IONOSPHERE

Keep Watching This Space!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 17 Jul 2016 18:35:00 +0000

So...there has been some major lag with this blog. We haven't met each other in almost two years now.

And before I plunge into excuses (which I eventually will), an unadulterated apology is due to all of you.
I am very sorry.
I really am.
From the depths of my heart.

Now, the ~~excuses~~ reasons for this rather long long-time-no-see period.

I moved residence from Ohio to Pennsylvania. During the relocation I lost most of my precious research notes on the subject I was writing about...(yes, I still write notes in a notebook...a real paper notebook...with a pen. What can I say, I am old fashioned like that!)

Then, I was in India for a period of four months...the visit was long overdue and we had a big wedding in the family yada yada yada.

I was and am involved in other writing projects...but really, that is no excuse to not write this blog. I understand.

On a more solemn note I also had a few personal health concerns which needed immediate attention.
I do not wish to bore you with the details but I am on the path to recovery now, getting better each day. :)

I have finally re-researched the topic to my heart's content and I have my notes in order again. I cannot dish out articles for you to spend your precious time on, unless I am first 100 percent satisfied and pleased with the quality and authenticity of the material.

We shall pick up from where we left very very soon. I will take you with me into the boudoirs and dressing chambers of ancient Greece and Rome.

My heartfelt thanks to all those of you who have repeatedly complained about the delay...to me personally, on my social media and even to some of my family members. It is your enthusiasm and support that keeps my motivation up. I was overwhelmed each time I read or heard about those complaints.
In a world of two second attention spans, I am incredibly blessed to have readers who have remembered this little blog and this unpaid blogger after two years of inactivity.

The unending encouragement I have received from my readers and those few minutes you spend on clicking on the links to my articles and reading them...that is my only remuneration.

Thank you!

See you real soon!

-
Pallavi

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL WORLD: DHARA (Mohenjo-Daro), ERISH (Mesopotamia),FENG-LEI (China) 3000 BC to 1400 BC

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:25:00 +0000

Our next stop on this journey is what can be roughly called the Bronze Age. What a great era this was! Man had finally established his superiority over all other creatures and defeated all the unfavourable natural conditions to pave way for the complex social networks called CIVILIZATION.

We had conquered rivers, oceans, land and the power of flowing winds. We could grow our own grains and vegetation, domesticated animals for milk, eggs, meat, wool, leather, for working with us in our fields and for travelling. Plants and animals had been selectively bred to give more yield and be more docile and useful around human establishments.

Instrumentation, too, was at a completely new high. From tinkering with simple pieces of stone, bone and wooden tools for activities of daily life and agriculture, man had gone on to conquer the one material that would impact the rest of the human race for ever - the beautiful, strong, gleaming, solid, malleable, ductile and durable Metal! Metal that made our lives easier and also gave us the power to fight and kill more swiftly than ever. (that discussion, however, we shall keep for another time)

With the domestication of plants and animals, the assurance of a steady influx of food, and the power of metal to defend him, man gave in to his social nature and started settling down in large communities. And these communities became more permanent from the semi-permanent establishments of the past. Floods and earthquakes, while still very frightening and destructive, could be controlled to some extent and hence, unlike previous eras, couldn't wipe out entire communities altogether. It was the banks of the major rivers that saw the first permanent human settlements - the Indus river in the Indian sub-continent, the Tigris-Euphrates river system in Mesopotamia, the Huang-He in China and the mighty Nile in Egypt. (Because river water was of utmost importance to agriculture and rivers formed interconnected networks for transportation to almost anywhere)

This was the first time in human history that we were able to devote time exclusively to arts, science, culture and religion - because our basic necessities - food, shelter and protection from the forces of Nature - had been taken care of.

For appeasing our newly named deities (who were the personifications of the fearsome Natural forces that we were yet to comprehend completely) we elected priests, for looking after day to day civil life, laying down rules and defending us, we elected kings and leaders, for procuring produce from the producers and bringing it to our establishments some of us became merchants, while another group of people took it upon themselves to look after the cleanliness and hygiene of our homes and communities.

Such precise delegations of role in the nascent human society, gave others the time to indulge in finer pursuits like art, architecture, music, dance, elaborate rituals of beautification, writing, composing, handicrafts, pottery and so on.

With such enormous changes in the human "way-of-life" from the Neolithic times to the middle and late Bronze Age, it is but obvious that the purposes, definitions and means of beauty had undergone transformation. While beauty will always be associated with attracting potential mates, the Bronze Age saw women working in fields, markets, pottery-barns, as weavers and seamstresses, in the service of kings, as jewellery makers, nurses, singers, dancers and courtesans. Women could now marry without violent abductions or fights breaking out to possess them, own property and servants, work and even separate from their husbands after justifying the merit of their case.

Therefore, being beautiful now meant a lot of other things than just latching on to a man for food and protection. Hygiene, aesthetics, orderliness, a feeling of well-being and energy was a major part of what defined beauty in the bronze age.

To take a closer look at the beauty rituals of the Bronze Age river-based civilizations, we will first visit Dhara, named after the flow of life-giving water, a young girl living on the banks of Indus, then stop in the neighbouring Mesopotamia to meet Erish and finally, conclude this trip with a visit to Feng-Lei, who lives in China, where the Huang-He flows.

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE DO NOT USE THE BEAUTY RECIPES MENTIONED IN THIS POST. WHILE THEY ARE AUTHENTIC, THE INGREDIENTS MAY NOT BE UNADULTERATED IN THIS DAY AND AGE. ALSO, THESE PREPARATIONS MAY BE ACTUALLY HARMFUL.
BEST TO LET BYGONES BE BYGONES. :)

DHARA'S FRAGRANT SANDALWOOD - The Indus Valley - 2600 BC

Dhara has always considered herself lucky to be born to a merchant father.They are not poor. Their family owns land to cultivate cotton,ox, bulls and cows, employs people in fields and shops and lives in a big, well-lit, airy two story baked-brick house with many rooms circling a central courtyard and its own drainage system and water supply.

Her father is a big trader. His men often hire wooden ships to travel to far off lands. She is aware that their community trades with other such communities in Southern India, Gandhar (Afghanistan), Egypt and Mesopotamia. Her father's men sail to these places, making use of the ample river networks and exchange cotton, linen, beautiful painted pottery, timber, beads, sandalwood for gold, spices, perfumes, jade and other semi-precious stones. Some of her father's men have stayed back in Mesopotamia to act as her father's agent while some foreign traders have made her town their home.

Artist's representation of a gateway in an Indus Valley township. www.crystallinks.com

Dhara knows she'll probably never get to see these exotic places herself, but at least she can spend her time working as a helper in the big shops her father has in the central marketplace. It helps if a family member is present as a supervisor. The people who come to buy their wares give them other useful things in return.

That's how it works out in Dhara's community - a person has to give something of importance to another person he is interested in procuring something from. Dhara's father uses precise weight measurements to ensure he is not getting fooled. The weights are made from cubes of flinty rock called Grey Chert.

While her younger brothers play with clay and wooden toys in the form of animals, carts on a string and dolls, Dhara, an adolescent, loves the pieces of jewellery, pots of perfume and fine cotton skirts her father and mother often gift her. Her mother is a stylish and beautiful woman, people say. And Dhara is following very rapidly in her footsteps.

It is very warm almost all year round in her town. Heavy clothing is not suitable for Dhara and her people.
She wears loose cotton tunics, chest bands tied around the chest and fine cotton skirts tied at the waist by a gold or bronze girdle, armlets, bracelets and bangles and adorns her neck with necklaces made from ivory, semi-precious stones, beads, gold and bronze. Her mother, being the chief wife of an important town-merchant, wears an elaborate crown like head-dress or sometimes a cloth turban.

