Joy Maaaaa!

 Ashtami Sandhi Puja posts need to be created even as one is still in that comfort blanket of delirious joy at having Chanda-Munda bumped off with a satisfying thwack or two. This may have been the defining moment, the game changer in  the legendary battle according to Puranas. It's the first high point in a series of highs for us worshipers (or even just fans) of Ma Durga, till we hurtle towards the conclusion of the celebrations and then the looong hangover. 

I've videofilmed sandhi puja many times before but I've somehow always missed grabbing that magical moment. This time Brigid brought me luck and like a good girl she captured the moments before and after as well. 
I will say very little, just  leave you to enjoy the video and share your feedback. In honor of that moment, one pushpanjali I like to offer is this one. There's something comforting about the sound of the word Chamunda and the special protection she offers. 
The post won't come through the same way, written as it is after the battle is won and the goddess has symbolically departed. I wish I could have poured it out two days ago right after I experienced the joy  But the video gives you the "there and now" so enjoy it.
Say it with me - "Joy Maaaa!" 

You can follow the links or do your own searches to know more about the legends around the climax of Durga's battle with Mahishasura and the different stages in the action.

Here is a video on sandhi puja for those who understand Bengali and want to go deep. 

Once Upon A Time In The East - Part 1

 A little fountain to soothe the nerves

Once upon a time in the east of this incredible country, a family from the south painted a unique Durga Puja story of their own. Below is part 1 of the series.

When this writer was a wee girl, Durga Puja for the family started on Saptami evening. We would dress up after tea and make our rounds of the pandals in the locality, starting at our beloved Northern Park, Bhowanipore, which, like the Pole Star was a constant. And remains thus. The silly childish me decided to name the pandals we covered in our little reverse pradakshina, Southern and Eastern Park respectively. We never found one to the west and the little girl was always a trifle disappointed. Till her father told her that her home was to the west and there were major festivities on in our beloved home, which was indeed to the west. 
Home was where the puja was for my mom who was incredibly rooted in the Tamil culture she had grown up with. Three things stood out for us as a family about our beloved paara (neighborhood)  puja though - the dhaak and arati, the grandeur of Durga herself and the shehnai which was on the menu for the three main evenings. For my dad, there was a little adda with his cronies, some gentlemen on the organizing committee who had taken kindly to him. One of them, a particular pal of Dad's, was Mr Parbati  Bhushan Bose,  organizing secretary, and a noted communist at that!  We paid a "chanda"  of five rupees as our contribution towards the celebration expenses -  a hefty sum in 1950 - and believe it or not, the five rupees continued all the way till 1981. Occasionally a bunch of youngsters would knock on our door in the weeks before the festival and Dad would tell them he'd visit the pandal and pay. For some reason I enjoyed the duty of handing the money over to Mr Bose, and collecting the receipt with my father's name filled in. Together with the receipt was a goody, the souvenir. A thick book with a black and white picture of the previous year's goddess on the glossy cover, it mostly contained pages and pages of trivia in English about the worthies on the committee, bits of poetry and prose in Bangla which my brother would read as he was the expert in Bengali, an occasional short boring prose piece in English and the audited accounts that I found great delight in running through as I grew older. Somewhere in one of those ancient trunks here, I'm sure to find one such book. One item in those accounts stands out - it read "Dhaki, shehnai and mike" - Rs 1001. And very likely that figure continued for decades with the dhaki likely being the soft target who was paid less and less each year as inflation set in (he constantly complained, did our old man dhaki - named Jhoduram Sardar as we came to know much later). 

I grew older, my brothers left home and life started catching up. The Naxalite movement was on and evening celebrations tended to wind up early. And my mother started opening up with stories about her time in the fifties, taking the tram and riding to North Calcutta to see the "thakurs" there - yes it was called "thakur dekha" and not pandal hopping. Because ALL the pandals (marquee for the festivities) were the same boring tarpaulin over bamboo structures, waiting to leave the unwary with twisted ankles. They all had simple aesthetic cloth decor inside bearing the weight of an occasional lone chandelier or some pretty shaded lights. The altar where the magnificent deities stood were lighted up starkly with ordinary tubelights. And it was all so gorgeous and overwhelming because these grand clay deities exuded so much power and reassurance. There were ornamental lights placed at a few strategic locations outside and children would stare at them, fascinated, calling them the "running lights" - read about their origins here. I recall two of them in particular perched on cornices of the old buildings flanking the park, that would repeat annually like old friends we looked forward to meeting.

Running Lights 

More stories emerged from the lips of Mamma Mia. They had taken my oldest brother aged seven or eight to Babughat to watch the immersion(yes the images are lowered into the river and the clay dissolves). And then I started to feel angry and quite offended that I'd been denied all these treats. Parents were getting older, they no longer had the enthu to haul me along to partake of the fun. Year after year I'd look at the front page picture of Durga being immersed, that graced the newspaper the following morning. Immersions took place strictly on Dashami. And I silently gritted my teeth and waited.

