and bushes. Sometimes I felt I was walking around their homes and sometimes I knew where they liked to perch.

The hibiscus flower led to offering food to Mother. And I felt I couldn’t repeat the same food. I ended up making nine different prasadams for the period. What that meant was I researched and read recipes, asked my mother what to make and in turn received many stories from her. The food that I made was simple but I learnt about more complex prasadam that I might try over the year.

All of these rituals led me to give away something little everyday. It was nothing much but I got into the practice of actively giving everyday. I realised daanam is at the core medicinal. It provides what a person/family needs to thrive. I have some other gifts to give – like I need to provide compost to the trees and plants I took flowers from. And some gifts for the gardeners in the area. And so on.

I was surprised and not surprised to have been able to write everyday. When I started the series, I had no more than 3-4 ifffy topics to write on. However, ideas emerged and each piece made me reflect further on our worlds. I feel grateful to the act of writing.

Like in 2017 series, I prayed that there would be one reader who would read carefully and provide a comment. Happily, for all posts except the last one I received at least one in-depth or heartfelt spontaneous messages. And even surprising conversations. In the world of algorithms, one has to decide what one seeks and not let the algorithms dictate. And for me, it is genuine engagement.

I am grateful to each one who engaged with what I wrote and made the effort to communicate. This Navratri felt complete through you.

I visited a Durga Puja Pandal here in Hyderabad and most happily could attend the Navami Kumari Puja. I find it interesting that after all the pujas and homas, the final day of the goddess is dedicated to the Goddess as a little girl. That we receive blessings from the young form. So it is.

The complete links of the 2024 series is provided below

First day: Tipping Point

Second Day: Child Goddess

Third day: Unbiography

Fourth day: Many Forms of the Feminine

Fifth day: Learning and Dark Learning

Sixth day: Not Religion, Not even Spirituality

Seventh day: Cybernetics of Body Image

Eighth day: Surrender is Abundance

Nineth day: She is Sound

 

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): She is Sound

 

Weaver Bird common in my neighbourhood (From Wikipedia)

(This is the ninth and final post of the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here. To read the second post, please click here. To read third post, please click here. To the read the fourth post, please click here. To read the fifth post, please click here. To read the sixth post, please click here. To read the seventh post, please click here. To read the eighth post, please click here.)

I am writing this post on Tamilian Ashtami. Navami in my family is the day of Saraswati. We surrender our writing articles and books to the Goddess. It is Hers and we return it to Her. And on Dashami, we receive it back from her as her blessing.

Following that tradition, I have taken the help of technology to schedule this post on Navami at the appropriate time. And I have chosen not to write but to share the sounds of our world.

A decade back, I had travelled across India and recorded sounds of her landscape. Some of those sounds I shared in the Navami post of that year’s Sa Ham series. You can listen to it here.

I have learnt to love bird sounds and have many recordings from different spaces, including near the Taj Mahal as well as Itmad-ud-daula tomb. They are the easiest ways for me to return to those spaces. I share a couple of recordings here and here.

I am loving new musicians who straddle technology and classic instruments, along with multiple sensory forms, to produce music that challenges our linear understanding of time. I had the joy of sharing this in our ImmARTsion Café in our Lightweaver group. This is FKJ with Ylang Ylang.

I find myself returning to classical chants. I leave you with the one and only MS and her Suprabhatam.

May the coming seasons fill you with expansiveness of heart and detachment from the immediate swirl. May you be more present, more attentive and filled with magic.

Happy Dussehra/Vijayadashami.

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Surrender is Abundance

Small Basket of Various Flowers

(This is the eighth post of the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here. To read the second post, please click here. To read third post, please click here. To the read the fourth post, please click here. To read the fifth post, please click here. To read the sixth post, please click here. To reach the seventh post, please click here.)

This Navratri I felt called to offer a hibiscus to Mother every day. I was not sure how I would find one. I knew flower vendors did not sell these flowers in this area. I also knew there were veteran flower pickers in this area who had a routine around plucking flowers. By a certain time in the morning, one can expect the flowering plants to go bald. I was also afraid of being scolded by someone for plucking flowers.

The first day when I came down my building, she was waiting for me. Diagonally opposite, I saw a single red hibiscus fallen on the wall. I could not believe my eyes. I rushed to get the flower and decided to stroll around the area. Maybe I could find one more. And I did. I was so excited. I plucked a few other flowers too and returned to my building happy.

I saw our building watchman, very Mohanlal like, was noticing me from a distance. As I neared the elevator, I saw him run with his chubby body and return with something in his hand. It was a palmful of hibiscus flowers of different colours. Ohhh. He was a veteran flower picker! I was in bliss.

Since then, I have learnt to happily go around the area in search of flowers. Instead of scolding me, I have seen men step in to help. Some bend branches so I can pluck easily, some guide me as to where a flowering plant is. All the while saying, “Teesko, teesko.” (Take, take).

