The Morning After What?

An Unreal Silence

Written on 12th October 2016 - a somewhat personal post that I decided to share because of the resonance it found in Sridevi, steady supporter of my writing endeavors. In her words, 

"You usher in so much silence with your posts. I can relate so much with those friends morphing into "strangerhood" and the dialog which dangles between the need to be heard and the need to be quelled for the sanity of the most temporary kind. And yet somehow along the way, we make peace with it. "

Specifically I wanted to channel that silence to others. 

Where did the Morning After go? That very special feeling of emptiness embracing fullness, that we feel after the goddess has left the pandal and gone into the Ganga. This year there was no immersion on Dashami (the final day of religious rituals). She stood there in the pandal waiting. Surrounded by an eerie silence that was at once beautiful in the opportunities for contemplation and touching Durga as pure spirit,  and uncanny at the same time, the abrupt halt to festivities,leaving a sense of melancholy. 

You don’t leave Durga in her pandal and turn off the lights. You keep celebrating as long as she’s there. Instead they held her prisoner and said “Halt.” It was a never-before silence that could stand up to that of Kali on Kali Puja night. Is there a reason Durga did this? Yesterday’s cloud parade with Durga on her flying steed in the sky, was clearly the goddess taking leave. So what remains now? Did she really go, tired out and a little cross with the tomfool’s playground that is India today? Leaving a mere likeness in her place for formal celebration?

And is there a reason I am receiving so many gifts whose value somehow loses itself amongst the challenges and constraints? The constraints are so needless. Like this hurting  hand. Which brings me to doctors. And the gamut of strange emotions that are at play when we take one foolish medical decision over another – be it wise or foolish is rarely ever revealed to us. 

I have no idea what I’m doing right or wrong. Just feeling like I need a breath of fresh air, a radical change in the kind of medical help I receive. I am a rational being – mostly. I have an almost suicidal irrationality that sometimes takes over though – and how! And I just feel the urge to change things, even though there seems to be nothing the matter with them.

There are definitely other emotions at play, too. The strongest ones for most of us are fear and rejection. Each by itself is destructive enough. When you put them together as “fear of rejection” it freezes you into inaction, apathy, ennui. Or makes you bolt in terror. And when that rejection is subtle, it hits harder. And when you perceive a rejection that may not even be there – it’s all only a mismatch in expectations when you look at it through a crystal – it is worse. It brings me back to my favorite “gap” – the gap in understanding.

Today I am forced to manage largely with the company of strangers. The year has been a lesson in understanding that people are not what they seem. And that some relationships that once roared like a bonfire, have drifted into an uneasy tension. So strangers become the only friends you have and friends float away into a state of partial “strangerhood” – a situation from which you will never be able to make a clean break because there will be some things that are never quite stated, nor quite left unstated. 

Meanwhile we all continue our restless search for that one person in whose affections we are first. And remain first. I’ll readily share the honors with several other firsts. The trouble is they are not as gracious in return. Nor does that special person ever turn out to be as wise as I would wish. 

Durga had ten hands. If you took one away, she wouldn’t be the same. Each hand was different. Each hand was her first. 

The "morning after" this time has incredible weather. There’s a sweet breeze from the west – not too dry or moist, just a hint of autumn cool. But it is the morning after nothing. Because nothing happened last night!

PS I decided to post this affirming picture that said “Asche Bochhor Abar Hobe” rather than something grey and bewildering like the situation all around could be - if we allowed it! I mentioned gifts didn’t I? I will not let them lose themselves in the confusion.

Footnote:

That year there were no immersions of Durga on Dashami (the date as per tradition and one that is preferred by home pujas and the smaller community pujas) out of deference to the solemn observance of Muharram on the same date. 

Dashami immersions are anyway becoming less frequent as organizers like to hold on to the deity for as long as they can, after all the effort. And now with the Grand Parade of Durgas down Red Road to the river at a carnival organized under the auspices of the state government, the old patterns are morphing into new ones.