Gold and Semi-Precious stone Jewellery unearthed at different sites in the Indus Valley. www.bbc.co.uk

Woman with curvy figure, prominent bust. Wearing choker, necklace, girdle and elaborate headdress. www.harappa.com

Their community worships the "Mother Goddess", the deity of fertility and the Earth's unending bounty. And following the cult of the "Mother Goddess" or "Earth Mother", the most sought after feminine figure is the voluptuous, well rounded one. Big bosom, rounded belly, slim and shapely waist,wide hips and wide thighs.

All the women in Dhara's family use sandal wood very heavily - as a perfume, as a powder, as a face and body mask and as an emollient. The strong, soothing, earthy, woody notes of sandalwood scent the air of her home.

Women also stain their fingertips and the soles of their feet with the coppery red lac-dye. It is considered to be a sign of beauty and is very auspicious.

In the heat and humidity of Mohenjo-Daro, bathing is an important and elaborate ritual of hygiene. Some privileged families like Dhara's have their own private bathing area in their residence. But for the majority of the people there are great public tanks and baths. Both cold and warm baths are common.

People exfoliate their bodies vigorously with scrapers/exfoliators like a rough piece of cloth, a block of wood, jawbone of ox, a chunk of sandstone and so on. It is believed to help with keeping the skin clean and fresh.

Use of oils for body and hair is common. Oil massages are believed to tone and strengthen the muscles and improve circulation and give a lush growth of hair on the head. Mustard and sesame oil are used most often.

(Crushed and powdered seeds of the Opium Poppy/khus-khus mixed in milk, get rid of dandruff when applied on the scalp)

Masks or "Lepas" are used both on face and body. They are supposed to detoxify, make the complexion bright and fight blemishes and aging.

(Sandalwood paste mixed with milk cream, saffron, honey and turmeric is Dhara's favourite facial mask. Some women also use soaked lentils ground with few drops of honey.)

Any kind of body hair (arms, face, legs, pubes) is considered repulsive, especially in women. They are shaved with the help of fine razors or removed with the help of depilatory preparations.

(Women in Dhara's family pound together the dried fruits of Amla/Indian Gooseberry and Indian Long Pepper and soak the resulting mixture in the milky secretion of the Holy Milk Hedge plant. This paste applied over the desired part of the body makes the hair from that area fall off)

After a prolonged bath, people dust themselves generously with perfumed, deodorizing bath powders. It keeps them fresh, active, energetic and smelling good for a long time.

(Powdered barks of the Mango tree and Pomegranate tree, mixed with powdered dry Neem leaves, finely milled powdered sea shells and powdered sandalwood removes body odour and keeps Dhara feeling fresh and fragrant all day)

Depending on the season, oils, saffron, musk (for winter) and camphor, sandalwood, vetiver (for summer) are used.

Both men and women apply lamp-soot and Antimony based collyrium to line their eyes and the green earth pigment "terre verte" as eye-colour. Women chew betel leaves with camphor, catechu and cardamom to sweeten their breath and stain their lips red.

Mixing a pounded, ground mixture of Camphor, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and cloves in water and gargling with it or swirling it around the mouth removes bad breath.

The famous nude Harappan Dancing Girl artefact. The bangles reach up to the upper arm.A trend still followed by women in Rajasthan, India. www.bbc.co.uk

Dhara apes all the beauty regimes she sees her mother following diligently, so she too may grow up to be a fine, confident, radiant lady like her mother, marry well and hold her own in front of staff and servants.

Beauty gives her the confidence to face the world.

Dhara has no idea at this point, that one day, her entire civilization will be wiped out due to unknown, puzzling causes, their script will be deemed unreadable and no one will ever know where her people went! But for the time being, it is a rich, thriving, peaceful, bountiful civilization.

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ERISH'S POT OF KOHL - Ur, Sumer/Mesopotamia - 1772 B.C

Erish was named very ambitiously. In the ancient Sumerian language, Erish means “Exalted Lady” or “Queen”. But she herself is no such thing. Though living in very close quarters with exalted ladies and gents, Erish is a concubine of a rich man whose wife is incapacitated by disease.

She came into this household of traders and business owners as a part of her mistress’s dowry. Being good looking, intelligent and literate, she was then considered by her mistress’s father, a very good and useful companion for the lady in her new marital home. Erish knew from the very beginning that she was more deserving of luxury, opulence, romantic love and a fulfilling family life than her soft-minded, physically weak young mistress, but bound by the ties of duty and loyalty, she had always lived in the shadows - never really reaching out for what her heart desired. So near, yet so far. She’d never be mistress...always a servant.

Their community in Ur (an important Sumerian trade city in Mesopotamia) was not suited for really intelligent women. While they could own property, work, sue, run businesses, they were never the legal and political equals of men. No woman was a lawmaker. Yes, there were high-priestesses, but rumour was that they were little more than religious prostitutes. The difference between queens and royal concubines was hardly noticeable. Of course, there were a plethora of Goddesses to pray to, but mostly representing feminine ideals like love, romance, fertility and agriculture.

It was a hurtling fall from a long staircase followed by a prolonged fever that changed Erish’s fortune. Her mistress was severely injured and had taken the bed permanently.

According to the Code of Hammurabi, her husband couldn’t divorce her or get rid of her on the basis of illness. He was dutybound to care and provide for her throughout her life. But that in no way meant he couldn’t enjoy the services of the female slaves and companions his wife had brought as a part of her dowry. Her mistress offered Erish as a sexual companion to her husband. She taught Erish her rituals of beautification, gave her fine clothes and jewellery, and tiny shell-shaped containers of gold and terracotta filled with coloured cosmetics.

That day Erish’s life changed.

Erish takes detailed baths in scented water. Someday the water is perfumed with the essence of roses, on other days Oil of Orange Blossoms, or Oil of Frankincense.

She rubs her skin regularly with Pumice stone to keep it smooth and free of body hair. She pushes down the cuticles of her nails with a blunt metal stick and plucks her eyebrows with metal tweezers to keep them well-arched.

She wears a toga-like strapless maxi dress, secured by an ivory pin and a lot of bead strings around her neck. The beads her mistress wears are gold, lapis lazuli and ivory.

Erish, and all the men and women she sees around her, use a lot of kohl on their eyes. It is made out of charred tree resins, powdered antimony (stibium), powdered lead compounds and arsenic. Heavily lined eyes and dark painted eyebrows are the most sensuous feature in a woman. Erish knows that an attractive woman should speak not with her mouth, but with her eyes.

She also paints her eyelids with vivid colours like apple red, rich green, aqua blue and turquoise. Her eyebrows are painted thick, dark and arched with kohl and they meet ever so slightly at centre of her forehead.

Ivory sculpture showing face of woman with gold head band, heavily kohl-lined eyes, painted eyebrows and elaborately curled hairstyle. avalonianaeon.blogspot.com

Her hair is well oiled and piled on her head in a huge chignon. The men, like her master, generally curl their hair and beards elaborately with curling tongs. Her mistress, before the fall, used to wear an elaborate arrangement of gold on her head. The gold was beaten into multiple ribbons, beads, floral headpieces and was a glorious sight! But Erish is only a concubine. So she wears little gold and ivory beads in her hair.

The flattened skull of a rich woman, Queen Puabi, unearthed at Ur, Mesopotamia. theancientworld.tumblr.com

Queen Puabi's gold headdress and bead cape reconstructed from the flattened skull unearthed in Ur. ornamentedbeing.tumblr.com

Erish applies face creams and a variety of face powders from her mistress’s cosmetic box. Her face powders are made of red oxide of iron (haematite), white lead and yellow ochre. Yellow ochre dissolved in a few drops of water and applied on her face forms a beautiful foundation for loose powders and cheek rouge.

Facial reconstruction of a wealthy Mesopotamian lady. Arguably Queen Puabi.

