Dashami..Beloved Dashami

Its over.The media frenzy,the serpentine never ending queues,the precocious teenagers,buoyed and radiant by the first trip out,the mahishashurmardini on every puja day in my neighbourhood is finally over. Its Dashami and and the media vehemently supposes me to be sad.Far from it!

Its all lighted to sunshine out here,so much so that one has to squint to see her.But there she is,somewhat demure(but that is obvious,this is the shukla paksha or the waxing half of the lunar month),garbed in a sombre copper-red attire,weaving mystery as she sews along the charkha.She weaved then too; before my pimples came out,before darkness became mere absence of light,in the frequent load-shedded,candle lit evenings the world was a warm lap,my maa's warm lap,and through the perforated cool aachol i had seen her weave the same mystery.The grand,ancient,ageless resident of moon,the chander buri. The world is now larger,and well-lit, but the mystery persists. And this day is the same all the time,for it is today(and it was today 15 years back and will be today 30 years hence), when the GODDESS looks so much like my mom.

The GODDESS , smeared with vermilion,a tinge of tear in the large , oval eyes, the women ululating happily around,an occult aroma of mother-flesh(and its not human flesh,for a mother is not human,though a woman born human can be the mother) transported by the frankincense,the dhakis beating a mad,raving rhythm...so much of maa...so like my maa.

There they come! A matador carrying the Devi and family,and another full of mirth,laughter and bollywood steps.And there comes another,and lo,yet another!..This pukur before me looks melancholy otherwise , but today is different.When I did not fake happiness,so as to say when I was a child,I envied the kids swimming here.The shining bathtime pond shimmered with rippling laughter,of kids learning to swim,of their instructors,and of the bored men and women stealing a luxurious moment before the hard,grinding day ahead.And this fascination of mine was mixed with a tinge of envy,envy of not being able to join the revelry courtesy my beloved mother!

But this revelry here is different.There ain't no heaving wet bosoms,hairy chests or shiny balds here.But the joy is wet indeed,refreshing wetness.The bored reader(u aren't bored by now? I bet) may recollect a Limca commercial with Riya Sen in the lead that was wet but refreshing wet.So is it,wet with myriad emotions,emotions that are a delectable concoction of sweet happiness and peppery sorrow of farewell. Ah...the water felt like cold piece (whatever that is supposed to mean..u will never feel if u haven't felt that!) when some mother...my mother sprinkled on us!

"Mere kalam pe zamaane ki dard aisi thi/

ke apne baare me kuch bhi nahin likh saka yaaro

....ke main zameen ke rishto se kat gaya yaaro"

-Jagjit Singh's ghazal

I don't know why I quoted that.Of course I love it but there is no reason to.But then its good sometimes to just let things happen.It is happening again.I have been disconcerted of late and have just been sane enough to notice my speech getting incoherent.Perhaps it is the ROSHKOLNIKOV effect.The irritable,haughty,on the verge of madness protagonist of DOSTOEVSKY'S epic CRIME AND PUNISHMENT has preoccupied me for the past fortnight.And I want to let it be.It happened before too, in the turbulent,experimental,beloved days of adolescence,with a Sirshendu Mukherjee novel called DURBIN. I remember stepping out of Kalighat,my beloved holy Kalighat without offering devotion to mother and sleeping alongside the beggers and an insane mother. I recollect the stink,which got used to me in a few minutes( i was the intruder here) and which i started taking in in lungfuls.It is the stink,the bare ,reddish black torso of an invalid, the frozen eyes of the insane and her dusty,rugged hair,and the peaceful siesta in the pavement-these are the fragments of a jigsaw which still form a clear picture in my mind. Its inexplicable,but that clear picture i do not visualise;it appears as a grey mist somewhere at the back of my mind.I hate oxymoron and i might be annoying you with my duality but that clear grey mist is observed in meditation.I have found all my beloved images/sounds/experiences in that form.Even Isha is to me that sensation at the back of my mind,which i cannot visualise but i don't regret cause i feel it with far greater clarity than vision in meditation.

If you have managed to endure this ordeal this far then please forgive me. I was delirius when i wrote the above but this delirium is not apologetic..it promises to come back on the next BIJAYA DASHAMI, with my mother on tow. Its a long wait till the next Dashami..but the wait is worth it.The worthy should be few and far between....

"Apne Gham ko Geet Banakar Gaa le na/

Raag purana tera bhi hai,mera bhi/

Gham ka khazanaa tera bhi hai,mera bhi..."

-Sajda(Jagjit Singh,Lata Mangheshkar)