School days slipped into college days. The Naxalites went away - rather they were taken out - or  they transformed into non-Naxalites. We started staying out later in the evenings. Slowly imperceptibly puja committees started small innovations. The first such in 1972 that came to our notice was a Durga made of jhinuk (mother-of-pearl) and the hoopla around it. My brother #2 - the aforementioned Bengali reader having come back home for a while we made a foray to see it, thanks to his clamoring  and were not amused by the queue and the scramble. It was beautiful for sure. But something was missing. For days my neighbor aunty would agonize about what they'd do with it as they certainly couldn't immerse it. Which makes me fast forward to 2023 and wonder what they do with they images that are made of stuff other than clay. And all those trappings that go into making the magnificent artwork that has turned the festival into an extravaganza?

The puja of Gokhale Sporting Club - it started in 1972

College got over, my parents left home(!) and I was left behind. The year was 1981 and I was busy "finding myself" as young people did back then. They say good things come to those who wait. And I had my comeuppance as I drifted my way quite by chance into my first "bhashan" as the visarjan (immersion) was rather irreverently called then. Of which more another day.

I am emotional today. Also sad because something doesn't feel right in my life or my heart this puja. The prospect of having to leave my city for good scares me. I hope the goddess will smile on me and turn that around. We have come a long way as a city. Puja committees would massacre trees back then in readiness for processions. Now KMC does it for them well in advance- not a good thing, then or now. Pandals would regularly catch fire and that's one thing that's been resolved now with all the regulations requiring the use of fireproof materials .. definitely a good thing. 
While the canvas and bamboo with a trench dug around the whole affair had a rustic feel that still calls me in my memory, I am happy we have evolved to where we are today. And curious to know where we'll go from here. If I don't go bonkers before then!

Enjoy the festival whichever way calls it calls to you. Whether you're pious or spiritual or merely fun-loving, there's a rich and exciting layer for you to immerse yourself in. And that's way more than we had, growing up. All paths lead to joy and that's what the occasion is about. The Pujas were beautiful and meaningful and they will continue to be. 

In another post I will talk about what happened to the Pujas post-1981. That's quite an exciting tale and today's young folks will be able to relate a lot better. 

The Mahalaya Twins

 .

Durga's Abode For The Next Few Days

.. Cause You Know Sometimes Words Have Two Meanings

The theme : Mahalaya - today 14th October

Part 1 - The Mahalaya Twins

The post: my response to a one word prompt "Mahalaya" - I asked friends for words to build posts on -  from my friend  Kaanchan  ☺

#inkflowswarmprompt

Where do I even start? Let's get the bad stuff out of the way, shall we? Disturb the comfortable? Rather disturb the uncomfortable so that some of the discomfort may be resolved?

With the Puja season come those incessant rumblings - and ramblings. 
Enter social media, enter the ubiquitous greetings for every blessed occasion and non occasion. 
The heated conversations have taken off on the appropriateness of greeting people with Shubho Mahalaya.  And these conversations while interesting, seem so unnecessary to me, when people overall just want to be cordial.
First - let's get a few uncomfortable facts/myths out of the way. And being me, I'll combine sensitivity and sense while doing so. Harder than you think!

I'll start with a question - did this day ever mean anything other than the concluding day of Pitru Paksha when people give offerings to honor the souls of their deceased ancestors? No it did not. Not that I know of. 

Not until one fine year almost a century ago, during the very early days of broadcasting in India, somebody in the newly set up radio station All India Radio made a mistake. They aired a program welcoming Goddess Durga on the wrong date. A beautifully crafted innovative musical offering that cut across several barriers  to emerge in just that manner and format. That date happened to be Mahalaya Amavasya (dark moon or the null phase). And when they realized the error they decided not to correct it. And nobody, just nobody seemed to mind. Except the small bunch of naysayers who didn't approve of such an unconventional addition to the sacred soundscape, in any case, regardless of date or day.

That little glitch spun off a tradition of bonding across generations and social backgrounds over the old valve radios that many homes had acquired. One that has held generations of folks in Bengal and subsequently elsewhere in the country and the world, in thrall, as it races towards a century.

Has anybody ever tried to reschedule this? No way. Because Durga's arrival has been firmly tied up in people's minds with this now 90 year old tradition. So much so, accredited sources when queried about Durga Puja, will tell you that this is the day Durga descends from the Himalayas or that it's the day the Trimurti created her. She takes exactly a day to float down I guess, because the first day of her worship or the official start of the worship as per the sacred texts, is the very next day - the first phase of the waxing crescent moon. 