She reddens her lips with red ochre based lip salves or with deep red Henna.

Henna designs also adorn her hand and feet. The men dye their hair, beard and eyebrows with Henna.

For special nights spent with her master, Erish relies on the heavy usage of perfumes. These perfumes are sourced from crocus, thyme, lotus, marjoram, saffron, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh and amber.

Erish takes care of every single detail of all the tedious beauty rituals with just one goal in mind. In Ur, Sumer, a master retains the right to sell a servant even if he has had sexual relations with her and even if she has borne him sons.

Erish is, therefore, aiming to capture her master’s heart – to avoid being sold to another unknown family. Her intelligence and tact are gifts of Nature......and now cosmetics have given her the conviction of attractiveness and the aura of confidence.

Well, why not?

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Feng-lei's Nail Paint - Anyang, China, 1500 BC

"Red, White and Black" are what Feng-Lei has been told the three colours of feminine beauty. Red lips and nails, white skin and black hair, eyebrows and teeth (yes! you read it right...black teeth)

White porcelain skin and pitch black hair in ancient Chinese women. ancientpeoples.tumblr.com

Feng-Lei lives in the city of Anyang with her parents and siblings. They are neither very rich, nor very poor. Her father married two other women after he married her mother because her mother couldn't give birth to sons. Sons are highly coveted in her community.

It is only after marriage, in the eventuality of having a son, can a girl hope to command some respect. Or if she lives to a great old age, survives her husbands and sons and becomes a grand matriarch. Otherwise, women should simply be content with household work, having children (sons), looking after the family and beautifying themselves.

Feng-Lei's mother is concerned about the fate of her only daughter. She wasn't a particularly attractive woman herself and she has had enough trouble as such. She has never had much affection from her husband. Though the head-wife, she has eroded her softness working hard at household chores. Her husband doesn't like it if the younger, prettier wives work much. But she doesn't mind. She keeps her mind occupied in grueling hard work and makes sure Feng-Lei can stay happy and beautiful.
Feng-Lei has no blood-brothers to look out for her, neither is she the favourite child of her father, and therefore, her only chance of happiness in the future is being selected by a good suitor. And suitors are known to be notoriously choosy. A slightly sallow complexion, plain fingernails, shadow of eyebrow hair - almost anything can get Feng-Lei a rejection when the groom and his family come to see her. So, being prepared is the best option.

Feng-Lei washes her hands well, massages her long, graceful fingers with oil and once the oil has been absorbed, she paints her nails a beautiful pale pink.

(Nail colours, first formulated in Bronze Age China, are a concoction of gelatin, gum arabic, beeswax and eggs, mixed with natural pigments. The royalty can use gold or silver dust in their nail paint, wear deep, vibrant colours like red, black, purple....but the common people are forbidden from colouring their nails brightly.)

Her mother helps Feng-Lei in following the latest trend among the city girls by threading off the eyebrows entirely.

Feng-Lei paints black, thin, shapely eyebrows over her eyes, in the place where her natural eyebrows should have been.

The ultimate beauty statement is a porcelain white skin and black (or golden, if one is rich) stained teeth.

Feng-Lei uses generous amounts of finely milled and ground raw rice as a face powder. She paints her lips red.

Teeth-Blackening or "Ohaguro" is considered a sign of great beauty. Also, a coat of black colour over the teeth was thought to protect the enamel and prevent tooth decay. Feng-Lei colours her teeth black.

(The formulation for blackening teeth was prepared by dissolving iron filings in vinegar and combining the resulting solution with vegetable tannins from sources such as black tea. This mixture was black and insoluble in water. It had to be applied on the teeth once a day or once a week, depending on the intensity desired.)

Woman with black teeth.

Another important aspect of aesthetics Feng-Lei must learn about is the art of fragrances. Her people have just one word to denote fragrance, incense and perfume "Heang" and Heang is divided into six moods-
Tranquil, Reclusive, Beautiful, Luxurious, Refined and Noble. FengLei has to learn to use the right aromatic for the right occasion.

Feng-Lei's world and surroundings are by far the most different from her Bronze Age counterparts in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. She is more or less cut off from the rest of the world in faraway China.
She often wonders if there is a world beyond the Huang-He river. If it is inhabited by people like her. If there are more girls, more women out there.
How must their life be?

Feng-Lei is grandly ignorant of the fact that this very year, 1500 BC, as she prepares to find a suitor and live out her life in the quest for the coveted "male child", far from her homeland, a woman has been made a King - not a Queen...but a King...a role no woman has dared to take on before...Pharaoh Hatsheput of Egypt.

Feng-Lei will never know.

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References:

Fashions in Makeup: From ancient to modern times by Richard Corson
Wikipedia
www.harappa.com
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/
Herbal Cosmetics in Ancient India by Kunda B. Patkar
Beginnings of Civilization, www.saylor.org/courses/history101/
Daily life in ancient Mesopotamia by Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat
lauravaleri.com/2013/05/23/the-role-of-women-in-ancient-sumer
www.cosmeticsinfo.org/Ancient-history-cosmetics
http://www.diybeautytutorials.com/2012/09/7-ancient-chinese-beauty-secrets
History of cosmetics, SK Chaudhri and NK Jain, Asian Journal of Pharmaceutics, 2009

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Pallavi

Kent, OH

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL WORLD: AYLA'S RED OCHRE (10,000 BC, Egypt)

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 16:17:00 +0000

10,000 BC, New Stone Age*, Somewhere along The Nile Valley, Egypt

*(Neolithic era - Egyptians are still a Negroid, "true African" population. Man has turned farmer from hunter/gatherer, has settled down in establishments and communities and owns land and residence.Cleopatra and the Europoean featured "Egyptians" are, as yet, millenia away.)

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Who first applied cosmetics on their face and when exactly and where, is a question forever lost in the annals of time. There are no indisputable, solid written records of the earliest, oldest and the most primitive manifestation of the pursuit of physical beauty. Perhaps politics, violence, wars and battles have always found importance over the more subtle, more delicate and more beautiful aspects of our growth as a society.

Therefore, we will have to rely solely on archaeological finds and faded wall paintings, and re-create the “face of beauty” in the Neolithic Era from our imagination. Some information, to serve as the basis of this “flight of fancy” we are about to indulge in, is, however, out there and has been, thankfully, found!

For example, archaeologists have unearthed palettes (made of ivory, slate, stone etc) used to grind pigments for eye-paints in sites dating back to 10,000 BC and thereabouts*.

Perfume bottles, eye-paints, emollients have been discovered in ancient graves, rendering the dead person equipped with cosmetics for after-life.

When we consider these primitive samples of make-up, paired with cave-art, the early clusters of semi-permanent dwellings, the beginning of systematized agriculture and domestication of animals, we start to see the creation of an ancient framework for cultured, societal living, rich with symbolism, rituals and practices.

This is the first time in human evolution that man and woman, have started living in large social groups and forming relationships to take the human race ahead, relationships based on cooperation and mutual dependence for resources like food, shelter, protection for the female and her children, and the privilege of sex and dispersing his genes as much as possible for males. And the interaction of males and females, for the purpose of reproduction is driven by two major stimuli - female fertility and beauty.

And in a 10,000 BC time frame and perspective, it won't be wrong to say, fertility IS beauty.

Lumps of red ochre and other pigments, believed to be the primitive form of lipstick, cheek rouge and eye-shadow and body paint , have been found in Middle and New Stone Age settlements and burial sites. And a look at the body-painting and mate-selecting rituals of the indigenous tribes existing today, tells us that, manipulation of the body using man-made products is not only for the frivolous purpose of beautification,but it is an important signal to the opposite sex...MAKE-UP IS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATION.

But how do we start our journey? And wherefrom? Is there a direction? Which way do the recent finds of historians take us?

