"A moment's silence for the silences that are lost in translation."
As I struggle to break out of a looping headache that comes back to grip a part of my head every time I try to go back to sleep, these words keep replaying in my mind. The first few words that emerge as I realized I have missed something that possibly wasn't there. I have missed the entire Kali Puja ritual that visits me as a soundscape each year from the neighborhbood pandals.
The ritual itself is an unpredictable mix of the ludicrous and the profound. The ugliest of Bollywood hits competing with an unlikely recording of dhaak or even a rare real one. The intermittent conch and bell. And the loud, brash, half drunk voices exploding at one another disruptively. I marvel at the way the dhaakis are being dispensed with even as the lights get more garish. These lights hurt my damaged eyes and I shield them with my camera screen that magically filters out the glare and presents to me the version I want to see. Indeed it's good to lose in translation sometimes.
When the worship commences there are these profound silences. If there's a priest uttering mantras, those are not reaching my ears.
There are also my closed glass panes this time. No it's not the sulphur fumes from crackers that are overwhelming. There have been hardly any fireworks this year - for that matter in most recent years with a few exceptions when an authority backpedaled on Green Bench norms and the demons unleashed themselves.
It's the traveling Northern Indian fog belt that's come visiting Kolkata right in time.
The festival series is late this year in the course of this little back and forth dance that the sun and moon enact to synchronize with each other, so an autumn festival actually remains in the autumn! For those not familiar, the festival schedule rolls back by eleven/twelve days each year till it hits the border of a solar month when it pushes itself forward again by three weeks.
And now, the north winds have sadly borne, instead of clear cold air, this filthy blanket of fog that's reached Kolkata just in time to spike our AQI!
Returning to silence methinks the closed room walled me off from the sound of that silence. I fell asleep right when I had meant for the silence to jerk me awake. Whither the insistent sounds of distant dhaak building to a frenzy - not so distant considering it's in the next street - that would make my heart leap in anticipation of that sudden silence at the end of it? I missed it. Because it simply wasn't there. And I'll now need to wait till 31st October 2024. Don't wait for anything, I remind myself. Allow it to find you if it will.
Kali never lets me down. And she did not this year either. I believe these words that came to me which I kept repeating in my half awake state in a bid to not forget them, are the gift she's given. I walk - rather stumble my way - through a strange path on this most unusual (and sometimes seemingly pointless) journey that my life has been.
I'm holding on to this idea of silence. I will not attempt to translate it. Like my heritage home project that I recommit to every waking moment, I will put it out there. You can read and interpret and maybe come back for a conversation?
I hope, I dream on.
I am off now on a jaunt to go catch up with the goddess - time for some visual communication - and have a few pow-wows with her.
Happy Kali Puja! May Kali's Silence find you in whichever manner is meaningful for you.
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