Solemn/celebratory days are chosen for their purpose,  through evolving traditions that are ascribed to numerous (sometimes conflicting) myths. Likewise this one. Coming as it does on the no-moon - a liminal zone - it is about a mingling of energies. 

The aforementioned question - the clash of the Mahalayas - never bothered me through all the decades of my life, because I took this coexistence of ancestor worship and the goddess's welcome so much for granted. And it wasn't just me, my relatively orthodox - when it came to observing rites around the deceased - parents seemed so accepting of this merging of the solemn and the celebratory. If memory isn't playing tricks with me, my mother would oftentimes set up the kalasha inaugurating the Navaratras,  on this very day, without a second thought. While almanacs give very precise timings, the lay observer tends to embrace a zone.

People point out to me. that mistakes need to be rectified. I point out to them that mistakes that don't harm anyone, can stay. Especially when they bring joy to so many and have created a firmly rooted unifying tradition.  The short story is, on any day of celebration, someone somewhere will be actually grieving. I mean for real, not merely observing a ritual. Do all celebrations stop? 

Pow-wow done, let's come to what is special about this 20th Century tradition? What does the word Mahalaya mean to you? The word means something pretty simple - maha=great, alaya=abode. Mahalaya Amavasya - the new moon of the great abode, indicating the cusp of this special fortnight called Devi Paksha - the fortnight of the Goddess. 

A close look at the Great Abode. Don't miss another pretentious abode in the background vying for greatness

I have always found something about the word Mahalaya, that pushes frontiers - a limitless abode, the universe. And as a child lying in the dark surrounded by family, with the green "magic eye" of the old radio lighting the vicinity,  I would experience a sense of the whole universe descending and surrounding me. There were parts of the oratorio where Birendra Krishna Bhadra's voice would evoke a sense of unreality, almost fear in my childish imagination. The rise and fall, the cadences. Back in the day, it wasn't a canned product. It would be put together afresh each year, if I am not mistaken even performed live. I wish my parents were alive  to tell me. I wonder if there are recordings of old broadcasts - they would reveal so much. Has the packaged product reduced the charm with its predictability? There have been years when I admit, it feels weary. The tendency to spin it off out of context from start to finish at pandals or street corners too, has detracted from its charm. 

Generations need to come full circle, break patterns,  discover and connect afresh. I say more power to them. My family would refer to this early morning program by various names - Agamani, Mahishasuramardini and perhaps even Mahalaya. The kids around me think of it only as Mahalaya. Maybe that's what popular usage does? Or the internet guru's gyaan? The word means above all, that 90 minute feast of music played at that hour on that day. And the greeting is sans any malice. So let the twins thrive! Our ancestors who have enjoyed this with us once upon a time would want our lives to be nothing but Shubho - auspicicious. Even as we offer them food, they would love to share the music. 

PS - be careful when you google. You are actually told things like All India Radio founded Mahalaya!!!!

Footnote: When  you explore myths and traditions you will always find clashes and mixups. They are part of the territory. Ours is anyway a culture of paradoxes. I'd say there are more vital  issues to spar over. However my advice to readers - greet people with caution. What you do on your social media timeline is your business. Don't mess around on anybody else's. And please don't hail all the people you run into with a cheery greeting. Not everyone feels the same way as  you do. Enjoy the festival - love and peace to all

To be continued ... the second part will be about my personal experiences and how in my isolation, connecting with people I've never met in person over this profoundly beautiful music, has added to the mystique as well as the comfort and joy it offers. It's been an unusually lonely year for me. I seem to be fighting battles I lack the words to explain to others. Perhaps the Goddess understands and has my back. I'm sure the ancestors do.

Plenty of links are given in this post for those not familiar with the cultural terrain. I have given links from wikipedia though wiki has become a pretty unreliable source and is quite compromised by agendas as well. But it offers links to source that you can follow. 
Please do read this one without fail - an article that gives you the recent history of celebrations that we have come to take for granted.

Piling Up Like The Dishes - A Friday The 13th Special

 

21 years of service, still usable

#inkflowswarmday8  (6 and 7 will be  written later)

#healingthroughcreativeresources

The ink has gone from warm to lukewarm to cold and indifferent. But I'll try and heat it up. Which date does this post belong to?

11th and 12th October slipped out of my hands as I struggled with unexpected hardware issues that were not about the house but about objects within the house. On the 11th I was busy writing a challenging post that belonged to the 10th, on a complex theme around house, home and self. Soon thereafter my mind was working on a sequel that never quite formed itself into a post. Because the universe decided to throw a teaser my way. Trust the universe - always! ☺☺ Looking back I realize that my writing as well as my reading on the computer have been rather slow and I've been blaming the unusual flicker on my monitor screen for it. Our minds work in strange ways at such times and I was looking for the reason in all the wrong places. Including, as I have been conditioned to do, myself. Was it after all, my eye giving more trouble than usual and overreacting to a flicker? Drat the monitor - this is what comes of buying second hand goods. Please ask me why I buy them. The answers are not so pretty.