Today, the eighth day of my hibiscus venture, I found three watchmen in other buildings had already plucked flowers for me. Take, take, they said. My bowl was overfull of flowers. And I thought maybe I should give some to others. My neighbour is an elderly couple with some severe health challenges. I knocked on their door and handed them some hibiscus flowers. Uncle was surprised. He said, “From where did you get these flowers? How were you allowed to pluck them?” I smiled.

He was saying what I had thought on the first day.

Urban Indian lifestyle has groomed us into a kind of lack-of. There is water available if I open the tap. And then I must be careful not to waste water by closing the tap. Electricity will run the bulbs and fan if I switch it on, and I have paid the electricity bills. I must remember to switch off the geyser else my bill will run high. Food is available if I can go to the shop or order it on an app. And I must have money to pay for it. Nothing is just there without my agency, without some exertion on my part.

And those who exert more can receive more. In other words, our abundance is directly related to the amount of energy we can exert in fruitful and pre-decided directions. Study hard, work hard to ensure there is prosperity.

Many years back, my family visited me in another city. And my mother joyfully walked around the neighbourhood, plucking flowers, noticing fruits and weedy berries. She had tales to tell. I, as usual, was flustered and worried she had been rude. She was, in return, very surprised at my reaction.

My mother grew up in a world where it was less of switch-on-off and more of go-around. Her family kitchen had a window that directly connected to a well. The well had water all year long. Or she went to the pond. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Sometimes my mother plucked and weaved them into a garland. Sometimes her neighbours weaved a jasmine garland for her.

There were many fruits like bananas and jackfruit. The large jackfruits were shared across neighbours. The vegetable garden in her family home had some vegetables or other all year long. I see the same abundance growing in my mother’s terrace garden in her current home.

Her hands, so used to abundance, would cook for way more than the family. We would scold her—Amma, cook exactly what we need. Let us not waste food. She never understood how to do that. She would simply say, someone may arrive, and we need to feed them. And food never went to waste. There were hundreds of recipes to use leftovers. We would groan.

The only area her hands would shrink and close was physical money. She worried if we would have enough money to run the month.

Even those who have lived for centuries in the desert do not see their landscape as lacking or needing the same kind of agency that we do in our apartments. They live in an active alive relationship with their environment.

My hands are exact in measuring. I have no extra food anywhere. I have no extra anything in my home. And I have wondered about this exactness of things and worry of wasting. And I realize “wastage” is an urban phenomenon, tied to its architecture, materials and personal energy (or what we call bandwidth).

Surrender, in modern parlance, is often associated with defeat and passivity. In my community, in my younger days, the ability to do namaskaram (the full floor prostration) repeatedly was appreciated. Especially, as people grew older if they could still do namaskaram, it was adulated.

Namaskaram, the full prostration, is symbolically so much more than showing respect. It is the art of giving up agency and trusting in the magical living processes of the Universe, just the opposite of anthropocentrism. It is symbolized and attributed to a Divine form or to a living elder.

We have inherited the colonial shaming glance and stare at our practices as superstition or ignorant rituals. The reaction to shaming has unfortunately been a rigid enforcement of practice which also does not help.

I suggest that we look at the ecological consciousness that is embedded in not only our tradition but all older traditions. In East Asia, Japan, Mongolia, Scotland and Ireland, Native Americas, Aborigines of Australia, Maoris of New Zealand and more have stayed deeply related to rest of nature. They have known the importance of maintaining respectful and alert relationships. They have known the importance of humility and no-action until it is the right time. They have known the rest of the Universe is alive, active and moving in ways that we could label as “their agency”. That the relationship is alive on both sides.

Surrender is welcoming and accepting Universe’s alive movements. It is an opening of possibilities beyond what we can think and achieve. It is a portal to hope and magic. Iain Gilchrist in his work and in many of his online lectures speaks about the importance of faith as a neurological right-brain opening to something more.

Surrender does not come with guarantees that we have become used to. Open the tap, water should flow. And we are stressed when water runs out. No guarantees but that everything that comes your way is an evident or hidden blessing in the living universe.

Many folks in the systems change space make the mistake of continuing the usual scripts. They believe they must act and change our world. That the world is a passive savage, needing guidance and intervention by earth’s youngest child, the brat called human.

I think it would behove all of us to first learn the ways in which life continues to produce life and re-learn to dance with it. The Earth Oikos will turn as needed.

Ya Devi….

Namastasye Namastasye Namastasye Namo Namah!

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Cybernetics of Body Image

Maa Kalaratri (Source unknown, Wikimedia Commons)

(This is the seventh post of the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here. To read the second post, please click here. To read third post, please click here. To the read the fourth post, please click here. To read the fifth post, please click here. To read the sixth post, please click here.)

I have been studying a lot of South Asian Goddess images and the diversity of forms has stirred me around. Here is the thing, while the Goddess is perceived and worshipped in different bodies, there are also some standards of what-is-sensual that comes through in the stories.