Well, I personally believe that these old, primitive archaeological pointers lead us to the banks of the mighty Nile, the cradle of human civilization, in the bountiful Africa, where we meet the young Ayla and her community.

AYLA's RED OCHRE

It all began when the women set out to fool the men!!

Ayla has just had her initiation rite. The rite of passage from girl child to woman. It is a puberty ritual she has observed among the women of her community since she was a little girl. She has seen her sisters, her friends go through it. And to be honest, she was kind of waiting to transform from a child to a young woman, marked by her first menstruation. She has been of little value to her community as a girl child. A woman, however, is a different story.

A young girl with big eyes and a complexion the colour of the silky dark Nile clay, Ayla has noticed her own body change from lithe, athletic and rough from playing in the mud and sand all day, to elongated, rounded, curvy and graceful. Her mother has told her over and over again that she will not attract a single mate if she went about looking like a young boy. She knows now, with her initiation into the group of "young women" she will have to give up playing in the sun. But still Ayla has enjoyed this process of growing up. It is as if she is in on some beautiful, intriguing secret!

There has been much singing and dancing at her initiation ceremony. It was an all woman affair. Ayla was bathed, smeared in perfumed oils, tattooed with the mark of their tribe, her hair has been elaborately braided and her face, lips and arms and legs have been painted with Red Ochre. (Red Ochre is an earth pigment found in clay that has large contents of iron in the form of Hematite)

From looking at most of the women around her, Ayla can say from now on, Red Ochre will play a very important role in her beauty regime.

The Nile Valley has become pretty dense with people as compared to what it was even fifty generations ago - so dense that simply hunting and gathering food is not enough anymore.

(Picture courtesy: www.historyforkids.org/learn/egypt)

Ayla’s father is the head of their mid-sized community that consists of mostly peasants. Her family owns some land, quite a few cows and pigs and a very airy and sunny semi-permanent dwelling constructed with mud. Her father is the leader not because he owns the largest piece of land, but because he is believed to be the strongest of all the men around and therefore capable of protecting the community in the eventuality of an attack.

Ayla is not sure if she will live out her entire life here. The river Nile has a mischievous tendency of flooding. Her father says it is this flood that makes the soil richer every time it sweeps the land, but Ayla knows the women live in the fear of having to move if their settlement is flooded. Everything is always more difficult for women than for men. Women cannot fight or hunt or do really heavy chores in the fields, so they stay back having children, taking care of their men and brood, and chaffing and grinding grains and charring meat over fire. A mass movement from this settlement will not only mean extra hard work for the women-folk of the community, but also fear of violence, abduction and violation from members of other hostile communities and tribes.

(Picture courtesy: www.history.com)

In such volatile conditions, Ayla understands that as a woman her safety lies in securing a mate as fast as possible and reproducing. However, there is a slight glitch in the plan.

The mature women in Ayla's community are divided into three categories - the ones that are old and cannot reproduce, the ones that are pregnant or lactating and therefore cannot be of much interest to the menfolk for some time and the ones, like Ayla herself, that are young, attractive and not pregnant and therefore ready to be "taken"....ready to lure the dominant males away from the women they have already impregnated.

This, the women will not allow. Ayla's Red Ochre is not her's alone.

Menstruation and fertility are a big deal in Ayla's time and community. Reproductive stress is high on the women as they are dependent on men for food, shelter and protection.

And therefore, Ayla learns, the women work as a strong coalition...a community within a community...they help each other by manipulating the men's mating behaviour - with the help of the colour "red".

Ayla's older sisters explain it to her. In an emerging social structure where the rules of monogamy have not yet been laid down, the reproductive investment of women is far greater than that of men. Physically, it is the women who have to bear the brunt of keeping the community thriving, whereas, for men the best way is to mate with as many fertile women as is possible and then to not stick around for the entire duration of bringing up the children. The men go on in the search for more women who are fertile and not pregnant.

To stop this philandering of their mates, who provide them food and shelter, the pregnant and lactating women in Ayla's community fake their fertility.

This is called "Sham Menstruation". The women dress up and make-up in the same way a young, fertile, non-pregnant girl would. Earlier they used to wear a lot of red flowers. But as red flowers are unreliable in the dry heat of Egypt, they use Red-Ochre to paint their lips, cheeks and bodies to give out the signal that they are "fertile and therefore desirable."

And then, since they live in a community with a strong and protective women's coalition, they deprive their men of sex....every woman together at the same time. The women go on a sort of "Sex-Strike". And no woman breaks the rules of this "fertility sisterhood".

This confuses the men to no end. While the way the entire womenfolk dress up and put red paint on themselves, screams "yes"; the way they ignore the men and behave, yells "no".

Biology yells "YES!", while behaviour yells "NO!".

The signal one gender sends out loud and clear to another gender is that they are fertile and capable of having babies, but they are temporarily unavailable.

The men therefore, busy themselves with working on fields, growing grains, hunting the odd animal for meat and bringing home food.

Ayla is intrigued to no end, but is willing to participate in this elaborate charade. She is readily willing to share her Red-ochre with other women to smear on themselves and fake menstruation, so that no woman of the community is deserted and their supply of food and shelter continue unhindered.

(At this point in time these women are not even aware that thousands of years later, the colour "red" will still be the colour of sexual attraction, intrigue and fertility...that men will still be mysteriously drawn to a woman's red stained lips, red rouged cheeks, red clothes and red heels...Red, will forever be the colour of finding a mate and keeping him!)

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Ayla is learning about so many new things she always knew the grown women never told the children.

Red Ochre clay mixed with water is a beautiful colour to paint the body and face with. It is the most commonly used cosmetic Ayla sees around her. Almost everyone is painting their lips, eyes, cheeks and bodies with Red Ochre.

Myrrh, Thyme and Chamomile, tied in a soft cloth bundle, smell so good and fresh and spicy that Ayla sometimes goes to sleep with such little bundles on her person.

Ayla’s personal favourite is Lavender. It makes her smell beautiful and mysterious. It calms her down.

Nine parts animal fats mixed with one part perfumed resin is an excellent and long lasting skin emollient.

Burning natural resins gives off a very beautiful fragrance.

Myrrh oil is used to protect against sunburns under the harsh Egyptian Sun and is an anti-inflammatory and antiseptic, anti-microbial and an astringent.

It is also useful against infections of feminine private parts and can also ease painful menstruation.

Swirling water with a few drops of Myrrh oil in the mouth makes bad breath go away. It can also stop wounds from bleeding.

Rosemary, Cedar, Marjoram, Moringa, Frankincense, Rose are all used by Ayla, her mother and sisters, as perfumes, essential oils and emollients.But they are expensive.

Olive oil and almond oil keep the skin smooth and shiny and slow the appearance of wrinkles.

In fact some Sweet Almond Oil and two drops of essential oil of Frankincense, applied to the face in circular massaging motions is a tried and tested method of preserving youthful skin for a very long time, Ayla has been told.

Drawing the waterline and lash line of eyes thickly with kohl (a mixture of soot, ash, crushed burnt almonds and ochre, black manganese oxide, powdered antimony, malachite, verdigris, resin etc) makes the eyes stand out and look sensuous and attractive.

Painting the eyes is also supposed to protect them from the harsh sun.

Henna is good for temporary tattoos.

Hair on the head was, however, best worn in a tight braid, or many tight braids after oiling it with perfumed olive or almond oil.

A good way to keep hair looking slick and black is to smear it with a paste of soot mixed in animal fat. The men prefer their hair to be completely shaved off.

In the heat of Egypt, a shaved head means less sweat and no lice infestation.

Clay from the banks of the Nile help with keeping the skin tight and cool against the rough weather and also helps in avoiding boils and pimples.

Cream churned from milk, when added to honey, is an excellent skin softener.