And so on :)

This monitor has been less than perfect - a few marks and lines at the edges - since the start. It's been more than serviceable, though. Well early yesterday morning - oops 8 am, much later than usual - I flicked the main power switch of my computer and the damned spike buster went POP!

Initially I glowered at my poor computer, thinking the SMPS might have decided the heat wave was too much. I sniffed the poor thing to make sure and then decided the direction of the sound pointed to the culprit, pictured below.

Thereon ensued a saga that I am not as yet convinced has wound up.

The culprit

I have a way of collecting old stuff - working, partly working, even defunct. And this stood me in good stead. I fished out an old spike buster that I had abandoned for reasons that seemed very pressing at the time I did. Plugged in all my stuff and all my stuff worked. A monitor with NO flicker. I almost forgot to notice, relieved as I was that my computer came to life.

Oops! I'd had every chance to be ahead of this one and saved the trouble, had I just tried my monitor with a different power source when I sensed the flicker but ... such are the ways of old fools. Heck, I have been feeling foolish all year over follies current and past, including those ancient, long forgotten ones that come back to bite like all karma does eventually, especially the less pleasant ones.

What happened next wasn't funny. The computer that came to life and seemed alive for a bit, started turning itself to standby mode. Several rounds of coming out of the mode only to be dumped backed in and then it dawned on me that my keyboard wasn't behaving itself. Wait - pressing a few keys was hanging the system up! In fact pressing keys to find a spike buster online at the Amazon Puja Sale ☺☺☺

First things first - an anguished and somewhat menacing call to my techie, Dharminder whom some of you are familiar with from honorable mentions on my shows. And then the real work at my end to diagnose the problem, me having fully qualified over the years as a half baked techie ☺

Guess what? I promptly whipped out my old keyboard that had served me for 21 years (yes my precious collector's item) and been pensioned off reluctantly over a non functioning "e" key. True enough, I connected it, started to type sans "e" and no problem turned up at all. Like ever.

Of course you know by now that I had brought the roof down on poor Dharminder's head. I told him in my nth call that I now had a suspect and it was the keyboard. The rest you know. He arrived late in the day, bearing goodies. I've had to shell out money and I do hope all this stuff lasts me for a while and doesn't trouble me. My dearly loved speakers have been producing some odd sounds and today they hung up my computer with the same power-saving nonsense after emitting choked growls. Fortunately they've come back to life. For good measure I've ordered some cheap backup speakers and a cheap mouse (the mouse feels strange to my touch today, and hey, wasn't it feeling strange all month?) To be sure I've lost my marbles but I bet you'd do the same. Now what's making me more unsettled and shaky is that today is Friday the 13th. I have no particular fear of #13, in fact I consider it my lucky number. Maybe one that tries and tests me but rewards me eventually. I use the number a lot and I'm comfortable around it. I have generally liked Fridays though they've had some associations with death in my life. One Friday the 13th though, always gives me the chills and that's Friday October 13th. The one in the year 2000. It was the day my brother went sadly from a hospital to a lonely guest house he didn't belong in, to live out the remaining days of his life. This is a story I don't want to repeat or dwell on much, but the events of the past few months, indeed of recent years, have brought back into focus the reasons why his last days were forced to turn out the way they did. That year's domestic challenges were resolved for me over the coming years, but never fully. As I stand at the brink of a scary project in the house - Project Waterline - there is recall. Especially today. And maybe I'm writing this for no reason except to unload those fears and emotions a little more fully. Knowing well that this post may make sense to nobody but myself.

But so it is ...

Footnote - Piling up like the dishes because water shortage is the theme that weaves its way through the years of my life, winding in an out. Don't get me wrong. At times there's been so much abundance that it became my enemy. I need for sure to heal my relationship with water

My House - And I - Shifting Patterns

A tenuous portal between my altar and me

  #inkflowswarmday5

#healingthroughcreativeresources

#worldmentalhealthday #ProjectHearthFire

#ProjectWaterfall #myhouseandI

- are extensions of each other

are reflections and echoes of each other

indeed are each other.

I am my house, my house is me and it's complicated. Who then is the home?

There are three entities here - myself, my house and my home. Could you say that my home is the dynamic that plays through time and space between my house and I?

Patterns and pattern shifts are something I've always thought about and tried to work with. Patterns could be what we perceive, hence they may reveal themselves differently to us at different points in space and time. Also patterns are about relating, interweaving, interconnection between beings, entities. But there could indeed be some patterns hard coded into a setup or a situation. Thanks to the strong and abiding relationship I built via home, over time, trauma and transformation, the connect with "house" is visceral. Home is a portal that opens between house - structure, hard coded patterns that take radical change to shift - and I, me, myself. And shifting these is what I am about to explore. Via those very interconnections - a dynamic, an ecosystem I call home.