The goddess is worshipped in different skin-colours, skin textures, facial shape, teeth types, waist girth (including a nearly hollow abdomen), and legs and nails and eyes and so on. However, the portrayal of sensuality has some common threads – narrow waist, fully-formed luxurious breasts, and a fertile-looking bum. You will find this in the descriptions, in the poetry for the goddesses, and in the sculptures. There are also aspects about the eyes that ancient south Asians were obsessed about. Eyes like a fish or that of a lotus or a deer and so on.

I realised that across time and geography, there are parameters of what constitutes womanly beauty and attractiveness in a given time period.

The collective sense of what is beauty is a description of the culture of that time. I want to bring your attention to how this collective sensing is being shaped in the 20^th and 21st century. What are the conditions that shape the current crisis of Body Image?

I call it the Cybernetics of Body Image (h/t or flowers to Gregory Bateson for his many essays that explore Cybernetics). You can also call it wide-boundary analysis.

In my view, scanning across the last few centuries through different pathways, I notice some patterns:

• è The increased sharpness and fixedness of categories along with the notion of representation of that category (h/t to Foucault for his Archaeology of Knowledge and the Genealogical method): For example, Modern Enlightenment period saw a distinct separation of heterosexuality from homosexuality. And people performing the sexual identities to reinscribe the boundary conditions of the category. We perform to stay in the same box. You can apply to any other category, say, religion or caste. Who is a proud Hindu? Who is a good Muslim? Who is a faithful Catholic?

• è The hierarchical comparison of categories that came with eugenics: There are superior genes that form superior bodies creating superior cultures. And there are ways to measure superiority. Brain size, IQ, bone structure and such. And as Nora Bateson writes about tautology in her essay, It’s Fantastic, the measuring reinscribes the superiority of the measurer. The ways in which the centre is formed. And also, the ways in which the Other becomes ever so distant and inferior.

• è The rise of visual media: The last century saw many newspapers and magazines being published. Newspapers, by the very nature of layout, had to prioritize what kind of news should go in which page. And which news will have how many columns. As newspapers became more business than journalism, the question was what sells. How do headlines get written? Which page has most traction? Magazines were developed with an eye on certain demographics along with a business sense of what works. Medium is the message and more. More seeing, less touch. Less possibility of differing feedback to arrive. And the visual form in media is fixed, dead and carries authority.

• è The rapid innovation of audiovisual and digital media: Technological innovation is the hallmark of the last few decades. Television was created. And within few decades there were multiple private channels competing for audience attention. With internet, social media and digital media emerged. Now more entities participate in competing for shrinking audience attention. Further, visual form leads the way. Time shrinks and cycles in short bursts. Those who capture audience attention quickly are superior. And that is a category others aspire for.

• è Easy global communication: Through multiple messaging services, apps, platforms, the audience for any communication is easily global. Overlay the continuing tradition of gazing at Europe in all contexts and the fact that origin of most of these innovations is in the West, there is a bias towards popular European parameters. Including, how to rebel.

• è Increased orientation towards structures of thinking that privilege the external. What Schuon (1984) called as the exoteric view of the world as against the esoteric view of the world as a psychic organic whole. He said in his 1984 book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, “One wonders if anything separates the modern world from its predecessors more than its leveling of reality into a single dimension” (p. xvii).

• è Rise of fashion industry or clothes as the new medium of communication. And the medium shapes what we need to look at, what to appreciate and how. Which in turn is caught in the trap complex mentioned above.

• èCameras: A camera is capturing life into two dimensions. A photographer who spends time and skills and exquisite attention brings perspective to life. One who doesn’t, flattens life. The camera also prefers body contours that yield well to a kind of play of light and shadow which transfers well to the film. With the rise of easy-to-use everywhere cameras, the trending focus is on producing photos that conform to social media likes or get internet track. It is like sugar is metaphorically added even to the production and consumption of images. Which are in turn shaped by the trap complex mentioned above.

• è In the meantime, soil, water and air pollution increases affecting food, water and breath which affects the body’s biochemical process and microbiome health. The rise of food processing industry and their business needs also impacts what we eat. Inflammation, disrupted metabolic pathways, poor oxygen delivery and epigenetic activation are some of the cascading consequences.

• è Increased stress through the many conditions of urban living and modern workforce in turn affecting bodily functions and the state of nervous system. There are hurricanes that hit the body.

• è And this: Our perception is increasingly mediated by machines, reductive, and linear.

 It is in this mix we experience the "body image" crisis.

What is body image? It is how we perceive and assess our bodies. How we perceive is already tainted by the patterns pointed above. How we assess is also already gamified.

There isn’t much space for fuzziness. In-person encounters and topics of conversations are already pre-disposed to “looking good or not”, “diet plans”, and so on. Touch as a way of perceiving another sexually is threshed quickly in favour of performance of a preconceived notion of the “erotic.” In liu of touch exploration, orgasm is privileged just as success is privileged in the world, irrespective of means. And the history of measurement continues – how many orgasms in a day or how many orgasms with how many people.

