I think

Summer

It seems that sun god is planning to make up for last year's leniency in our part of the world.  The famed Tamil Agni Nakshatram or Kathri season  begins tomorrow (4th, May) and the past few days have been a glorious preview of what to expect in the next fortnight.

I am a summer person.  I can take any amount of heat.  Or, I can convince myself that I can take any amount of heat.  The moment I feel uncomfortable and irritated with the heat, I automatically remember the few years in Syracuse winter, especially incidents such as this, and I am ready to go dancing in the blazing sun.  A friend and I would argue about which is better - hers being, there is no limit to the number of layers of clothes you can wear on yourself to warm up, but there is a definite limit to the number of clothes you can take off to feel cool.  My argument was that it is much easier to cool both inside and outside the body with something as simple as water, but no matter how many clothes you wear, your nose and eyes need to be bare, and just that much skin exposed to -30 can even kill you. Of course,  this friend was born and bred in upstate New York, while I belong to the tropical paradise of Chennai, so there was nothing unexpected in our viewpoints.

Each region develops its own defense against nature's elements with time.  For example, fatty meat and alcohol are staple in cold countries because of the warmth they offer.  We have our own traditional defense mechanisms.  A few minutes back, we had a dinner of cold dadhyodhanam, a simple curd rice, garnished with cucumber, carrots, mango, cilantro and mustard.  As the first mouthful of the rice reached the stomach,  the body sighed at a perceptible cooling that resulted.

In the afternoon, the kid and I, not wishing to waste sun god's bounty, chose to check out South Asia's largest library, located a hop, skip and jump away from home.  On our way back, we walked and walked for what seems like kilometers, in search of a bus stop.  What saved us and a lot of people like us from sure heat stroke were the many vendors lined along the sidewalk, selling ilaneer (tender coconut water) and water melon.    When we sipped the refreshing drink, straight from its shell, I realized that while coke and pepsi can hoard the "kewl" factor, they can never come anywhere near a simple ilaneer for true "cool"ness.

The only thing that bugs me about our lifestyle in this hot weather is the clothes we traditionally wear.  I suppose "traditionally" is a wrong word to use here, because before the ancient foreign invaders corrupted us with their personal standards of morality, our clothes, as can be seen in the many sculptures in traditional temples, were skimpy. Of course, even if you factor in an element of hyperbole for erotica in art, reality would not have been too far off.   As seen in the sculptures,  both men and women were bare chested, and wore wispy pieces of cloth at their hips. 

Then came the Muslim and British conquest of India. The chest became a bad part of the body that needed to be covered and now, here we are, wearing neck-to-ankle covered salwar kameez or the modern 5 meter saree draped multiple times around the body, with its many layers of blouse/underskirts/underwear underneath.

If the ancient invasions ruined our dress habits that were designed so well to face the tropical weather of the country,  the recent invasion by the West has replaced our natural food habits that were designed to suit the weather here.  So, now pizza, coke and junk food have replaced dadhyodhanam, neer mor and panagam, and we walk in and out of air conditioned enclosures, thereby muddling the hypothalamus and messing the body's natural response to heat.

At least the ancient invasions were by force. The newer invasions have been by our own choice.  There is nothing wrong with adopting alien practices, but when it messes up with our natural proclivity, we need to think and act. 

With that highly egotistical statement I conclude, wishing co-Tamil Nadu dwellers a safe Kathri season.

Stay cool.

 

 

CSA Awareness Month

During idle blog hopping that I seem to be doing a lot lately, I stumbled upon this site. A group of bloggers created this site to spread awareness on child sexual abuse.

Two years ago, I had written about my brush with sexual harrassment.  Thankfully, I have never faced sexual abuse, which is no consolation, but not as serious as the many horror stories that I read in that site.  I know that each and every single friend of mine has faced sexual harrassment or abuse - a suggestive remark, a sly look, bottom pinching, eve teasing and so on. 

Agreed, I am not emotionally maimed for life by the incidents in the past.  I lead a healthy family life and am not trapped in the hell of past horrors.  In fact, apart from the temporary feeling of "something is not right" at that time, it has not caused debilitating disturbances.

Or has it ?

I refuse to leave my seven year old daughter with anyone alone.  The only three men I trust my daughter with are her father and two grandfathers. I do not send her to school by the school van or an auto by herself.  Everytime the cell phone shows an unidentified caller when the kid is at school, I panic.  When I give the kid her weekly oil bath, I involuntarily check her body for tell-tale signs. I wonder if she would be traumatized when I give her an oil massage - even if I AM her mother, am I allowed to touch her body ? 

I get paranoid when strangers smile at my daughter or even pass an innocent comment  and mad at my daughter when she responds to innocent comments. When the kid wants to play outside when I am working, I peep out of the window every minute to see if she is alright.  On the rare occasion that I take the public bus somewhere with her, I place her in front of me, and stand so close to her so that not even air touches her. Every week I talk to her about good-touch-bad-touch.

