Procession Of Thoughts

Capturing the thought stream ...

A little like a tiny child trying to catch a sunbeam. Streams there are many and varied. Like a sunbeam and a moonbeam and the wind and the mist and the hands clutching at them all and finding them all just vanish. The way Durga vanished* into the river in 1981.

A touch of what she looked like in 1981 with soft lighting

All those old and new thoughts go rushing by chaotically now, each on their own journey, reminding me of Durga’s farewell procession in all its cacophonous glory. Bells, dhaks, beats, joyous cries. Sometimes a bagpiper band all out of tune. Horns, horns, and more horns – every note of every pitch that can possibly contribute to creating a dissonance that insistently cuts across the rhythmic waves and the flow of the sea of dancers. Well this time the dancers are in the imagination. But the goddess and her dhaak are for real.

My thoughts carry on in their processing, occasionally slowing down. I am trying hard to reach that child I left behind. The one catching sunbeams. The thoughts sometimes hold on to one another for support, in the face of the onslaughts from the unsought and oft belligerent traffic. Oh the bathos. I live with the bathos pretty much as Durga’s security squad ease the electric cables out of her way so she can sail down the narrowest of lanes unhindered.

2016

2018

My thoughts keep their focus on her, as my camera tries to concentrate on her, unfazed by all those monsters that travel across the screen and often inadvertently illuminate the frame to create surreal works of art. Headlights and tail lights, street lights and her own torches of victory.

The glory days of petromax lanterns took over from their predecessors, the flaming torches of real fire! Now it was like the movies or football stadiums – unbearable glare almost purposefully designed to befriend glaucoma and breed its sinister spawn - blindness. My first ever real bisarjan in 1981 saw the last of the petromax torches and the unsullied days. That was a whole other ambience, old world short of true vintage. How old does it have to be to qualify as vintage? I gaze upon this procession and think to myself in amazement that Durga in that form still exists and so does her dhaak, as do so many of her rituals. Where we fail is in the ambience.

1982 saw the first sharp change. The garish tubelights powered by the sputtering, belching generators had arrived. It was the start of what could be the end. Fortunately the wheel of time has circled us back to some good places in history. The generators are now soundless like they didn’t exist. Hopefully next year’s lights will tone down the glare a tad and be more aesthetic. The bagpiper band was missing. While they add a bit to the fun, who can actually dance to those linear thuds that go on and on and on at the same pace? They were meant for soldiers to march to. But Durga’s soldiers are on a dance of joy, not a stodgy old victory march. This is a victory of self over self. Not one with the spoils of territory and the price of bloodshed. And the ever changing rhythms of the dhak that swell to a boisterous crescendo and ebb to soft echoes from the depths of hollow wood. Rhythms of nature, rhythms of the earth and sky and tides.

Before the rhythms lull me, I switch back to the procession of thoughts. I need to give each one attention and nurture it and tell it that it counts as first among equals. They are all crying out for the first and tastiest morsel of my time and skills. Like a posse of hungry nestlings. Hang in there and cut out the clamour! 

First there are thoughts that awaken from memories of long ago. The trance like state of my first ever “Bhashan**” as we would call it then before we all turned into bhadrolok*** and chose highbrow words like bisarjan to describe what was more aptly a “floating.” That very first time Durga had dissolved into nothing in a nanosecond before my unbelieving eyes. Weed/bhang/shiddhi had no part in this uninvited trance. There were trance-inducing energies from the sheer force of humans coming together over a mystical connection with a piece of clay in almost-human form. The piece of clay was slowly divested of all its glamour and stood there on the threshold of the ghaat steps, vulnerable like any human whose time on earth was over.

But the next thought tugs at my sleeve like a pesky child. Asks me about the lorry ride home and the wet shirtless bodies pressed against mine. Yes they had dived after Ma Durga to send her on her way. And then I am reminded of the lovely young man who asked me to hold his watch while he rolled up his sleeves and gave a hand to heave and haul her down the steps without hurting her till we had to let go of her and let the inevitable happen.

Then comes a thought that reminds me of my tears that might have flowed had they not been frozen by the sheer awe of the moment. A voice whispers to me that we all fell in love with one another in those few moments, drawn together in a surge of emotion, connected by the one we were parting from. The one whose foot had cracked from the strain of standing there in a lorry for hours as it jolted over ruts and potholes, and saying farewell to all her loved ones who lined the route in tears and smiles. That sheaf of foolscap paper that I have tucked away god-knows-where, containing my thoughts on the miraculous and totally unsought experience. How the river was in my face when I least expected to emerge through that narrow alley and stand before it in the moonlight. How I was in this liminal zone for real, standing there - all flesh, blood, skin, bones and emotions of me as one, at that threshold between worlds.

It was all written down in a letter to my parents. An experience they had never given me sought me and was sought by me in equal measure. Wholly unknown to me. Wholly known to the divinity that contrived to make it happen. I can see my brother in his own trance standing next to me watching her descend the steps. The ropes that haul her seem almost brutal. It is all so real I am standing there again. 

Will those steps be the same again I wonder? Will my brother ever stand there beside me again and say farewell together with me. Can we do this minus the ugly payloaders and the destination**** ordained by the grim civic reaper? Can we stretch out five fingers of one hand and grasp and grasp again, that which has long since melted away into impossibility? Can we? Maybe yes! And maybe we will come away with a little of that pristine essence.

PS1 This was just one way to capture some of those thoughts as they danced away towards the ghaat with Durga. They will regroup and re-form and dance again. There will be endless choreographers and endless new dances. This hand will capture them yet as they come back again like returning waves that never cease. This is maybe the nearest I have come in writing to what I wrote to my parents in 1981. The years weigh heavily on me and and on Durga. We will both need to shed some baggage before we get back the spring in our steps and our hearts. There will always be another chance. Kim you know the slogan. Share it!

PS2 I am smiling at the end of writing this.

Footnote:
*vanished into the river in 1981 - part 2 of that story will be told soon.You just read part 1

** bhashaan is a colloquial word for visarjan which is the letting go of the idol into the river. 

***bhadralok are genteel folk

Finale: This was written on 17th October 2016. Little did I know that my brother would leave this world on 3rd January 2018. This Puja I felt him in unexpected, reassuring ways that softened the pain of loss.

****destination**** is the city's dumping ground. While it is imperative to prevent pollution of the river, maybe we need to do this in a more respectful and dignified manner. We also need to rethink immersion practices creatively and morph to something more appropriate. Most of all we need to prohibit the use of toxic materials in idols. I was rather shocked to find that plastic and synthetic flowers were starting to replace real ones. Have we stopped cultivating flowers? Maybe we need to focus on growing more indigenous flowers in natural ways and recycling these meaningfully too - create paints from them?