The trap is deeper – the ritual performance into the desired category is a must for other contexts too. You are a singer; well, get into shape. You are a senior leader; it is very important to be in shape. You are a coach; how can you be a coach unless you are in shape? You are a writer; oops you need to be in shape for book-reading and photo shoots. You are a young upcoming politician; umm, get in shape. Want a date? Marriage? Be in shape.

Or learn to be photographed well. Oops, it helps to be in shape.

The efforts to fix the crisis in the “mind” also end up reinscribing the same patterns. Weight-loss programs reinscribe the importance of certain body parameters. Medical research digested into short news items also bark about weight and medical crisis and make it as an individual failure. Empowered rhetoric like plus-size fashion and models simply create new categories around the issue. Efforts to reclaim body by various workshops or photo shoots, whether a celebration of various body shapes/types in different oh-you-can’t-wear-this apparel, or nude, once again reinscribe the gaze on individual body. To say body doesn’t matter, only inner beauty counts, is, besides being delusional, again an individual-centred discourse. To deliberately cross-dress and confound gender binaries also doesn’t help—for it is still feeding the visual form and riding the social media sugar likes. To colour hair or tattoo/pierce body parts in unusual ways is beautiful but it continues keeping the gaze on the individual body.

We are either shamed for not being in shape or shamed for adulating those in shape or shamed for not modelling the rebels. We are forced to perform into some category.

“Meanwhile the world goes on” (Mary Oliver, Wild Geese)

As Nora Bateson writes in her essay, “So where is the change? It is everywhere except where we try to make it. The trying and the making of change are contaminated with the familiar scripts and blue prints. Watch the swirl, try not to be distracted by what is swirling.”

As long as we live in the realm of “Body Image,” the crisis will continue.

The beauty of the worship of the Goddesses in different forms is simply this –that it is very fuzzy and edges blur. The beautiful Parvati is also the dishevelled Kali.

Aum Kalaratreya Namah!

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Not Religion Not even Spirituality

Kala-bou or Banana bride ritual (PC: Utkarsh Speaking Blog)

 (This is the sixth post the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here. To read the second post, please click here. To read third post, please click here. To the read the fourth post, please click here. To read the fifth post, please click here.)

Sa Ham series can easily be interpreted as a “sociology of religion” articles to some academics and others as simply a religious or spiritual or “goddess” blog.

I contend that this is not that.

The printing press period in Europe also saw the discovery of Americas, spread of European empires across Asia and Africa, rise of the machines and Science (as we know today) and it has had an impact on how we have come to perceive our world. Fixed, separating, exploitative, controlling, and needing to predict with more engineering type solution pathways.

This is also the time when there were efforts for a clear distinction between the Institution of Church from the Throne and from matters of social rules and laws. The rise of Christianity in Europe had already driven underground many of the pagan practices. Within European history and social evolution, the term “religion” has a context.

That is not true of the practices in South Asia where across centuries, and even through colonisation, every aspect has continued to be stitched together intricately. There isn’t a thing like “religion” that can be separated from everyday life or social norms. Nor is there a term in native languages that exactly transliterate the word “religion.”

There are no single fundamental institutions in South Asian practices. Although we have Sankracharyas of the various Mutts, a select few visit and the influence is limited. No temple is considered the most important. Every community and in fact every family have their own traditional places of worship and ways of worship.

There are more than three dozen definitions of religion and academics struggle to place South Asian practices in some umbrella. There is a definition which I had liked for my PhD research, that it is a “chain of memory” (Hervieu Léger, 2000; Burgess, 2008). I would add that it is a set of acts through which the chains of memory are invoked, reinscribed and re-formed.

The commonalities that “Hindus” appear to agree on are -- particular Spaces, in the sense of auspicious time, in the rivers, in certain plants, flowers, and light. For example, Varanasi (Kasi) is highly revered. It is the space by the banks of River Ganga that is revered, not some temple in the town. Hindus across India visit Kasi for Kasi, the space. People revere the Ganges. And will gather on the banks wherever it flows. In fact, all rivers have gatherings of some kind. People revere Tulasi plant and bel leaves and Dhurva grass.

Lighting an oil lamp (diya) is common across the diversity of Hindus and so is offering of flowers and food across regions and caste. What kind of flowers or what food is offered depends on the seasons, the geography, local species and continued cultural wisdom.

Every festival in a community has set of plants (flowers, leaves, fruits, seeds), a way of preparing food, a bird/animal associated with it. It also has songs, mantras, stories, and rituals that weave through re-affirming an embroidery across time and ancestry. Each careful performance of the festival keeps some species alive –whether plant or animal/bird. It keeps some of the mythic stories as well as family/community stories alive. The interdependence that makes our world is steeped in the practices. It keeps a way of seeing the world and each other alive.

This is at once expansive across the constellations, and across time, and holding together the separated notions of this-is-family and this-is-religion and this-is-culture and this-is-education and this-is-x.

Each festival is a spontaneous dance and celebration of our ecology, or what keeps our world living.

(May I state here that calling the way of life in this land as Sanatana Dharma also doesn’t help for it becomes another covert way to brand and do the exact same things that religion does. I think if something refuses to be classified and labelled, then it should remain so.)