************.

Ayla understands that her pursuit of beauty and all the oiling, massaging, tattooing and face painting will eventually cause strife between two or more young men of her community. Someone will fight someone to death, just to possess her.

Or she will be betrothed to the chief of a larger, mightier tribe, somewhere unknown to her as yet, on the banks of Nile- in a matrimonial deal that will ensure the prosperity of her tribe.Thereafter, her only duty would be giving birth to and rearing child after child and cooking, cleaning and grinding wild grains.

And then, if she doesn't send out those "red-ochre painted" confusing signals to her mate, of being fertile but temporarily unavailable, her importance and requirement will simply decrease directly proportional to her age. Like her father, her possessor too will desert her in search for younger females who can give him yet more children.

If that is the way it works, Ayla is ready for it. After all, food and shelter for herself and the children she will have in the future, is of utmost importance. Therefore, she has no objections to the women pampering her and themselves in preparation for a well-planned fertility scam.

Being beautiful and desirable feels good. And the meaning of beauty in Ayla's community, is fertility.

Little does she know, that over the next few millenia, Egypt will be home to some of the most physically beautiful women in the world - women who will go on to set some of the most iconic and outstanding trends in beauty.

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References:
* Universal World History, Volume One, Edited by J.A Hammerton
Painted Ladies by Kate Douglas, www.newscientist.com
Fashions in Makeup: From Ancient to Modern Times by Richard Corson
From Interaction to Symbol: A systems view of the evolution of signs and communication by Piotr Sadowski
The Mammoth Hunters, Book Three by Jean M. Auel

www.historyforkids.org/egypt

www.historyofcosmetics.net

Women in Pre-Historic Art by Camilla Power

www.cosmeticsinfo.org

P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :-)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I love writing them!

Pallavi
Kent, Ohio

CURTAIN RAISER - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL WORLD!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 20:57:00 +0000

"Love of beauty is taste; creation of beauty is art." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Since time immemorial, mankind has been in the pursuit of physical perfection. A world divided by race, religion, culture, language, colour, sexual orientation and distribution of wealth, comes together in its eternal quest for beauty. Men and women, rich and poor, the Caucasian and the African, pale and tanned, red and yellow, Hindu and Christian and Muslim, theist and atheist, gay and straight, royalty and working class....every single person on this planet, everywhere, at every moment is striving to achieve beauty, in some form or the other.

This universal human pursuit of beauty has often made us look at Nature for inspiration, has motivated scientific breakthroughs, has propelled trades and businesses (from ancient inter-civilization trades between Indus Valley and Mesopotamia, to current multi-gazillion dollar luxury brands) and has challenged the convention of "being content with what we have". No, we never did, do not and will not ever accept the look biology gave us. Since the beginning of written (or cave-painted) history we have been adding, concealing, colouring, weaving, braiding, priming, waxing, threading, conditioning, bleaching and generally manipulating the body we are born with.

Our wish to look, feel and be beautiful is our ancestor's gift to us which has been passed on from generation to generation over countless centuries and countless eras.

But how or where did it start? Not the quest for beauty - that is ingrained in everything Nature made, including plants and animals, from the richly coloured peacocks to the dainty, vibrant, dancing flowers - but the definition of what is beautiful and what is not.

Who defined what is beautiful? Who told us what is worth seeking? Genes? Art? Nature? The eyes of the beholder?

Why is a straight nose preferred over a blunt, thick one?

What kind of complexion does the world really wish to have? Pale and bloodless? Ruddy and weathered? Or glowing and tanned? A delicate porcelain, a golden wheat or a rich, smooth coffee? Or some other permutation?

A curvy girl or a skinny girl?

Flowing long hair or a bouncy, sleek bob?

Almond eyes? Doe eyes? Limpid eyes? Liquid eyes? Sparkling eyes? Warm eyes? Intelligent eyes?

What is the definition of a healthy glow?

Why is it that people who keep hammering "imperfection is beautiful" secretly want a blemish free perfect skin?

A tall, dark and handsome man with warm brown eyes or a tall, fair and handsome man with piercing ice blue eyes- who decides?

Full lips or thin lips? Glossy lips or matte lips?

Eyebrows - thick, thin, full, half, arched, natural, none?

And why?

Why this and not that?

Let's face it. Natural may be lovely, but mind-blowing, mate-catching beauty is an endeavor. A lot goes into it.

Over the next few articles, one every week,we will deconstruct and reverse engineer the psyche behind the quest to look beautiful and desirable, era by era. We'll take an in-depth look at how changing times and changing social structures have changed our notions of beauty.

We'll start from as early in time as we can find any kind of recorded history of, way before Christ, and journey down the lanes of prettiness to medieval ages to the Renaissance period to today, here, right now. I will also take a look at the beauty culture in India, including beauty rituals that have passed on for generations amongst the women of my own family.

Come with me on a journey across time, through melting canvases of beauty, through ideas that have time and again contradicted themselves, through ever changing, ever new dogmas of loveliness. Meet people from places near and far and from eras gone by and hear from them what they thought was the definition of physical perfection in their time and their place.

Some of their ideas may shock you, some you may find downright absurd and hilarious and some you may agree with. See for yourself how far man is willing to go in the quest for physical (or, at least facial) perfection.

Take a look at the face of beauty as reflected on the mirror of time.

Bon Voyage!

And I hope we shall emerge from this journey a little more appreciative of the beauty Nature has bestowed upon the human form and be thankful that today we have more independence, more choices, safe medical practices and a more accepting society than our ancestors had - in terms of FACE VALUE.

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

Pallavi
August 10th, 2014
Kent
Ohio

My random & quick two pennies on Mother's Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Mon, 12 May 2014 05:05:00 +0000

While the Mother's Day cheer is still in the air...I thought I should write this down (lest I forget to share these thoughts with all of you)

Motherhood is a state of the mind....not a state of the physical body.

Children should only be conceived out of love and out of the confidence to commit to a lifelong developmental project that never pays in cash.

Children shouldn't be borne to prove to the society that you are fertile; as is often the case in India, with tremendous pressure on young women to set everything aside and get married and have children. (often at the risk of scathing comments and scoldings and caustic remarks)

It is rather strange that many senior Indians have this thought process...because in our mythology, Devaki was the birth mother of Lord Krishna, and yet every mention of His childhood paints the picture of foster mother Yashoda in all her resplendent, affectionate glory in our minds. Sad as it may sound, there are many real life mothers who have been known to resent their babies,refuse to feed them,go into post-partum depression and think motherhood ruined their lives in general...and on the other hand, there are many childless people who are reservoirs of unconditional love.

If you love someone selflessly and limitlessly,understand someone like a soulmate and are ready to defend someone from the big bad world at all costs - anyone - a child, an elderly,a friend or even an animal...there, you are a mother!

Happy Mother's Day to everybody. Because we all are capable of loving unconditionally....with or without the labor pains.

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P.S - Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I love writing them!

Cheers!

Pallavi

Kent, OH
USA

THE LIPSTICK LECTURES AND COMPACT CHRONICLES

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:25:00 +0000

March 8^th is celebrated worldwide as International Women’s Day. That means people will have a temporary ceasefire on the gender war that is going on silently between the sexes since time immemorial and felicitate the females for a day. Long passages and short text messages, picture messages and video messages will circulate throughout the day, most of which will say women are the best and how would men live if women weren’t around etc. Some of these, however, will be thinly veiled misogynist sarcasm. (e.g Have a happy Women’s Day, ladies and for God’s sake do everyone a favour by not driving!) But yes, pretty much every message, e-mail or Facebook status today will have something to do with how wonderful women are!