Everytime I read or hear of some form of CSA, my stomach churns and I check up on my daughter, and don't leave her out of my sight for many days after that. When her father and I are walking around the stadium, and she is playing, if I can't see her for one second, I am swept by a wave of desparation.   As I see signs of impending tweens in her, and promise of a beautiful teen, one part of me is proud, but the other worried.  Would I rather she be a plane jane than the beautiful woman she promises to grow into?

And its not just with my daughter.  When I see young tweens standing somewhere by themselves, I want to go and stand with them and deliver them to safety.  When I see my daughter's friends S or J riding their bikes by themselves in an otherwise empty alley, I feel very uncomfortable.

Life should not have to be like this.  I should not have to be so mistrustful of co-human beings. 

But it seems that I am justified.  CSA is rampant.  FSA (Female sexual abuse) is equally rampant.  I recently heard of cases where in our peaceful and apparently safe campus, a friend got flashed by a random stranger, outside her own house. Another friend was pulled into the woods and may have been violated but for passersby.  I don't even want to browse the newspaper any more having yet not recovered from the news of the kids in Coimbatore being assaulted and killed by their own school van drivers a few months back. When I hear news like this, I wish I could send my daughter back into my womb where she would be safer.  I wonder if I should just lock her up inside the house, home school her and generally release her into the world when she is fifty years old.  But then, there would still be GSA - geriatric sexual abuse. Will it ever end? 

If I met God, I'd ask Her to redesign the human sex apparatus (including the one in people's head) such that it operates only when both parties willingly consent.  It's not too much to ask, is it?

 

Vacation

I’ve been married into the Srirangam clan for eight years now , but this was the first year I visited my “pukkagam”, on the occasion of Vaikunta Ekadesi, the most important of all spiritual practices of our sect and in particular, of Srirangam.

The trip was almost not to be.  The tickets were bought a few months earlier, the kid had worked herself into frenzy, and I was looking forward to a break from routine.  But the day before departure, dude was assigned to co-chair a conference at work, the kid’s milk tooth, hanging by a thread, not only refused to fall off, but throbbed enough for the kid not open her mouth, an event unheard of, from the moment she had lisped her first “appa” at one. My neck was all bunched up thanks to bad pillows, the heavens threatened to open up a deluge and in general, life was not conducive to travel at that point.  But by evening, three of the four problems were solved - the dentist extracted the offending incisor, ibuprofen dullened the nerves, and the skies, although still dark, exhibited restraint.  So, leaving dude to his fate, the kid and I packed our bags and set on our first sojourn together, alone.

It never fails.  On school day mornings, I have to pry open the kid’s eyes with surgical tools to wake her.  Yet, every single day at Sriragam, the kid was up before the sun.  Someone needs to study this phenomenon scientifically and formulate a law or something.

Srirangam was crowded, as expected.  On the first day, we visited the temple, and after paying an obscene fee to escape the queue that would take hours to reach the destination, set eyes on the reclining 6-ft tall (long?) deity, who, as convention goes, was attired in a dress made of pearls.  The “urchava moorthi” (henceforth refered to as “Rangu”) was dressed as “Mohini”, which wasn’t as exotic as I had imagined it to be.  My m-i-l agrees that this year’s “Mohini Alankaram” was less impressive than usual.

Pearl-decked Ranganthar (picture from here)

The second day was Vaikunta Ekadeshi.  Conventionally, people stay up all night at the temple praying, and before dawn, follow the deity across the threshold of Vaikunta Vasal (“gates of heaven”).  We skipped it because it involves being jostled in crowd at dead of night.  But at dawn, we saw Rangu in his “Rathnangi” (clothes made of precious stones – diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls etc.) being borne on a  palanquin, flanked by the Alwars, up and down the sandy ground, sometime steady, sometimes with a lilting walk called “Vaiyali”

Bejeweled Rangu

I was brought up in the other Sri Vaishnavaite bastion - Triplicane.  Growing up watching Lord Parthasarathy (“Pachu”) through all his urchavams, one fact struck me as very weird about Srirangam.  Pachu never leaves his abode without his consorts (ubaya naachiyaar), while Rangu is always alone, his consort in Her own sanctum, never to join the Lord in his sojourns.  But I guess it is all these cultural differences that add colour to the show.

Pachu with his consorts

The next day of our stay was “Dwadashi”.  The more pious Srivaishnavaites fast all day on Ekadeshi (some don’t even sip water), and on Dwadashi, consume a feast at dawn.  The food comprises specific dishes – gooseberry, agathi-keerai (a form of spinach),  aviyal (a mixed vegetable stew) and so on, a healthy, yet delicious combination that is supposed to cleanse the system. While we didn’t observe the fast, we chose to enjoy the feast and that too, at the temple. So we were up at 6.30 AM at the temple, seated before a big plantain leaf, over which was served the feast.  I have never imagined that I could eat a full four-course meal at 6.30 in the morning, but eat, I did, with not a morsel left on the leaf at the end.

