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.