I too am sitting here writing an article about women (definitely related to women, at any rate) on the occasion of Women’s Day. It is not a real serious topic – like rape or female infanticide or human trafficking or dowry. I know those issues are staring us right in the face and enough has been written and said and discussed on blogs, forums, TV shows, newspapers and Facebook. But I do not want to present women as sufferers and victims. Enough of that is being done as we speak. This article has nothing to do with any burning social issue. It is on the, shall we say, more fun end of the spectrum.

That, however, is not to say it is completely frivolous.

My humble attempt at something on the lighter side may be considered serious, or not-serious depending on your perspective. Your perspective towards life and morals and behaviour.

If you are with me so far, thank you. Read on!

Women have long been censured and made fun of, by the media, by their husbands and boyfriends and by the society in general, for using a lot of products and taking a lot of time to beautify themselves. From Cleopatra to Claudia Schiffer, from Marilyn to me, women of all eras, all ages, all ethnicities are united by their love for looking good. And feeling good about it.

It doesn't matter what we women really look like or if we fit in with the classical definitions of beauty. Our faces may be launching a thousand pimples everyday instead of a thousand ships a la Helen of Troy. It doesn't matter if our complexions are milky or peachy or dusky or dark or fair or tanned or bronze or beige or sandy or caramel. Doesn't matter if we have a button nose or a Grecian nose or a cute li’l piggy nose. Doesn't matter if we are blondes, brunettes, redheads or any shade in between. Doesn't matter if we are 30A or 36C or 40EEE. Doesn’t matter if we make a lot of moolah or are perennially broke. (I could really go on and on about the things that don’t matter, but let’s get to the point now.)

Irrespective of where we come from, our race, our genetics, our culture, our beliefs - it is a fact universally acknowledged that women are notorious for the amount of time they take to look good and get ready!

Nobody, however, is frank and courageous enough to agree that in an increasingly destructive, harsh, big bad world where everything is getting uglier by the day; from the environment kids are growing up in to the very face of Mother Earth - there’s this group of special creatures out there known as “women”, which is putting some beauty back into the scene.

(Oh come on! Admit it, already! You like looking at the face of a well groomed woman who takes care of herself)

Why do women (ranging from hardened corporate bosses to scientists to nubile college goers to homemakers) devote so much time to beautify themselves? Just for a handful of compliments from other people? Surely not. That is a thing of the past. Surely the 21^st century woman has come a long way from decking up just to please people. Why else would the single girl groom herself as much as the girl with a steady boyfriend or the lady married for ten years? No matter how back-breaking our daily schedules are, we will find some time to take care of ourselves. And not for a few compliments thrown our way.

But why has the 21^st century woman - after so many vigorous and rigorous women’s liberation campaigns that have asked us to go braless and not shave our underarms and wear unflattering attires and not put a speck of colour on our faces - not stopped investing quality time (and money) in beautifying herself? If anything, the beauty industry is booming unlike ever before. Why are we still purchasing so many cleansers and moisturizers and foundations and lipsticks as our academic degrees and salaries are climbing higher and higher?

Well?

Is there a philosophy behind all the primping and pruning, we are silently trying to whisper to the world? What do our daily cosmetics and skin care products really tell us and the world...other than tall claims of making us picture perfect? If all those beautiful little jars and pots and bottles and compacts on a woman’s dressing table could talk; perhaps they would have spoken thus :

Cleanser- Don’t carry baggage! The day is gone, wash it off! Get rid of the negativity.

Exfoliator - Sometimes you know something is harming you and yet you don’t want to let go of it. A bad memory, a bad relationship, a bad job. It takes some extra scrubbing...some harder work than usual to wash away that extra bit of dirt – from your face and from your life - but do it anyway, once in a while.

Toner- Tighten up your belts, pull up your socks, don’t be slack - tomorrow is going to be a brand new day!

Moisturizer – But remember to do whatever you do softly! Don’t hurt anyone, including yourself!

Sunscreen – You are responsible for your own safety. Protect yourself at all times. Protect that pretty face, protect that money purse, protect that kind heart and protect that beautiful mind. Everything is more fun when you know you are safe.

Primer – Make sure you smooth out a surface before you build on it. Be it anything - make-up, buildings, careers or relationships.

Foundation – A foundation is also called a “base”. Self-explanatory. Whether you are building a life with someone or gaining knowledge as a student or building a career of your dreams or simply doing artistry on your face with makeup brushes,make sure you have the right foundation - the right base. This alone will determine how long anything in your life - from your marriage to your make-up - will last.

Concealer – Made a mistake? Spotted a few red marks? Then stop and correct them right away! Do not ignore blemishes – on your skin or on your life – and continue to build upon a blotchy, uneven, imperfect base. It is okay. Nobody is perfect. But we can all definitely put some effort into trying to be perfect. What is life after all, if not an endless effort to attain perfection? Mother Nature does it through seasonal changes and evolution!

Powder – A great work of art is never complete without finishing touches. You do it when you cook, you do it when you sew, you do it when you take a bath...you add finishing touches to everything. Then why not to all things big and small in your life? Put some finishing touches on the business document you are working so hard on, and see how delighted you are with your own work (and your boss too, of course). Put some finishing touches to the decoration of your room and you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you walk into in again. Raw is good but finishing touches are exquisite!

Eye-Make up (eye shadows, mascara, eyeliners, kohl) – You always open the windows before you open the door. Keep them beautiful and attractive. Windows show you the world outside and for someone on the outside; they give a glimpse of what’s on the inside. You see the world through the windows, before you decide whether to open the door at all, and the world gets a glimpse of you – of your soul - through the windows. Keep the soul unstained and the windows beautiful. Always.

Lipstick – Your smile in the best thing about you. Your face and someone’s world light up when you smile. Somewhere in the world someone works hard and prays hard everyday, just so you keep smiling beautifully. That gentle curve of your lips is the shortest distance between two hearts. There is a reason why the “M” shaped double curve of our top lip is called Cupid’s Bow. Keep those lips smooth and ready-to-smile. Don’t purse them or show your cynicism and sarcasm by twitching them on one side...you might be breaking someone’s heart with a mere disapproving pursing of your lips. Those lips are also your very own spokesperson...the last checkpoint before you blurt out the words your tongue has formed. Beautiful lips are justified only when the words that come out of them are beautiful and meaningful.

Perfume – A life that doesn’t leave a lot of grace, a lot of good memories and remembrances behind is so tragic! Would it not be nice to have people remember you after you have left a place –be it a party or the world- with nice feelings you invoked in them? Like you remember your mother by the feelings of comfort and security and by the smell of home-cooked food? Like you remember a bright sunny day by the smell of freshly laundered clothes, and that remembrance fills you with delight? But how exactly you wish to be recalled unto people’s minds, is, to a large extent, in your own hands. What would you rather remind people of? Warmth of acceptance or fear of rejection? Flowers or thorns? Perfume or stench? Choose for yourself, and behave accordingly!

Those are few things that I have learned from my collection of cosmetics. Try listening to yours’ sometime! They speak!

It is not a bad thing to want to look groomed and sorted out. Every culture has thousands of years of history about the tradition of beauty rituals. But please do remember, behind that glowing skin and that worked out body and those beautifully arched eyebrows of the woman/women in your life, there is a heart that feels and a mind that thinks.

Cherish your special lady and rejoice in all her aspects! Everything comes together to make her the magnetic, attractive and mind-blowing person she is.

HAPPY WOMEN’S DAY, FOLKS!

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P.S - Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Love

Pallavi
Kent, OH, US
March 8th, 2014

THE WOMAN'S APOCALYPSE

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 11:37:00 +0000

"Some say the world will end in fire

Some say in ice...."

Doesn't look like it will end either way. Fire and ice are too mild and tame for mankind's brutal strength.
21st December 2012 came and went and here we are...ruthless as ever, shameless as ever, drunk in our vulgar bravado...continuing with our wretched lives. There is no Apocalypse for us. Nothing can kill us. We will live on and on like cockroaches. The only way we shall go, perhaps, is when we finish each other off.

