Shivratri

Shivratri

Sham S. Misri

We have managed to avert calamity so far, but no one can avert destruction.

Shiva comes to visit us on Shivratri, a very important festival for us Hindus and Kashmiri Pandits in particular.

Shiva of the matted hair and live snake jewellery and ashes for the talcum powder  meditates atop  a snow clad mountain in a yogic pose, inanimate until the energizing  Female awakens him. His neck is blue from the poison it has imprisoned, and his only garment is loincloth of snow leopard skin . To Parvati he is the most desirable  man   she has ever seen. The Female is transfixed, this beloved daughter of a mountain king,

and she cannot move or be moved.

“Cosmic forces are at work,” says mother, “they are just doing the dance of creation”

There is nothing more important for a mother of a post pubescent girl than to collect her trousseau and then to keep watch over her and her dowery preparation.

“The king is enraged, how can his priceless daughter be given to a wandering ascetic with a begging bowl?. He weeps and cries  and rants and raves. He curses his wife for the way she has brought up their daughter”.

Mother narrates the story. I understand some of her phraseology, but I dare not question the authorship of the lyrical narrative.  I have no doubt that Shiva and Parvati speak fluent Kashmiri.  This she tells me every time.

“What happened?” I ask.

“What else?” This was going to happen, nothing could stop this union of two halves which make a whole. The mountain king held the wedding as if nothing had happened, as if Siva was the most eligible bachelor.

When the bridegroom arrived sitting on a bull the relatives shrieked with laughter. But Parvati was Goddess  and her father knew that now. Her father married her off as he should and Shiva and Parvati set up house in the Himalayas.”

Presumably this is where we found them and worshipped them. They belonged to us and we belonged to them.

But Shiva is unpredictable and he can turn everything to ashes just in the blink of his third eye. So we appease him by celebrating his marriage every year.  As seductive he was to the Female, his attraction to Parvati must have been equally overpowering. He became a regular fellow, gave up his asceticism, threw off his snakes , his smoking pipes and his ashes, and went  in for   traditional marriage, with in-laws and receptions and feasts and banquets. This is the part we like, and we being mortals, try to imitate the divine.

Kashmiri Pandits are Shiva believers. During summer in Kashmir, there is an influx from door to door ascetics from all over India heading for the phallic lingam in the Amarnath cave.  They rattle dried gourds  and cymbals  at our gates and loudly invoke Shiva, and we give them alms. Alms can be anything rice, lentils, fruits or money.

We hurry inside the house, because the ascetics are barely clothed, and secondly because they seem to be long to another cosmos. Sometimes we give them tea or food. When they sit , then they tell us some strange stories. When angered they can impale a person with their tridents . We have also heard that  when they reach Amarnath Cave of Shiva they meditate naked in the freezing temperature swearing garlands around their erect penises.