Let's think of home as the software (former s/w professional alert) I created/evolved over time to relate to my house and through which my house responds to me?

The theme I dwell on today is how the health of one determines the health of the other. My house has health issues - ones arising from mere age but more so from assaults on its integrity. When the house is ill, so am I. The home captures data and alerts me and the alerts could trigger symptoms as well as remedial responses in me (anger, panic and investigation/correction too) Alterations to software, rewriting of software, testing of software with new data. There are times when software too, fails to perform and crises happen instead of being averted. I find myself in one such. There are also subjective responses (refer to what I wrote about perceiving patterns -we respond to what we perceive) - it is beyond fixing/adaptation versus I am unable to fix it/adapt to it. Well this time it's both, so welcome to health-giving hardware changes!

We take this concept of "relating" as inbuilt - in short we take the portal called "home" for granted. That is till it's disturbed in some way. My house has been disturbed through space and time, so acutely and distressingly, cumulatively, that the idea of home as an interplay between house and self is wounded. And that which is wounded needs to heal. There's a sense of disconnect, of un-belonging between the parts. My home as I mentioned in an earlier post from this series, is not all of my home. And the conclusion here is inevitable. A conclusion that hardware changes are needed. It's all in the game. It has taken time to get here. Hardware changes cost a lot. That's one reason we try all software options we can, especially when we are creators of software in our own right. I can't fix hardware, I can only pay someone to fix it. And if you think this post is leading nowhere it's leading you to the Mother of Project HearthFire (of which a lot more in the ongoing #inkflowswarm series) - Project Waterfall. Isn't it ironical that this time around it's gonna take falling water to keep a fire burning????

Comment with your thoughts. This post struggled to come out of me. Maybe because of the revelations that emerged as I wrote and which will continue to emerge. And wish these Projects Well - shall we start a Project Wishing Well? Footnote: People who know me well know how deeply invested I am in the house-home duo I derive my sustenance from. I will share more with anyone who is curious.

Stop! You Have No Business Here - Just Ramble On

Photo of the inlet that we propose to tap for the new line

 #inkflowswarmday4

#healingthroughcreativeresources

#ProjectWaterfall

A title that makes no apparent sense? Please feel free to interpret as you wish.

This is actually yesterday's post. Because yesterday, far from being warm, became a little too hot for comfort. So I'm sitting here over  a late early-morning coffee in the stifling post-monsoon air, writing on behalf of yesterday, today!

Some readers know that I've been battling an agonizing situation over the past almost-six months. From earlier posts you'd be knowing that there's malfeasance galore in the 100 year old building I live in. We have a bunch of demons who've captured parts of the premises and a motley crew of cowards who watch silently, without protest. These demons are sneaky and operate termite-fashion to erode functioning systems leading to their collapse. If you've ever dealt with termites in your home you'd know how intractable they are. Well this is not a perfect analogy because termites* act instinctively and know no malice, malicious and vicious as their depredations feel to their victims. These criminals will also tell you that they act without malice - but you know better. Or do you? <shakes head>

Ask me why I live in  this 100 year old building, when there are challenges by the minute? I'll give you at least one answer for each year, but first and foremost I'll tell you I do because I have a right to. A far greater right than this bunch of vermin.  Cheeky much? Yes! The termites know it. And that's what stops them from eating up my water line altogether. If you don't already know it, their careless/callous activities are concentrated in the corner of the terrace through which my line makes its merry sojourn like the Holy Ganges through Himalayan crags and crannies to descend into my kitchen tanks. Some of you know these demons already, as the Moshers of the 4th Floor Mosh Pit. And their ceaseless thumping and breaking and building. Well this time around they have moshed my line into extinction. 
And my poor waterless self is running from pillar to post for a solution. 

What do our esteemed doctors do when arteries are bust up beyond repair?
Welcome to the Bypass! 
The first time I heard that word oddly enough, was when our beyond CMDA/KMDA (does it still exist?)  decided to construct a road that ran through the city's outskirts through wetlands and trash dumps to connect the heart of the city with Salt Lake and thereafter the airport. Back in 1984, emerging from the city's congestion onto this deserted road and zipping top speed along it, was considered a kind of treat for the bored juveniles that we were then. And we would also revel in how dark and creepy that road got after dark and how criminals lurked, waiting to hold up our vehicles and stab us.

And thus you see how yesterday's post has rewound the tape to hit an era whose memories bring joy and pain in equal measure. This one solitary road was viewed as a major feat in what some considered a dead/dying city fit to be abandoned. You read that right. Forty years later I'm reading social media posts about what a vibrant city this is! So was it that (in)famous EM Bypass that unknown to itself, became the game changer? Perhaps ...