When I titled the last post with a smiley, saying I will be back soon, I wasn't aware that a 23 years old, bright young paramedic, a victim of prolonged gang-rape and brutalization, will lie dying in a Delhi hospital with gangrene spreading rapidly inside her body. Her uterus will probably never work anymore and almost all of her intestines are gone.

I wasn't ready for this.

I am, like my fellow countrymen, pretty roughened and weathered by all those bold headlines I see in newspapers every day. Murder, rape, molestation, child abuse,theft, robbery, scams and other assorted national pastimes. Like the average Indian, these things do not shock me out of my skin. They used to,but not anymore. Two days without one bad news and I start thinking the news people are a lazy bunch.I have read the worst. The very worst. Brothers killing brothers, mothers selling off daughters, young girls beating babies to death, fathers raping infant daughters, innocent animals being set on fire, women being stripped and paraded...what have you. I thought nothing could shock me anymore. I thought I knew it all.
But nothing I have ever read in my daily newspaper, which I peruse religiously every morning, could have prepared me (and I am sure any of you) for this. NOT FOR THIS!

There is this young girl I know who has just entered her teens. At school she is learning all about the various body systems in details. Respiratory system, nervous system, circulatory system et al. Sometimes she shows me the complicated biological diagrams she has to draw. Veins, organs, arteries. But a thousand times more complicated than any of her intricately accurate bio diagrams was one simple remark she made after hearing about the Delhi gang rape case.

"How can her intestine get ruptured through rape? Isn't the intestine a part of the digestive system? Isn't the digestive system way different from the reproductive system, which is the primary system involved in cases of rape?"

This one doubtful question from one teenaged girl (who dreams of becoming a doctor someday), underlines, highlights and focuses boldly the sheer brutality we harbour in our hearts for one another.

Drunk uneducated male rapists are the worst of the lot no doubt, but remember baby Falak? The infant who was thrashed by a teenaged girl? Fractured skull, broken arms, human bite marks, cheeks branded with hot iron, the baby left for a better world after battling with death for around 60 days at AIIMS. A charge of culpable homicide was slapped against the teenager who had thrashed and beaten and vented all her anger on the baby. She, this 14 years old murderess, herself, has been abused, assaulted, raped and made to have sex with at least seven men per day for as long as she can remember.

Given a chance, it seems to me, that each one of us - irrespective of our gender - will not bat an eyelid before tearing another human body to pieces. Reasons could be so many. But it all results in brutalization in one way or another.

Why are we so violent? So brutal? Why are we so angry? Where is all this angst coming from? How can we have fun tearing someone's uterus and intestines apart with an iron rod? Is it funny? Will it make us laugh? How can we have fun slapping, hitting, kicking, screaming, punching and struggling? The act of sex wasn't meant for this.Even if I cut out all the romance and affection we generally associate with sex, even if, for argument's sake, we see sex as only an animal method of procreation, violence and brutalization were never meant to play any part in it.

There was, there is and there will be no need for iron rods in sex. Or even rape.

And if this heinous crime which has rocked us was an act of venting out anger, then we go back to my first question again...why are we so angry? Why are we so angry with women, babies and men who try to defend them? Why do we always want to teach women a lesson? What is wrong with us? Who is messing our brains up? Or were we like this since the beginning? Is civilization only a veneer as thin as a virgin's hymen? If not then why does it give away at the slightest of excuses and expose our bloody ugly faces?
If a woman cannot stop herself from being dragged and raped can she please please please beg not to be ruptured, torn and infected in every possible manner? Can rapists please be content with focusing on sexual intercourse and not harm heads, ears, noses, stomachs, hands, legs and every thing inside them? What is the next level, after iron rods? Nails and hammers? Road levellers? Crushers and shredders? Chainsaws? Mixers and grinders? A whole range of industrial machinery to assist with brutalization after rape?

Why are we hurtling so rapidly back to the dark ages?

People come up with loads of papers and articles on the psychology behind rape. How a rapist's mind works. How it is not about sexual pleasure but about a demonstration of dominance. How some men are angry at the mind boggling progress women have made over the last few decades and being unable to compete with the girls on an intellectual plane, they want to "teach them a lesson" physically.

But brutalization? How do you explain that? Let me talk in crude, vulgar, downright shameful words and make you cringe a little. Let me spell out in clear, sharp words what we all know of this case and will not lucidly state.
How do you explain the sadistic need of inserting a rusty iron rod inside a woman's vagina and jabbing it into her with so much anger and force that it goes past the cervix, bores a hole through the uterus and embeds itself into the small intestine, after you are done raping her with your biological organ?

I will tell you why those monsters did not feel for one second that the person lying naked and bleeding under them was a person at all. Because women are a different species altogether. Women are not what is scientifically called Homo sapien (Linnaeus, 1758). Only men make up Homo sapiens. Women are just two things - a pair of breasts and one vagina. THAT IS ALL.

We women are not human.

That is why the same friends and relatives who will innocently play with a female infant cannot stop ogling at her breasts once she reaches puberty. Women are not human. We are not living creatures, in fact.
We can't think, we don't feel pain, we don't feel hunger or thirst, we don't laugh, we don't cry, we can't learn, we can't love, we can't hate. we can't decide...and the best is, if you cut us open we won't bleed, like you will. We can't walk, run, sit or stand. Oh come on! A pair of breasts and a vagina cannot cry, laugh or feel. Even to feel pain they have to be connected to a brain via some nerves. But we do not have that as well. We are just two functional breasts and one functional vagina connected somehow by a rubber or wooden structure. Rubber and wood don't bleed or hurt, do they?

And therefore, what is so wrong and strange in abusing us, cutting us open, humiliating us, raping us, burning us, slitting our throats, rupturing our organs (again, all rubber), tying us up, parading us, killing us?

Sometimes, just some times, when you are in a better mood, or when some woman has allowed your sperms to mingle with her ovum and handed the resultant product over to you, you may be benevolent enough to call us goddesses, put us on a pedestal, write poems and songs, call us THE MOTHER, make films and stir up storms over coffee tables about our greatness.

And then, it is back to abusing, cutting, humiliating, raping, burning.

I am sorry I was born a girl. And then dared to grow up into a woman. I apologize. I will try not to be a female next time.
But this time I don't want to spend the rest of my life doubting every male I know. I don't want to love and live half hearted, with a quiet fear in the back of my mind that I can be brutalized the moment I need to be "taught a lesson".
I don't want to close the door on every unknown person's face, who comes asking for a glass of water. I don't want to travel around with an arsenal of weaponry like Swiss knives and pepper sprays to hurt people around me. I want to meet new people and make new friends. I don't want to spend all my time clutching my bag to my chest so I can avoid being groped there. I want to travel without bags and scarves sometimes at least. Sometimes I want to just look ahead towards the road I am walking and not keep engaging my side vision. I don't want to be on the lookout for people who may hurt me all the time.
I don't want to indiscriminately hate an entire gender. Don't make me. Please.

I have just one more question. Is there a "God for women" too? Do women count on God's list as living things? Or is the "God for women" dead? If not, then why hasn't He (or She) equipped us with any natural form of defence against the atrocities the "God for men" has designed for us. Almost every other female animal is equipped to protect herself from violation - a lioness, a tigress, a she-elephant, a leopardess, a cat, a bitch - speed, strength, teeth, claws - they all have some means of protection or the other. The only population left defenceless and helpless is the human female.

I don't know if the Mayans knew anything about the end of human life and I don't know if they were really entirely wrong, even though 21st December is gone without any noticeable change on the face of Earth. Because if you feel enough, you will know that for women it is the end of humanity as we knew it. The prediction was correct.

The "women's" apocalypse just went by.

