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\nThousands of devotees gather at Kamakhya temple in Guwahati during the Ambubachi mela last week. Pic\/PTI<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
On a visit to my in-laws, I attended the Mela. My younger daughter Anya, who soon begins higher studies and who, to my lasting pride, calmly but swiftly takes down cousins who mindlessly spout North Indian machismo, also wanted to go. However, the rest of the family behaved as if Anya and I were going to enter a 1960s film in which twin babies get separated at a mela. \u201cDon\u2019t lose Anya,\u201d my elder daughter Mrinalini commanded me. I promised to give Anya, who is nearly 18 and has an iPhone, a locket for identification so that we could be dramatically reunited if she got lost. In the end, however, Anya stayed home.<\/p>\n
Kamakhya temple\u2019s backstory is this: Lord Shiva\u2019s better half, Goddess Parvati (aka Sati) immolates herself after her father, King Daksh, deliberately tries to humiliate her husband (Though Lord Shiva somehow seems un-humiliate-able). Shiva was enraged. He danced with his wife\u2019s corpse, and that put the fear of God into the rest of the divine pantheon, since such dances usually ended with cosmic destruction and no one wanted space-time to end ahead of schedule. Lord Vishnu therefore, using his Sudarshan Chakra, cuts Parvati\u2019s corpse to pieces, each of which falls in a different part of India (each landing in what eventually becomes a pitha-sthan); Parvati\u2019s yoni (her genitalia) lands here, in Guwahati, on the Nilachal hill (562 feet above sea level). On that spot the Kamakhya temple is constructed, her yoni represented not by an idol but by a rock formation. (The temple complex has temples for all ten Mahavidyas \u2014 the ten aspects of Goddess Parvati.) Coming from a suffocatingly \u2018traditional\u2019 Bihari family, I find the way that this story consecrates the female yoni, without embarrassment, refreshing.<\/p>\n
Throngs of us devotees, from all walks of life, climbed the hill on a nearly 4-km road, our sea of humanity occasionally parting to allow the well-connected in their private cars to pass (the road has been closed for the mela, and overstuffed buses have been organised for pilgrims). The not-walkers know not what they miss. All sorts of middle-aged, middle-class goddesses trudge with me, though their incessant spitting is less than divine. And an hour later, we circumambulate the temple \u2014 closed for the periods \u2014 meeting shakti devotees from around the country, tantrics, third gender devotees (born a god, became a goddess), groups of women immersed in kirtan, women sitting cross-legged outside the temple-walls deep in communion with the Mother Goddess, families taking a dip in the tank at the back, a matted-hair sadhu occasionally coming into view. Despite the crowd and the noise, there is a spiritual peace to be had here, as if the Mother Goddess takes hold of your mind and lifts it above the concrete matter of the senses. And looking at the gathered hijras in crimson saris, you can only feel that sexuality here is not something to be uptight about, that there is a harmony in this milieu.<\/p>\n
The mela is a big deal, considering the kind of misogyny that casually informs the psychic and emotional landscape in mainstream India. It\u2019s no coincidence that of the three Khans, Salman\u2019s filmic image is that of a fiercely conservative male (as is his average fan), while Shah Rukh\u2019s is playful like Lord Krishna and Aamir\u2019s is that of the socially-concerned activist. India remains a society where giving birth to a girl is a curse, if she hasn\u2019t been dragged out and murdered while in the womb. It\u2019s a society where gang rape regularly makes the news pages. According to the 2011 census, the gender ratio at birth is 834 girls per 1,000 boys in Haryana, where I live; in Assam it is 962 girls (Kerala is best at 1,084 baby girls; the national average is 919). Clearly, it\u2019s high time that mainstream India bowed its puny pinheads before the Mother Goddess.<\/p>\n
Senior journalist Aditya Sinha is a contributor to the recently published anthology House Spirit: Drinking in India. He tweets @autumnshade. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n