When the Lights Hurt the Eyes

Yesterday I did some Diwali shopping. It was a Pavlovian reaction. I was walking past kandeels, colorful lights with tassels that would sway like dancing girls in gaudy pink and sunflower yellow, and without my knowledge my feet veered towards shops that sold things I would never need. Mannequins spoke to me in a mute language, a language that money would never understand.

Can money know the joy of silk on your skin or the moistness on the lips, as mint-flavoured gloss brushes against it like a stolen kiss? Can money comprehend how much that cuddle with the cushion matters to you on sultry nights when the only static in the sir is on your TV screen? Can money buy you that unbearable lightness of being as you tiptoe on hush-puppies with the curtains drawn and perform a ballet with the mirror as your forgiving audience? So, I don’t shop with money, I shop with my soul on its way to seeking an unfathomable connection with the self.

And so do hundreds of women. I saw them that day after a long time. Most of them were taking time out from office and household chores. I saw them, their long tresses in braids, polyester saris that do not crease and skins that will sooner than they should; women who wear the bindi, the mangalsutra, the sindoor to make sure they are seen as important beings because they belong to someone else. They will hang the lamps in their balconies, light diyas and paint rangolis with colour and rice grains outside their doors. They will wake up early to bathe, perform a puja, give sweets to everyone and then watch as the men and children have fun. They will be tired, but they will not utter a word in protest. Because today they are the goddesses, the Lakshmis.

As people, all bedecked in finery, will do the 'aarti' with a burning flame and flowers to propitiate the idol and the symbolism of Lakshmi, I would like to ask the goddess a few questions: How does it feel to be treated as Ms. Moneybags? How does it feel when machines, computers, account books are placed at your disposal, so that you can ensure prosperity while the smells and harmful rays assail you? Do you feel the adrenaline rush to your brain as you are made to feel like a most special person, or do you feel like you are being used? Does the holy occasion of Lakshmi puja give you a sense of empowering women? Do you know or even care whether women in our country, where you are revered, have virtually no power over money?

Being a goddess is relatively easy. What about us flesh-and-blood women – what is our wealth worth? Will we ever understand that dependence on money is not the only way to prove our independence? What did I prove when I bought a Laughing Buddha that seems to guffaw each time I look in his direction? Was I trying to prove something when I committed the ultimate calumny when I bought a fake trinket on Dhanteras, when everyone buys gold? Is this cynicism?

My neighbour, whose apartment door is just a few feet away from ours, lit diyas and my first thought was, “Gosh, hope nothing gets burnt.” It does not matter that she is a Muslim and I get irritated when she has those breast-beating mehfils during Muharram and everyone who was just a while ago talking about the latest car, is now wailing away. I can smell the food from the dekchis, khichra with lots of birastaa sprinkled on top. We all need to purge ourselves and reclaim something.

Why, I remember every childhood Diwali rather fondly. We would buy firecrackers, boxes of dry fruits would be deposited and mithais would be eagerly awaited. And then we would light those ‘bombs’, a string of red pellets that would go thatathatahataat, with the girls shrieking with mock fear. Then there was the atom bomb, the big dhamaaka, for which we prepared minutes ahead, shutting our ears and waiting…today I have insulated myself. Shut all the doors and windows and switched on the airconditioner. I hate the noise, the fumes.

Isn’t it funny that what one so enjoys as kids one begins to almost detest as adults? What has changed? Is it the growing older or that memories are no more potent? Why was I happy enough yesterday walking the streets scouring for goodies and why am I feeling different today? Can 24 hours change one’s life?

It isn’t the hours, it is the moments. I think I lost them while I was counting them. It isn’t just Diwali. It happens during every festival.

Christmas meant listening to carols sung in the streets by the neighbourhood church choir, then the gentle knock on the door with a plea to fill the box. We kept money ready. All of us owed our illiteracy to the nuns, which is how we made direct contact with the birds and bees and discovered the wonders of nature. My friends were mostly Catholic, and we even got a Christmas tree that threatened to shrivel at my operatic attempts. (I think it was communal. It flourished listening to Bade Ghulam Ali Khan saab.) For one week until New Year’s there would be anticipation in the air, though I have no idea what I was looking forward to. I suppose to listen to my friends tell me stories about cheek-to-cheek dancing. It was exciting in its own way. These days, I don’t care.

Even Eid is not something I look forward to at all. It wasn’t always like this. I still remember my first sharara, an aubergine beauty, and how embarrassed I was when I had to walk to a relative’s house with a huge bowl of sheer korma protected by a crochet cover, the scent of raisins and slightly burnt milk wafting through the filigree. We would watch the men in white kurta-churidars go off for the namaaz, and I would have the privilege of putting the Eidee money in envelopes, the crisp notes that grandma kept in a box that said ‘Black Magic chocolates’. God knows how old that box was. But it gave me such a high that I was the only one who knew how much each of us would get. Then there would be the haath-chumna business, touching the eyes and lips to the backs of hands. Seated, the women would fidget with the gajras trying to pin them into their hair. I, of course, suffered from a big Hindi film hangup and felt that those strings of jasmine and mogra were meant for mujras, and secretly delighted in the fact that maybe, just maybe, my good family was sinning.

But they obviously were not. Because I would be knocked off every time a relative kissed me and the scent of ‘Jannat-e-Firdaus’ attar would assail me -- as though agarbattis were not bad enough to send you into a semi-comatose state. We would show off our mehndis, the darker the tinge the better. I would wash my hands sparingly for fear that it would fade. And the highlight for me was the visit to the house of one old film star. I did not care much for the desi-ghee smell from her kitchen or the special warmth of her kohl-laden eyes. I was entranced by the hookah that took pride of place in one corner, near a divan. Her mother would suck on it and I would wait expectantly for that gud-gud sound. And than Ammaji would smile, her paan-stained tongue leaping out to shoot into the spittoon, an embossed silver bowl. I would sit on the edge of the sofa for the next round with juvenile glee.

I think these occasions should be left for children. Innocence is dying. Today even if I want gulal on my face during Holi, I know it is mixed with oil paint. I know that in Calcutta Goddess Kali is made happy with slaughtered animals that cry drowning the sound of Rabindra sangeet. I know that for many the Ramazan fast is the wait for Maghrib and the drive to the gallis for tender skewered meat. The symbols have failed us, or we have failed them.

Our superstitions are world-renowned. We feed the poor in designated months so that we may never go hungry and we even feed the snake, perhaps in the hope that no one will poison us. We propitiate Lakshmi in the hope that wealth flutters around us all year long. And this has a strange effect. The nouveau riche, to give themselves a touch of respectability, soil their new stuff to make it look old and antique, while the old rich flaunt the latest gizmos to show that the moolah is not all over and as dead as the famed picture of the pioneer.

Every year event organisers sprout up with new ideas up their sleeves, usually as smelly and hollow as their armpits. And the poor little rich suckers who patronise them think it terribly fashionable to be a part of the scene where everyone behaves as though they have arrived when they are supposed to have left.

It is this superficiality in the cities that have robbed festivals of their festivity and made them into crass marketing tools. Will Goddess Lakshmi take these people aside and give them a piece of her mind? Is Lakshmi too as helpless, going along with social norms, becoming a puppet to people’s whims and fancies? Would she do me a special favour this time? When all those devotees are busy paying obeisance to her, can she just hypnotise them all into believing that she does not care one bit about money?

I cannot get my childhood back, but I would love to throw open my windows and watch the stars in the richly-textured sky. These I cannot buy.