Family and Continuing Practice

I am not fond of community pandals for many of these emerged as a creative response to political and social crisis in South Asia. They had a purpose when they emerged, but they don’t serve us well anymore.

Here is why—I think family is the fulcrum for intergenerational continuing of practices and traditions. The child in the family will be around elders learning the ways osmotically – whether it is knowing a certain plant or a way of preparing season-conducive food, or songs or chants or ways of doing things.

Within the family, given whatever dynamics there is also an opportunity to blur rules and figure out a way to include in more forms. These practices can change and evolve through the loving hold of a family.

For example, in a community pandal, the male priest usually takes over and the gendered division around who can do what is quite evident. One stays back unless they are part of the organising committee and most people gawk, dress up and eat. We have outsourced worship, we have outsourced the joy of cooking and making things for puja and process becomes commercialised. And there is unnecessary competition between pandals and status show and every other evil that plagues our world.

In a family, this is different. There is more participation and more say on who does what. The gender dynamics maybe more fluid and who does what can shift. I have seen my mom lead many a puja and found ways for me to participate. I dislike keeping house staff away and find ways to include them. I have seen relatives make alpanas and decorate and pick flowers and collects fruits and help making food. In an ongoing unit like family, it is possible, for both a continuity of tradition as well as discontinuity of those practices that no longer align.

What has gone missing in many families in stress and splits of the last few decades is Care. I grew up hating many festivals at home because I would get barked at or shamed or some such. I know many people have difficult relationships and what I propose can be horrifying for them.

I realise this. And I know how as our connections to rest of nature has been spliced away, these difficulties have increased.

I don’t know how else to say this except to say it—we need to return to our lands, our trees and shrubs and birds and insects and to the skies and the fragrances and health and love. As David Abram loving writes in his book The Spell of the Sensuous,

“Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds and shapes of an animate earth—our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.”

Unfortunately, we can’t invent anything new for the population. We have to adapt what is present in a way that each adaptation will take place in a contextually meaningful way. That there will be many pockets of evolution co-existing with forces that keep our connection with our ecology alive.

This is not about theism or atheism or some such lost endeavours. This is about our Earth. About our Goddess returning to Earth, one thoughtfully done festival at a time.

Throwing this out is also about losing everything.

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Learning & Dark Learning

Raja Ravi Varma's depiction of Maa Saraswati (from Wikimedia)

 (This is the fifth post the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here. To read the second post, please click here. To read third post, please click here. To the read the fourth post, please click here.)
 

Today my heart tugged me to write about Saraswati.

My parents tell me that my first connection with the Goddess began with Maa Saraswati at the age of three. It appears I had picked up on the festival preparations in my city and insisted on my idol of the Goddess. And they got me a beautiful clay image of Mother, sitting on a swan and playing her veena, with that benevolent look.

They also provided me with puja samagri and it seems I had taken it up earnestly. I had done the puja as I had seen family elders and priests do. And that this puja changed the pattern in my family. My mother, she says, took up celebrating festivals around Devi with as much traditional rigour as she could muster. And that I toddled around her.

My growing years were filled with pujas of devi, inside home and outside home. I have great fondness of the Goddesses of different forms anywhere. My very first research paper was a media analysis of the movie “Daman”. In this movie, the protagonist is named Durga and climax is centred around Durga Puja. The movie reflects on the disconnect between the perception of human women as against goddess women. While Maa Durga is worshipped, the young wife Durga is subjected to severe abuse.

Some of my efforts in writing about Goddesses stems from this disconnect. How can I return Goddess to Earth?

In all this, there are groups of people who have given their entire lives for the academic study of Goddess myths. I do not come into this as a traditional academic even though I have read academic papers and taught at University in this area. I come in as a lover, dearly wanting to introduce She who tugs me even when I forget her. I come in as someone who believes that some of the continuing traditions of older cultures hold patterns that sustain a sense of ecology, of enmeshment and interdependence, and a wisdom that maybe sorely needed.

Maybe I am wrong in my assumptions and if so, may I discover them when it is time. For the moment, I find the existing theoretical lens that dominate both academia and public intellectual space as reductive and often divisive (in spite of desiring otherwise). The analysis tends to be through a narrow boundary lens.

My sense is we need to expand how we perceive our world. Challenge existing concepts, or shake them up with other perspectives, open out new possibilities of seeing and being.

I also find some challenges in the South Asian ecology. We underestimate the extent to which we have adopted and adapted colonisation patterns (both the old and new forms) and how our thought breathes through the colonial lens. The enemy is not an outsider. It is us as we gather and communicate.

To call something Western or Hindu and some forms intrinsically superior to others is actually playing into the same kind of categorical illusions that hurt us in the first place.

I hope through this series and through all of my writings I can reinvoke the smell of earth, generosity of clouds, the expanse of roots of trees in how we hold each other.