Returning to 1983 and EMBP, there was one lane and barely any traffic. We girls were advised not to take it after dark, why even the guys were discouraged. Everything new is initially feared before we befriend it.

The aforementioned CMDA had an office in Salt Lake near Central Park amid desolate fields where kaash bloomed and rippled and waved at us and a solitary Karl Marx stood surveying it all. And that brings a memory of vast, uncharted space that enticed one to explore. Which I never got to do. 

What does my water situation have to do with this road? Wait, I'll tell you! 

Two days ago, the painful realization hit me, that the rooftop game was over. That I'd been hunting in vain for ways to fix a problem that would only ever get worse. That it took several rounds of plumbers (and their inflated charges for doing nothing) to declare the patient beyond saving. 
Hence "RIP water line and thank you for your service" - my Facebook status on Sunday. I need to mention that this line had been brutally broken by these devils during the quasi-lockdown of 2021 when construction businesses alone were permitted to operate (how wicked  is that, tell me and you know construct=destruct in this country) and had to be restored by me at a huge cost thanks to the non availability of any workman save those who smashed good stuff and cemented it over with bad stuff, leaving a damaged pipeline or two.

Wind back to the present and some more to the future. A bypass with a difference.  An artery tapping into a burst of uncompromised hydro-power at a point where water flows free and strong. At an undisclosed location. Technically a new water line. More huge costs. A quest for funds as there are none left in this Annus Horribilis that has all but crushed me (at any rate my home) into extinction - ok I exaggerate a bit because I know I die hard. That's one thing I share with termites. And I hope my home will be every bit like me. 

But but but ... maybe a fresh line will give a fresh lease of life and this ready-to-abandon city that is my troubled home right now, will thrive and flourish and be spoken about in glowing terms years later? 

To hope then ... and faith that resources will present  themselves and above all love. Love for my home and its well being and mine.

The Shape Of Water - The Future

* a voice in my head told me not to give them the respect due to termites. they don't have the shakti of termites. after all termites have the power to bring down a mighty tree and you know these don't. they are more like headlice/fleas/ticks. and i'll run before you tell me not to disrespect these beings*

Patterns Drawn-Undrawn

Stories written-unwritten. Stories read-unread ...

Ok I'm just streaming these phrases from the back of nowhere

Because right now I am nowhere. 

Interesting that a comment on my facebook cover image by a friend got me spinning this little post out.

She told me to keep looking at it, that I'd see all the stories there.
And true enough I see tales of then and now.

I have been hopelessly ungrounded over the past several days. Earlier posts in the series #inkflowswarm - spontaneous posts about the feelings of the hour - mentioned my domestic struggles. Today I finally gave up on something after losing a good amount of money on it. It was no doubt a foolish gamble but folly invariably begets folly and that's been the pattern this year. A new chapter starts and I am not-so-foolishly putting more money that I don't even know how to procure, on Project Untouchable Waterworks (insert big grinning emoji) hoping before long I can wash a dish or two like normal people do and cook myself a good meal. 

Looking upon this work of floor art, the first story is of myself seated calmly on the red floor sometime during the autumn festive season, finger clutching cotton wool dipping into a bowl of rice paste and running over the surface as my mind wills it. 

The second story is a flashback of my mother seated gracefully and calmly, forming patterns in the air with her finger holding a little cloth rag that's pressed back so the liquid doesn't drip. Mom creating her magical kolams - those divine designs - before the altar and sometimes at the entrance. This is the pre-release choreography, her recce of the air a little above the smooth red-oxide floor-canvas. I was always fascinated by those arcs her gentle hand created while she visualized what would come to life as the floor awakened to white liquid. Her strokes were so light like her movements, graceful and balanced. Her designs were from her head, inspired by traditions she'd grown up with, and her own thoughts for the day. I wish I had found it in me to copy and save them on paper. I have one pattern I got her to draw for me towards the end of her life, in a notebook that will turn up someday from somewhere. I have to recall all those lost designs - for floor art is ephemeral and that is its defining grace - and there was no instant photography then. Fancy a video of her going through the process of creation. Videos recording her at different phases of life from the most effortless when she was strong and supple to the later years when the stiffening fingers would struggle and the struggles would write themselves into the patterns. Those things I have missed and can only ever bring back in dreams. I believe in dreams and I will ask my dream angel to send those my way. 

Maybe there's a photo or two of my altar as it was. It had an integrity to it, a wholeness and a gentle rootedness. I have never been able to bring back that feel. 

So here I am, ungrounded and trying hard to make sense of my roots which I have all but lost in the insanity of recent times.

Returning to the first story, we paint on the floor to center ourselves. We paint towards a center or away from a center, but there is always that center. That's the way my mother made me feel about it. But even as I sit in stillness hoping to touch that center, I find my hands running away on an Imramma*. No plans, no roadmap. My fingers travel where they will, my mind conjures up the most random patterns and they run away with me till I run out of floor.

