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When I was 8, there was this Devi Saptaaham (week-long puja) at a local temple in our Village, Muthukur.
There was a square pit made of bricks at the center of which was some idol. And there were always 4 chaps sitting on its four sides picking up kumkum (vermilion) in pinches and delicately throwing it on the idol, taking turns by day and by night, so that by the end of the week hardly any trace of idol was seen since it was immersed in a heap of kumkum. Everyone, man or woman, was invited to participate, watch, or donate in cash or kind to a forthcoming temple maybe.
My Father and Mother used to take us there every evening. So also the parents of all my friends. We kids were hardly interested in the ritual accompanied by the repetitive mantra (Om hraim hreem shreem) and so we used to play in the precincts of the temple till our parents returned.
On the last evening, while playing, I happened to hear what I came to know later as the Vedic hymn: 'Naraayaneeyam' (Mantra Pushpam) chanted by seven pundits standing around the magic square. On hearing the line: "Same'kaamaan kaama kaamaayamahyam..." I dropped whatever I was playing with and ran in to listen to it closely.
It was arresting.
Since then whenever I happen to hear it, my mind's eye reverts to that evening. Later when I went to Bengal, a similar sense of awe and reverence used to overtake me whenever I happened to hear Chandipaath at the crack of the dawn on Mahaalaya via my pocket radio.
And now I realize that the bond that binds caste Hindus all over India are the vedic hymns and puja paaths recited with clockwork precision and pronunciation in that otherwise dead language, Sanskrit. It is amazing that a language spoken by none can bind such diverse species of individuals as Radhakrishnan hailing from Palghat to Shivlal Mathur from Rishikesh.
The mellifluous mantras are always accompanied by tantras (ritual worship). Whenever my Mother could catch me at her place for a month's stay, she would arrange a Rudraabhishekham. A couple of pundits would be invited to read the namakam and chamakam and Rudram while I was made to sit and keep pouring water plus some honey and curds maybe with a tusli (basil) leaf on several shiv lingas on a tray. That's all I had to do. It would last anything between 2 hours to 4 depending on the business schedule of the pundits.
I asked my Mother (practically illiterate in Sanskrit) why she keeps asking me to go through this boring ritual; Is it for kaamya (fulfillment of worldly desires) or moksha (liberation)? And she would smile and say: "Neither...it is just that I love hearing those mantras being chanted."
I would then ask why she couldn't just hear them without my sitting through the ordeal. She then said that folks who perform this abhishekham have one worldly desire or the other and don't know any Sanskrit at all. So, they would invite the pundits and feed them and pay them for reciting the mantras. But the Pundit would insist that the payer should sit and perform the abhishekham himself so that he is satisfied that it was his desires and not the Pundit's that get fulfilled.
I then recalled that during my marriage ceremony, our pundit occasionally would read a shlok and ask me to say, "mamaa". He explained that the shlok he uttered says: "Let me be your loving husband for life"...obviously the "me" there is the bridegroom and not the pundit who recites it...the bridegroom being too busy otherwise...so the utterance of "mamaa" transfers all the coupling-rights to the bridegroom.
Those days I was a chain smoker and had a deal with my pundit that whenever I showed a prearranged hand-signal, he had to pause and take a break for five minutes as if he got tired and breathless.
I was so irreverent to rituals.
But not these days...I enjoyed the rituals done by my son and D-i-L during the baptism ceremony of Ishani, her "annapraashan", "bhogipallu", and recently "aksharaabhyaasam" (Initiation into literacy).
As the Bard said: "Ripeness is all"
Y B Chavan who ended up as the Defense Minister of India past our thrashing by the Chinese in 1962 was a card-holding Communist before he turned coat and became a Congressman wearing a Gandhi cap. When a journalist tried to taunt him about his volte-face, he retorted:
"Those who are not Marxists before 40 are felons; those who remain so after 40 are fools"
Buddha-da may agree...