There is another, less known but lovely temple in Sriragam – the Kattazagiya Singar temple. The Lion God with his consort in his lap is an imposing sight.  There was a cute practice I noticed. All deities are covered with woolen caps and bankets in the evenings and early mornings. Narasimhar was wrapped in red woolen shawl and cap and looked like a cross between the Disney’s beast and Santa Claus.  It was apt, given the season and my own perception of Narasimhar as the bestower.

The kid, with her “archeologist” aspirations, nagged grandfather until he took her to Rock Fort, where she  took pictures of the thousand year old Pallava sculptures, paintings and inscriptions with plans to study and understand them.  If she holds on to her aspirations, I suspect she’ll find much success in her chosen profession.

Sculpture at Rock Fort, clicked by kid

Inscriptions at Rock Fort, clicked by kid

 

Painting at Rock Fort, clicked by kid

The trip was a blessing for me.  Not only for the mortal break it offered from routine (the kid was entertained, fed and cleaned by the many doting grandparents and grand uncles & aunts), but also for the spiritual experience.  In the humdrum of daily existence, I ignore the spiritual part of me, and a break like this, once a year, makes me dip into it and rejuvenates me for the rest of the time spent enjoying my duties – a small bhakthi yogam to energise the karma yogam, if I may be arrogant enough to believe that THAT is what I am doing.

Happy Deepavali

Wishing those who celebrate, a happy and safe Deepavali.

கொண்டாடுவோருக்கு தீபாவளி நல்வாழ்துக்கள். 

 

 

Service

One evening, after college, I was waiting at the bus stop to catch a bus back home.  Standing there, chatting with friends, I noticed a sudden hush that befell the bus stop. A mentally imbalanced destitute woman took off all her clothes, squatted on the floor and started pouring sand over herself, as though she was bathing in sand.  I could see that everyone, like me, was speechless.  Before I could gather my wits, my bus route 10 came, and by force of habit, I got in, reached home and continued with my routine, deliberately pushing disturbing thoughts of the woman away from my mind.

A few years later, on a vacation to India from the US, my eyes caught an interview in the newspaper, with my college senior - Vaishnavi. In the intervening years when I was neck-deep in academia, Vaishnavi and Vandana had co-founded the Banyan, a service organization to rescue, rehabilitate and integrate destitute women. In the interview, Vaishnavi mentioned that her Banyan took root on an evening, outside college, as she saw a mentally unstable woman take off her clothes and throw sand over herself, with the rest of the apparently "normal" crowd merely passing a glance and getting on with their own lives.  At that moment, I wanted the earth to part and swallow me, because I knew I was part of the "normal" crowd.

Of course, as ever, that too, passed.

Today's newspaper carries an article about "Vidyarambam Trust", a non-profit service organization, started by one Vishwanath Ranganathan, to provide education and a decent standard of living to underpriviledged children in the city.  His inspiration came when he saw aluminum plates in the school satchel of kids, and realised that kids go to school, only for the meal.

The orphanage "Udavum Karangal" was started by a single person - Vidyaakar, who responded to his calling, when one day, he rescued a 11-month abandoned baby from a cinema theater.

My late mother, was part of a "ladies club" whose founder, Mrs. Savithri Vaithi, led her ladies to start a "home" for the uncared and abandoned aged, - Vishranthi. I remember that my mother found a lot of satisfaction serving there thrice a week, not minding the gruelling travel to get there, twenty years ago, when Palavaakam was a very inhospitable distant outpost of Chennai.  Fate snatched her away too soon, but I believe that if she had lived longer, she would have continued to serve at Vishranthi with all her heart.  Mrs. Vaithi is an octagenarian now, and lives in her own home, and is still dedicated enough to run the show with ample help from her ladies club women, who have stuck to the cause for more than two decades now.

What is it that makes a few special people stand apart from the rest to serve humanity?  Is it how we are hard-wired?   For example, I consider myself very soft-hearted, a begger on the road can bring tears to my eyes, but I cannot see myself serving less-fortunate co-humans.  Even when I hear of Prabakar or Savithri or Vishwanath, my first thought always is "what makes them do this?".  It could not have been easy.  For example, where did their daily meal come from?  Obviously if they had to plunge headlong into their service, it would leave them very little time to earn their lving. With a personal bank balance hovering around bare minimum, will they feel secure enough to help others? The societal obstacles they would have had to face must have been tremendous - Prabhakar was in his early twenties when he decided to dedicate his life to supporting orphans, which means he had set aside the normal course of life - job, marriage, kids, LKG admission, house, retirement benefits - everything, in order to give a few kids a chance to live.  Or is it just my own sad lack of passion that makes me think that. Perhaps the incredible commitment, driven by the passion to make a difference,over-rides any other obstacles that you'd otherwise consider crippling.

I can never be a Prabhkar, or Savithri Vaithi or Vaishnavi.  But I am grateful to them and hope that they will be blessed amply for doing what the rest of us should rightfully have done.