 

Devi Saraswati

I have known Maa through Raja Ravi Verma paintings. A particular figure of a woman that the painter thought fit to project onto the Goddess. And versions of it have creeped into the many sculptures. I recognise that.

I am also aware there are older forms of Saraswati like Vāc and myths are way more entangled and complex than what I present here.

Today I choose to step back from the usual media forms and reflect on the Goddess as symbol of learning. My readings about Saraswati are not exactly in-depth. I maybe wrong in how I present her. Nevertheless, the lover’s eyes senses Mother wholly.

In common practice, Maa is known as the Goddess of Learning, Speech and Arts. I once taught at an Indian University where the central sculpture was a huge image of Maa Saraswati, moon-white, sitting in a fountain of lotuses. And in her backdrop were the blue mountains. I passed by her every morning on my way to teach.

The question for me is why the Goddess is associated so closely with Bramha, the Creator. The popular myth goes that Bramha created Saraswati. She was the Shakti for the creative action and also some one he fell in love with. There first child was Manu, the first Man.

What has learning and speech have to do with the evolution of life? Thanks to studying Bateson and cybernetics, I can say—Everything. The trouble is, as Ivan Ilich points out clearly in his book Deschooling Society, we have come to understand Learning as instructional communication that happens in a designated spatial area called school/college/university during designated hours. And we prove we have “learnt” through the process of exams and other assessment tools.

Learning, as both Gregory and Nora Bateson point out, is something more liminal and an alive process. It is how an organism comes to live, thrive and evolve in its environment. As Nora often says, if you are alive, you are learning.

It is how unicellular organisms gathered and fused to become multi-celled entities, creating more complex structures as they evolved. It is how they learnt to continue life through splitting, duplicating and reproduction. It is how they incubated babies of more complex creatures like mammals in Mummy’s belly for extended period. It is how they created hormonal complexes that kept the mother attached to her offspring, and a community of mothers attached to all of children. Remember how many of us burst into instant smiles when we see a toddler.

And that all of this is held together through the process of communication. Not just words, not just gestures, but the whole-body throbbing with messages for the other. The dog sniffs the bark of the tree, bees smell chemical in the air, birds fall unusually silent, beetle freezes. The child gurgles, the puppy nips to play, the kitten practices climbing over. A lover gazes at her love, the flower blooms, leaves shed. And something is comprehended, something is communicated. Saraswati, Goddess of Sound and Speech.

The very essence of life is learning. The very energy of evolution is adaption through learning.

It is only apt that Bramha and Saraswati are together in the mythic stories. And perhaps we need to pay attention not only to “learning” but also the process of creating. That Creativity as some quality in a person does not exist. Rather, given the right conditions, any being/group/context/geography may create something new through learning.

Devi Matangi: A Calcutta Lithograph (Wikimedia)

Devi Matangi

Just as I was getting comfortable with the mythic stories of Saraswati, I learn about Devi Matangi. This Goddess is a tantric Goddess of Learning. She is said to be a sixteen-year-old sensuous gal, with emerald-coloured skin, crescent moon on her forehead. She is the Goddess of the dark arts and the dark learning.

What that means is she is the goddess who presides over “influencing” and “attracting” art forms. How to control someone or influence their desires, how to attract a mate easily and so on.

One of her versions is Uchchhishta Matangi. The “Outcaste Matangi” who emerged from leftovers of Trimurti, and who is worshipped through pollution—unwashed hands and leftover offerings. She is also offered cloth with menstrual blood.

Frankly, when I first encountered her, I was discomforted. She was the Goddess of everything I disliked. I know of influencing communication as marketing and advertisement. I know of it as propaganda. I know of hypnosis and how some claim to place suggestions in others. I know of the misuse of these patterns for power, dehumanisation, abuse of various forms, and sending people into an economic spiral.

And yet in the stories, Matangi is said to be a Mahavidya Goddess closely associated to Mahadevi Tripura Sundari. She is a Goddess of arts and path to attain Enlightenment. It is said that devotees learn to confront forbidden practices and transcend notions of purity and pollution and thereby attain bliss.

Insight came through two different paths. One is the study of Jung’s understanding of Psyche. In his exploration, Carl Jung, found “shadow” as significant and urged its integration into the conscious being. He said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” He also said, “Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.” 

For me, reading Jung knocked on my own shadow self – how do I own up to both the desire to control and my dislike of the same?

As I explored, I realised the issue is deeper. Jung writes about collective shadow. A collective shadow are the values, ways of being, images and so on that is repressed culturally. It also includes “collective guilt, responsibility and reparation.” 

I wondered about women who have experienced sexual abuse and unable to own the erotic aspects of their being. Or those who weaponised the erotic as an expression of anger. This is an ongoing exploration, and I do not have any aha moments to share. But there is something here.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis PC: A Community for Naturalists · iNaturalist

The other pathway for insight came from Merlin Sheldrake’s study of fungi. In his chapter on “Mycelial Minds” in the book “Entangled Life” he writes about ‘zombie fungi’. These fungi species are able to control and modify their host behaviour. One of them that he describes is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. This fungus species infects carpenter ants who lose their fear of heights. They climb the nearest plant and soon the fungus forces the ant to clamp its jaws around the plant in what he calls as the “death grip.” Mycelium then grows from the feet of the ant and embroiders over the plant surface. Later they spore. This work is done with extraordinary precision—just the right temperature and height that is suitable for their fruiting activities. (Please read Sheldrake’s book, if you have not.)