Which reminds me that my pristine floor is coated with random drippings from candles and I need suggestions on how to clean that off as my rice paste doesn't sit well on that compromised surface. My touch is harsher than hers, the paste thicker. She would grind the rice herself on stone. I used to. I have now taken to using rice powder stirred into water. One day I will revert to the place I belong. Her tradition. And we will write the third story together. I will channel her art, her touch, her dreams. Wish me luck.

*Imramma - literally "rowing about"
Imramma, a word of Celtic origins that means a sacred journey of the soul. A voyage on which we don't know where we are going, but our soul knows the way.

The Ancestral Arena

 "Ancestor Angst" ? Or should I call this post simply "Ask Ancestors"?
You read on and choose.

Kim's guiding globe

This is the second post from my daily forays into writing with warm flowing ink, no planning, no thought,  that I've taken up like my own personal Inktober! I'm guessing by the end of the month the ink would be flowing freely and my writing hopefully will ascend to another level like the ancestors themselves are doing.

It's that time of year again and there are spirits whispering in every corner of my head. 

It's those ancestors come to remind us that there are knots and breaks in the fabric of our interconnection and that it's the time for the magical mending. 

The dark fortnight leading up to Durga Puja, is when, by tradition, we get a chance to redeem those unpaid debts we owe them. The crowd of stressful events or non events that have gathered out of nowhere to create a year of overall gloom in my life, tell me there are debts that they - the ancestors - may need to pay and could be coming forward now wanting to pay.
Unfinished business from their side.

Rather than looking for their long accustomed and oft neglected customary offerings, they may be restless in this arena. Knowing my own lot from this vast pool of spirits in varying stages of ascension to higher realms, they wouldn't be the ones to leave kith and kin in want. 

There are many traditions where a light is left on a dark pathway to guide the departed to the otherworld. Years ago, Kim Raikes arrived unexpectedly in my life as an angel to wipe my tears of grieving for my mother, and to stay, play, pray and continue to hold me up, years later. Together we have navigated grief - fresh and raw as well as old and slumbering - hers and mine. She has invariably been the comforter and I the comforted. Early in our connection, we had started to co-dream. Yes, we would dream the same lucid dreams at times, walking in and out of each others'. And in one of those I saw the vision of a pathway in a homestead by an ocean in a strange but familiar land. And that pathway was lighted with clay globes emitting a soft, warm light that was clearly meant to lead a lost spirit home. The dream had come to us very near the time of Pitru Paksha  and somehow Kim decided to take it as a cue to invite some wandering spirits on to her deck. Where we offer balls of rice by tradition and feed it to the birds, she placed a ball (globe) of light and left some snacks -maybe to be claimed by squirrels and raccoons. 

The first night she was disturbed by the presence of so many strange and mixed  energies and reported back to me that she felt a tiny bit overwhelmed. We decided that she needed to be more specific and call those she felt to be her ancestors regardless of ties by blood or lineage. And she did and entertained some very important guests whom we both regard as our own. 

I confess that while I've always been part of this practice in her home in Maine, from across the myriad miles, I never actually got down to doing it in my own home. Because my home never really felt like all of my home. There were these missing pieces, these rents and tears in the fabric of connection with what my imagination and past experience declared as my home. 
And it's all finally making sense. Burdens I can't put down, stresses that always come back with interest, an actual absence of resources (no don't preach to me about lack mentality, I'm a pragmatist) all of which yesterday's post tells you about.

When we are left bereaved, we are left bereft of opportunities, of answers, of wise guidance on the next few steps to take along a troubled path. Grieving a person's living presence is coupled with the pain of missing what could have been, what could still be if we can find our way to it. But for those of us who believe that energetic connections endure and present themselves more strongly when they are called upon by a collective of descendants eager to right wrongs and continue the weaving of wholesome fabric spanning generations and lifetimes, this could be a time of reclaiming and sustaining connection. All beings seek continuity and these celebrations are ways of affirming it. 


Well I decided this time around - and we are already halfway through those 14 days that are allotted for this year's "peace process"  - I would do some good, heartfelt asking. And I am already picking up whispered signals directing me to here-and-now persons who will be my earth angels. I am offering light to our progenitors and theirs ... and waiting. 

Footnote:  here is a different and very illuminating interpretation of tarpan - the traditional ritual that's carried out during this fortnight. I leave you to reflect as I do. 
"By thinking of the deceased ancestors with gratitude and trying to give them an emancipation, one is actually trying to free oneself from various kaarmic predispositions that one has as a result of the rina (karmik debt) with several people. One can view this as an external event of satisfying and emancipating an external entity (a pitri). Alternately, one can view this as an internal event of satisfying and releasing an internal kaarmik predisposition."