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When I was 8, there was this Devi Saptaaham (week-long puja) at a local temple in our Village, Muthukur.
There was a square pit made of bricks at the center of which was some idol. And there were always 4 chaps sitting on its four sides picking up kumkum (vermilion) in pinches and delicately throwing it on the idol, taking turns by day and by night, so that by the end of the week hardly any trace of idol was seen since it was immersed in a heap of kumkum. Everyone, man or woman, was invited to participate, watch, or donate in cash or kind to a forthcoming temple maybe.
My Father and Mother used to take us there every evening. So also the parents of all my friends. We kids were hardly interested in the ritual accompanied by the repetitive mantra (Om hraim hreem shreem) and so we used to play in the precincts of the temple till our parents returned.
On the last evening, while playing, I happened to hear what I came to know later as the Vedic hymn: 'Naraayaneeyam' (Mantra Pushpam) chanted by seven pundits standing around the magic square. On hearing the line: "Same'kaamaan kaama kaamaayamahyam..." I dropped whatever I was playing with and ran in to listen to it closely.
It was arresting.
Since then whenever I happen to hear it, my mind's eye reverts to that evening. Later when I went to Bengal, a similar sense of awe and reverence used to overtake me whenever I happened to hear Chandipaath at the crack of the dawn on Mahaalaya via my pocket radio.
And now I realize that the bond that binds caste Hindus all over India are the vedic hymns and puja paaths recited with clockwork precision and pronunciation in that otherwise dead language, Sanskrit. It is amazing that a language spoken by none can bind such diverse species of individuals as Radhakrishnan hailing from Palghat to Shivlal Mathur from Rishikesh.
The mellifluous mantras are always accompanied by tantras (ritual worship). Whenever my Mother could catch me at her place for a month's stay, she would arrange a Rudraabhishekham. A couple of pundits would be invited to read the namakam and chamakam and Rudram while I was made to sit and keep pouring water plus some honey and curds maybe with a tusli (basil) leaf on several shiv lingas on a tray. That's all I had to do. It would last anything between 2 hours to 4 depending on the business schedule of the pundits.
I asked my Mother (practically illiterate in Sanskrit) why she keeps asking me to go through this boring ritual; Is it for kaamya (fulfillment of worldly desires) or moksha (liberation)? And she would smile and say: "Neither...it is just that I love hearing those mantras being chanted."
I would then ask why she couldn't just hear them without my sitting through the ordeal. She then said that folks who perform this abhishekham have one worldly desire or the other and don't know any Sanskrit at all. So, they would invite the pundits and feed them and pay them for reciting the mantras. But the Pundit would insist that the payer should sit and perform the abhishekham himself so that he is satisfied that it was his desires and not the Pundit's that get fulfilled.
I then recalled that during my marriage ceremony, our pundit occasionally would read a shlok and ask me to say, "mamaa". He explained that the shlok he uttered says: "Let me be your loving husband for life"...obviously the "me" there is the bridegroom and not the pundit who recites it...the bridegroom being too busy otherwise...so the utterance of "mamaa" transfers all the coupling-rights to the bridegroom.
Those days I was a chain smoker and had a deal with my pundit that whenever I showed a prearranged hand-signal, he had to pause and take a break for five minutes as if he got tired and breathless.
I was so irreverent to rituals.
But not these days...I enjoyed the rituals done by my son and D-i-L during the baptism ceremony of Ishani, her "annapraashan", "bhogipallu", and recently "aksharaabhyaasam" (Initiation into literacy).
As the Bard said: "Ripeness is all"
Y B Chavan who ended up as the Defense Minister of India past our thrashing by the Chinese in 1962 was a card-holding Communist before he turned coat and became a Congressman wearing a Gandhi cap. When a journalist tried to taunt him about his volte-face, he retorted:
"Those who are not Marxists before 40 are felons; those who remain so after 40 are fools"
Buddha-da may agree...
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