Our gut microbiome also influences the Gut-Brain axis and influences our emotions. It is said that serotonin, the happy-making hormone is produced in the gut. Changes in the composition of the microbiota species in the gut influences moods.

Umm. Devi Matangi could be the Goddess of Microbes and Shakti of the Psychedelics :-)

This pathway made me wonder – when we are talking about attraction and control in the modern times, we often consider it as an individual mastery for needs that end with the individual or group. My pleasure or building up my power/status with no awareness of the consequence to the ecology.

Devi Matangi is embedded in a cultural process that is found on the notion of whole and preserving ways that keep this awareness alive. These traditions, although massively demeaned and reduced in modern times for psychedelic and sexual adventures, were never about hedonistic activities. They are grounded in the transcendent whole and held with great rigour. It is extremely difficult to follow this path and very few tread on them and that too, with great care and secrecy.

One does not end up writing bestsellers on this :-)

This is an area of continuing exploration for me. I trust the awareness will emerge with the Grace of the Goddess when the time is auspicious. I hope it is has also intrigued you.

 

 

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Many Forms of the Feminine

Devi Dhumavati from Wikimedia Commons

 (This is the fourth post the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here. To read the second post, please click here. To read third post, please click here.)

Narratives of masculinity and femininity are presented in the mainstream as distinct categories with clearly distinguishable attributes. For example, muscular strength, valour, protection, assertiveness is often attributed to masculinity and feminine as softness, maternal qualities, nurturing, sensual and so on.

Occasionally, it is also said that hierarchy and hunting is masculine while equality and justice is feminine. There are many other variations of these two assumed categories of life.

This is where the Goddess myths upturn the categories. If you follow through the many forms of the South Asian Goddesses, you begin to wonder about such classifications.

Unlike the homogenous modern images and paintings, Goddesses have been worshipped in many forms.  She is worshipped as primordial Shakti, Lalitha residing in Sri Chakra, a yantra. She is worshipped as Durga that we know very well. She is worshipped as a nine-year-old girl Sri Bala Tripura Sundari. She is worshipped as a mean and unattractive old woman in the form of Dhumavati. And she is worshiped as Matangi who has a thick moustache on her upper lip and eating leftovers. And as Vanaramukhi, the one with the face of a Monkey and as Vajra Varahi with the face of a boar. She is also worshipped as Chinnamasta, the one with head that is decapitated and as Kali, the dark one with garland of skulls. She is the fierce form of Bhadrakali, Chamunda and Charchika. She is also the most sensual Rathi and Kamayani. And benevolent Mahamaya, Mahalakshmi, and Uma.

Devi Chamunda from 8th century temple in Jajpur, Odissa

Many of the goddesses are supposed to be “feminine” forms of the Gods. Except when you study them, they seem to have almost all the same qualities their counterparts have and you may wonder what makes them “feminine.” Indrani as the feminine form of Indra, Narasimhi of Narsimha, Varuni of Varuna (wind), Vaishnavi of Vishnu, Agneyi of Ajna (fire),Vinayaki of Vinayaka (Ganesh), Kauberi of Kuber and so on. In these forms, she carried their weapons and their blessings in the same way.

Her attributes are diverse. She is dark at times, moon-skinned at others, red skinned too as well as gnarly skin. She is tall, crippled, hunchbacked, short. She has all kinds of hair, all kinds of teeth, all kinds of eyes, all kinds of waist girth. She is sometimes human-like, sometimes more-than-human, sometime a colour, an energy vibration, a pattern, a yantra, an element. She is fertile, pre-fertile, ultra-fertile, post-fertile.

Sometimes she is maternal, sometimes terrifying, sometimes adorable, sometimes confusing. She displays multiple emotions – love, seduction, calm, compassion, anger, possessiveness, rudeness, contempt, disgust, mischief and more.

Devi Rati with her parrot (Wikimedia)

Except for the linguistic trap of pronouns “She” “her”, the “Goddess” appears elusive, transcendent of gender traps and simply offering a different lens to worship and connect with rest of Universe.

Very much like women on earth. Sometimes dark, sometimes white, sometimes tall, sometimes short, sometimes young, sometimes old, sometimes a child, sometimes utterly sensual, sometimes menopausal, sometimes with black shining eyes, sometimes with blue sky-like eyes, sometimes with eyes that are mellow, sometimes with wrinkles, sometimes with acne, sometimes smooth and taut, sometimes angry, sometimes loving, sometimes rude, sometimes contemptuous, sometimes wise, sometimes singing, sometimes playing with water,  sometimes dancing, sometimes a mother, sometimes a daughter, sometimes fierce, sometimes serving.