"It Is The Evening Of The Day"

Something somewhere has shifted - oh so slightly. I feel it. I caught two whiffs of scent from a tentatively blooming saptaparni  somewhere down the street from my house. They've been planting so many of them in this area and soon enough the air will be heady with the intoxicating scent of numerous bloom-laden trees.
Autumn usually makes me happy. It ought to make me happy. Especially as monsoons invariably turn out to be a torture for me with the leaks I battle year after year. I really thought the leaks had given this year the miss. They were being very civil - dropping gracefully into their rain traps or the solitary pail I'd placed for the drip-drip near the entrance. 
Then the demon struck! Once on the 22nd September and again a couple of days ago. This latest one brought in its wake an ugly fight with a demoniacal neighbor who bellows at me as if I am verily taking a le&k (sorry to be risque) on his head. Nay Mister - these leaks descend like the Ganga and the source of trouble is the very person who installed you as my neighbor in an act of malfeasance.   Leaving me anxious, sleepless, exhausted. Like there isn't enough to worry me. Because I am anxious and sleepless and exhausted anyway, perched on a metaphorical cornice like a foolish cat that found its way there. Angels need to help this cat get off.

This year has been the Annus Horribilis ++ putting all its predecessors in the shade. I suddenly want to call back all those years I'd waved goodbye to with relief, as I looked forward to restarting the counter with hope. Hope never leaves us, does it? 

This time has been different - hope has all but died. But maybe the saptaparni blooms will revive hope. 

The mornings and evenings of 2023 have just rolled by, the days and nights have merged into one haze of time. The only marker of each new day is the new water - the very limited daily supply that one grabs every morning and holds on to. And for the past month that's gone underground too.

While this is my shot at warm writing, I'm unable to summon up much warmth for what I am reporting on and all the demands that these challenges are posing to my already almost rock bottom resources. I try to look at the challenge without emotion. The irony of it - water oozing through walls onto the floor while it eludes the pipeline. And each competing for those slender resources to fix it. Maybe a little humor will kindle the warmth I need to fill the spaces between the bare bones of these sentences? 

Autumn means warmth. The warmth of home, festivals, fellowship, food. At any rate the memory of these. Of family, of times when we trusted and shared.

Marianne Faithfull sings 
"My riches can't buy everything
I want to hear the children sing
All I hear is the sound
Of rain falling on the ground
I sit and watch
As tears go by"

The only memory the past few months bring, is of pain. The pain of hauling myself through one day at time, unable to focus on anything meaningful. Watching with semi horror the process of my own wearing away into nothingness.

Stop! A few tears that roll down will restore the warmth. You can borrow them from Marianne. Be patient. The saptaparni blooms. And there is warm khichdi in Sridevi's warm pot. Even if there isn't water where I need it to be, there's Sri's hospitality of the kind that will never leave me lacking for anything.

Tap into your abundance. You have resources within and around. You have a teenager in the flat above you who doesn't want the leaking water to hurt you. It's not his fault. He's just been put there as a "placeholder" by the sinister elements that captured the space. And he's a good, kind lad. He calls me Dadi (granny) and this young woman (yours truly) feels an enormous warmth from his tone. Then there's Sailesh. Sailesh may be blind, but he will never be cold. And he will do his best to fix both these problems. 

You've taken a day at a time and the days just go by like Marianne's Faithfull's tears. But something somewhere's gotta change. This ain't continuing till the "last syllable of recorded time". Coz if nothing else, the season is changing. It's only the last thirty days that have been truly horrible. This problem can be fixed. Some angel from somewhere will replenish the resources. Hope maybe an impostor but we draw strength from such impostors. Because hope dies hard. And if you hang on to it long enough it can transform into something that actually happens - and surprises you.

Warmth restored  somewhat.  No I won't have an anxiety driven eruption. Let anxiety - another impostor - die swiftly even as its friend hope chooses to thrive and take over.  

Maybe I can crawl my way towards food. I was ravenous for a snack and hurtled my way through steamy afternoon air (talk of took much warmth?) to grab some singaras from Dakshin Kali before they disappeared. Also stared with curiosity at Durga's pandal that's turned itself around 180 degrees. The crazies of 22 Palli will never run out of silly tricks will they? I won't be surprised if the goddess tires of their silliness and escapes from the pandal one of these days. There - let your thoughts run wild. Because you want to escape from an existence that's starting to feel like a trap. Well not yet. Give it 3 months. This is like the "please extend" on the old time trunk calls, only this seems to be extending indefinitely as my bones start to creak and my teeth fall out. 

Stay warm - there's still plenty to smile about.

Read and enjoy this  and do follow The Khichdi Pot - a very special space created by Sridevi Datta.

PS - you and I and everyone else have been merrily tossed together and mixed up in the pot on this post. If you wonder who I'm addressing it is my silly self whom I see in many forms and images!The tenses too are enjoying a merry mixup.

Enjoy the song here

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