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.

 

 

 

Sa Ham- I am She (2024 series): The Tipping Point

The Creation of Durga (Watercolour on Paper @Met Museum)

(This year, by the grace of the Goddess, I bring in a third edition of the Sa Ham-I am She series. Each edition was influenced by the theoretical lens I was donning at that particular period. Sa Ham 2012 edition was touched by my many travels across India. Sa Ham 2017 edition was shaped by the neurolinguistics of how we perceive the world. This 2024 edition marks the emergence of ecological consciousness-- an awareness of relational interdependencies for life making life) 

It is believed that the autumn worship of the Goddess is akalbodhan, an untimely awakening. That the timely worship of the Goddess is in Spring (Basanti puja).

The myths are many. As per one mythological story, Sri Ram sought the Goddess Durga’s blessing before going to war with Ravana and invoked her on the 6^th day of the Devi Paksha, also known as Shashti. Another story speaks of the Goddess emerging from the energies of the many gods to defeat Mahishasura.

Ravana had a boon that he couldn’t be killed unless the Goddess gave permission. Mahishasura had a boon that he couldn’t be killed by any man or a god.

The stories are not simply that Rama worshipped the Goddess and she readily blessed him. Nor that the Gods created a Goddess, and she vanquished Mahishasura.

Instead, the process is slow, stirring, changing till that tipping point when everything changes.

I hear this term “tipping point” being used often these days and it delights me that there is an awareness of non-linear processes at play for something to emerge.

This essay is interested in the processes that lead to the tipping point.

Tipping point is different from problem solving. In the later, a problem is noticed, and a solution to rectify the problem is imagined. This is the narrow boundary lens analysis.

When our perceptions become spacious, instead of directly fixing a problem, we turn our attention to the conditions that keep a symptom as it is. And add in new conditions that may stir the pot in new ways.

In the myth, Rama has to offer 108 blue lotuses in his worship. He manages to find only 107 blue lotus and after floundering for a while, decides to offer his eye (said to look like blue lotus). As he takes an arrow to pluck the eye, the Goddess is said to have appeared. What is conveyed in Rama’s method of praying is the deep earnestness in seeking the blessing of the Goddess and the willingness to do something different. This, in turn, was influenced by the conditions—his wife Sita’s abduction by Ravana, Ravana refusing to negotiate, and the necessity of war.

In the Mahishasuramardini myth, the Goddess is created because the Gods have tried to defeat Mahishasura and failed. The usual ways of responding to the Asura fails while he grew in power. It is only then the Gods, on the advice of Vishnu, combined their powers to invoke a female form of their energies – Goddess Durga of ten arms.

This is a very different way to approach world issues. For example, hunger is an issue. Hunger cannot be fixed by simply providing food. Hunger can be seasonal hunger due to lack of jobs, or because of sudden medical bills or rent increase. Hunger could be because one doesn’t have access to kitchen. It could be because of malnutrition and sometimes because companies nudge people towards sodas and chips. Sometimes it is inherited bad dietary pattern. Sometimes it is eating what is not appropriate for the season or not eating diversely.

One can go on and on about the dynamics of hunger in our world. The point is simple fixes cannot tackle the problem. Instead, it is helpful to widen our perception and notice conditions. The structure of modern business, structure of influencing rhetoric, inequality and hierarchy in distribution, access and quality, lasting effects of colonisation and rapid industrialisation and so on.

To combine and invoke the Goddess requires we understand entangled nature of these conditions and the patterns that keep them as is.

What instead happens is we keep trying piecemeal solutions to fix the problem using the same patterns that have held the symptoms in place. Charitable pursuits on the side and corporate CSR while reading the many marketing books that tell you how to influence your potential customers and how to become rich quickly. In the meantime, not just hunger but many other issues show up in some form or the other.

Our world is becoming hungry at multiple levels.

It is like if the Gods were relentlessly fighting Mahishasura because they cannot believe they, in their current forms, are not suitable for the task.

Our world with its numerous problems is stuck on what Gregory Bateson called the “runaway.” A state when the computer hangs and a process loops infinitely. You can no longer provide new inputs unless you log out or have already set exit commands.

But we can’t “log out” of our worlds. Nor can we user input in the same old way.

The invitation is an untimely invocation of some other form not yet known.

(You may want to read Nora Bateson’s poem Hallway of Hallways as a companion piece)

From Lone Wolves to Counterculture

I watched "A Hidden Life" recently. On Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler and Third Reich. What was interesting to observe was how the village community pressurised him and his family to capitulate, how the general trend became that Franz was a traitor and a bad husband and father.

And the many times, I sensed myself saying -- Franz, let it be. Say yes and move on. Live, live.

Franz didn't. Crazy man, I thought. Driven by his personal values in the face of death. He was executed. Forgotten for many years till his actions were rediscovered. And he was beatified by the same church that had been scared to stand by him.

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch

I wondered. About other lone wolves I know of. Barking alone in the woods. And the times in my heart I have said, "Don't. You are going to be hurt." Even when I know they do the important work of belling the future.

The times I was a lone wolf myself. Barked and done.

About George Batesons's double bind applied to social structures that I read recently. About how structures demand us to lie and we know it is so. Not just structures far out there, but structures in our immediate cultural groups, in our fields, in systems we ourselves invent. How they become the "only pathway to wisdom."

"In our dealings with the world, we have simply come to accept that there’s an unbridgeable chasm between what we are told and what’s really going down."

and further,

"This is why Bateson’s work is so useful. He understands that getting angry and demanding the honest truth from someone in a double bind is a futile effort."

And then this article by Nora Bateson on letters by her Dad:

"At the peace table, at the change-makers conference, at the climate convention, and at the dinner table with your children, how much are we all looking to establishment to provide the path to a new perception? But it will not come from the institutions. Notice that these letters are all about Gregory resigning, ducking out, and retreating from taking part in these institutional processes. Why? Should he not be trying to produce change from within the system? No. Harsh though it may sound these letters are a call for us today to look to one another and create a context from which to discuss the context. That means the possibility for the survival of our species is with you and me, not any ministry, or organization.

The liminal realm in which we live is where the shifts are. Our integrity from one moment to the next, from one conversation to the next is everything. To take the risk of trusting each other is revolutionary, and evolutionary. Are we trustworthy?"

From lone wolves to counterculture...

Bhavana of December 1992

Pic Courtesy: Jude Beck on Upsplash

Bhavana of December 1992 was different. She was more interested in Love than Politics. And love was specifically romantic love.

Those were the days of Basic Instinct, friends, good food, challenging teachers, wondering about the planetary influence on love lives, looking pretty and ghazals. I cared about the country but not like – I know and understand the challenges of my country and I would like to improve it. Rather, I believed the country’s destiny was intertwined with my destiny. My awesome future would help my country shine. You know that kind of self-absorption.