Yaa Devi Sarva-Bhutessu xxx Samsthitaa |
Namas-Tasyai Namas-Tasyai Namas-Tasyai Namo Namah ||

To that Devi Who in All Beings is Abiding in the Form of X,
Salutations to Her, Salutations to Her, Salutations to Her, Salutations again and again.

 

 

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.

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): Child Goddess

Sri Bala Tripura Sundari from Pinterest

 

(This is the second post the 2024 Sa Ham series. To read first post, please click here.)

In her book, “Whispers of the Unseen: the Quest for 64 Yoginis”, author Beena Unnikrishnan has a chapter on Bala Tripura Sundari. The nine-year-old daughter of Goddess Lalitha. It is said that in great battle between Demon Bhandasura and the Goddess, the young Bala insisted on joining the war. The mother finally relented and gave her some of her armour and weapons. Sri Bala fought valiantly and defeated several sons of the Demon. (You can read my review of this book in the Frontline magazine here).

I was quite taken aback with this story. The story of child Krishna doing many divine acts are well-known. However, I had not heard of Bala. Once I researched, I discovered many songs and hymns dedicated to Bala including a thousand-names chant, Sri Bala Sahasranama.

This research made me reflect on how children are portrayed in mythology and ancient scriptures. For example, the entire Katha Upanishad is a conversation between 5-year-old Nachiketa with the God of Death Yama. And I couldn’t help noticing the contrast with how we perceive children now.

Parenting

I am thinking of Dr Benjamin Spock and his famous book “Baby and Child Care” which revolutionised parenting in the 20^th century. What it also did was to insert the idea globally that one needed a book or an expert to help with parenting, that there was ideal parenting “what-to-do” and “how-to-do” tips.

Combined with the rise of psychology influenced mostly by Freud and his later students, the engineering orientation to the world as problems to be solved, increased number of nuclear families, parenting became a process of moulding children and ensuring socially appropriate behaviours. To this was the addition of innumerable books, toys and games, giving rise to an industry whose workers depend on this process to continue as is.

The consequences of this shift in parent-child narratives are many. The most important aspect being loss of respect for the child as an aware and legitimately responsive human being. The “child” becomes lesser in hierarchy and treated as this adorable vulnerable waiting-to-receive-right-inputs creature. “Woh toh bachcha hai.”

One social media ad assured parents that they were the one who “hold the key to unlock the potential of their child” and the business would help parents “find the lock for the key.”

The directed sculpting and shaping through books, toys, and activities also meant the children are not discovering their own modes of entertainment and play. Instead, they are boxed in. Play this game to improve brain functions, and this one for motor functions and that one to learn alphabets quickly. The notion of unlimited growth is inserted right in the early years.

Veteran educationist K.B. Jinan often comments on this state. That children can figure out what they need to play with and how. That it increases curiosity when they are free to move around and discover. That parents can learn from observing children. He worries about the loss of natural cognitive processes in our world and states, existing “cognitive sciences are better for machines, not children.” You can follow hisInstagram page titled “Do_nothing_parenting”. 

The guided parenting activities also cut off children’s multipronged connection with environment. What we have is an activity with pre-decided one or two purposes. Instead of discovering an environment, they learn to relate to others from a utilitarian point of view. Park is for X, playground for Y, supermarket for Z and so on. Or how categories are formed and continue in our world.

Thankfully many are challenging the usual discourse of parenting and writing complex unparenting narratives of parent-child relationships. It is also wonderful to read rich layered memoirs of parents like this one that was published this week or the one I had written a decade back.

"Childhood"

There is another significant consequence of the events of the last century. It is the way in which “childhood” has become a distinct category of experience and part of the cause-effect analysis. The content and experience of this category is imagined having huge effects on the rest of life. Personal narratives often dip into this experience to make sense of their “behaviours” in the world. There is also a sense of loss and yearning if that category was not the imagined ideal.

What this excessive focus does is to deny other aspects of our life. That cultures and our worlds change. What was true of our parents’ time is not true in our times is not true of our children’s times. Which means actions are informed and influenced by the worlds they come into being so that the meaning of “childhood” is a shifting dynamic. What it also denies are intergenerational patterns that we find ourselves in – patterns that continue and some that are disrupted and some that are sadly discontinued. We are unable to zoom out and observe the swirl of everything.

Including the increasing pollution of water, soil and air. Of changing climate. Of intense divide of hearts and what that means to our nervous system. Of changing communication patterns.

Finding the cause of pain in a specific childhood is ignoring the larger broken-breaking, healing-healed world we were born into.

Through all of this, I remember the people who treat young persons differently. A dear one had shared an observation of her son. This young man is a mathematician of distinction and in a particular event, he collaborated with his very young cousin and received her inputs with great respect and seriousness. Bayo Akomolafe often refers to learning from hischildren, especially his son Kyah. In one speaking event, I saw him include his young daughter as a co-speaker-thinker.

And me thinks Bala Tripura Sundari probably smiles through such moments.