:)

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:37:00 +0000

RELOADING ....RELOADING....RELOADING....AND COMING SOON!

The Ice Cream Seller's Song

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Do you have a similar memory from the days of your childhood? Could be anyone...someone who sold candy floss in tiny packets, or candy, or mint or tiny black sweet and sour balls made of tamarind and other unknown things, or may be a tea shop you visited often, or a seller of sweets you couldn't do without...someone? Something?
Did you come back from school, throw your bag somewhere and rush out to play with your group of friends (as opposed to going for endless tuitions or whiling away time playing computer games)? Do you miss those days?

(By the way, the ice cream seller did not sing...that's a poetic licence I have allowed myself to take.)

I do not know if this poem has much of what seasoned poets would call poetic brilliance. The language is simple to the extent of being plain and there is no intricate or complicated wordplay.
It will also be of no use to you in increasing your vocabulary. Still, it is close to my heart. Very close. Don't know why.
Perhaps somethings are best expressed when they are expressed in the simplest possible manner.

THE ICE CREAM SELLER'S SONG

Jingle! Jingle! The bells ring out

And all of us, we run

The Ice Cream Seller! Here he comes!

Oh dear, what fun!

Quickly the box opens up

We crowd to see his wares

Our mothers shout "You greedy kids!"

We let them shout, who cares?

For every noon when the sun is up

And we are down in dumps

With jingling bells and ready smile

The Ice Cream Seller comes

Little hands inside little pockets go

One pice and two and three

"I'll have butterscotch", "Vanilla here!"

"May I have one for free?"

Orange bars and Mango lollies

And lots and lots of cream

Frozen ice to melt in your mouth

Its like your sweetest dream.

My lovely days of childhood

The touch of my Mother's hand

The group of friends, the Ice Cream man

It was a fairy land!

As we grew, the times changed

I saw my friends less

School and books and marks and grades

And subjects, all a mess

When in the noon, with books closed

I'd pretend to snatch a nap

My eyes gazed at the lane below

From the narrow window crack

No rushed footfalls, no endless chats

Just the Sun and the sultry noon

We had more important things to do

We were growing up too soon.

III

Two decades went by (time never stops)

Our childhood group now scattered

Some dreams of mine had come true

But, all child-like fancies shattered

My big old house, the faces known

The thoughts of a carefree mind

Adulthood, money and success, made

Me leave them all behind

I got in touch with old friends

We spoke of long ago

What became of the ice cream man

We never came to know

But we knew we had grown up

On his tasty treats and songs

For those simple treats that made our day

The child in my heart still longs

Years have passed and we all are now

Important, rich and strong

But as long we live, we shan't forget

The Ice Cream seller's song!

Pallavi

(Composed in 2005...or 2004,

don't really remember), Pune

I know, I know! This poem is pretty crude. The build up, the language, the flow of thoughts. I am open to admitting that. My apologies for this childish, simple verse. But that ain't the point!

The point is, what have we achieved and what have we left behind in order to achieve that? Was the barter truly, honestly worth it? How have you really changed the world for better after you bade your own world, your own people, farewell? Why can't we have it all? Family, childhood friends, people we know, people who make us feel comfortable and our career - all in one place?

But I guess,when the time comes, birds must fly away from the nest.

That is the point.

*******************************************************************************

P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Pallavi

The "normal" Indian woman and the D word

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:11:00 +0000

No no no. Stop before you think too much...it ain't 36 DD or any other D of the same genre I am referring to. But now that I have your attention, what the heck!

And my definition of "normal" Indian woman is -

Not a model (and with no aspirations to be one)
Not a movie star (and no such aspirations either)
Educated
Working (aspirations don't matter...bloodsucker of a job!)
Living in a metropolitan or one of the new "pretend" metropolitans (e.g Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune etc)
Life rapidly progressing from active huff-puff of a university student to the sedentary sighs and yawns of a person with a sitting job (like sitting 10 hours a day)
Earns well (relatively)
Spends better (absolutely)
Unmarried, single, zero relationships (don't know if that is due to lack of interesting people to meet or lack of time, a constant state of burn out and no enthusiasm for anything other than crashing on the bed and snoring away as soon as she gets home)

Can you now begin to guess what the D word is? Yes? Clever you! No? Let me continue the foreplay for some more time in that case.

Living the stressful, sedentary, unproductive life our "normal" woman lives, she soon finds herself on the...let's say, out of decency....voluptuous side of the spectrum. (Nah...the metabolism isn't really what it used to be at 18. Really, office formals can be so deceiving. )

She immediately joins the poshest health club in town.It claims to have an Olympic sized pool (which is "under construction"/"closed indefinitely for cleaning"/"closed indefinitely for inspection by the health officers"/any other reason). It claims to have an organic juice bar ("but that's open between 5:30 am in the morning to7 am"...our heroine goes in at 7:30 am.), a steam and sauna facility (come on, this one works...you cannot already be thinking nothing works in posh Indian health clubs!), plus many other latest gizmos, amenities and magical secrets to give you a body Claudia Schiffer can kill for.

The first thing our "normal" woman notices on her first day (for which she has virtually bought an entire Reebok shop. Or is Puma more in fashion these days?) is that the people who come to that health club are lycra and spanx clad lassies and hunky, beefy, muscular lads - who do not seem to be in any need of the services a health club offers.

Our lady reasons out her observations in the following manner:

a. What the %$@#. Life is unfair.
b. Ah! This is what I too will look like within six months of my rigorous training schedule.
c. Wow! Inspiration. (not only for exercising, also for latest trends in gymwear)
d. If not anything else, at least I am starting my morning in a holistic environment with gorgeous people around me.
e. What if I meet someone really interesting?
f. What the %$@#. Life is unfair.

**********************************************************

A month later.

Voluptuousness - pretty much the same
Tired - like a washerman's donkey (wasn't exercise supposed to make her feel energetic? Oddly enough, it doesn't)
Set of gym clothes - around 5 (sweaty, stinky, wash repeatedly)
Number of days she went to the health club - 15
Number of days she skipped going - 15 (those 4/5 days of the month, early meeting at office, late night meeting at office, don't feel like going, working on important assignment from home, don't feel like going,body full of aches and pains, getting late for office, it's raining, it's too sunny, it's too cold, it's too pleasant, don't feel like going, friends at home for a weekend....and well, just don't feel like going. Not going to become a model anyway....what's the....YAWN....point?)

So what next? Clubbing and gyming clearly weren't our lady's cup of tea. Or decaf coffee...no sugar, no cream.

NEXT ON THE AGENDA IS THE D WORD.

DIETING.

Defined by Wikipedia as - "the practice of eating food in a regulated fashion to achieve or maintain a controlled weight."

LIARS!

Controlled weight???? CONTROLLED WEIGHT??? The very need for dieting comes from the fact that the weight is OUT OF CONTROL!

Having chirpy and eager girlfriends fed on a steady diet of glossy women's magazines helps our lady to zone in on what's latest in the D world, across the world.

Atkins Diet. Pritikin Diet. South Beach Diet. Jenny Craig Diet. Weight Watchers Diet. Sea Weed Diet. Raw Diet. Starve-yourself-to-death diet (OK I made that one up) Negative calorie diet. Zero Calorie diet. GI diet. Detox diet. Mediterranean Diet. Ornish diet. Zone Diet. Gluten free diet. Rosemary Conley's Hip and Thigh diet (now I am laughing myself silly...but no I haven't made this one up).

One says stuff up on proteins, another says stuff up on fats only when you think you are dying, yet another encourages you to gobble everything up raw (consuming an ample load of microbes and pesticides seems to be a part of this diet), another wants to shock your body into starvation and yet another says starvation leads to fat storage. One says eat whatever you want and then gives you a list of food items even your dog won't sniff . One wants to change the ph in your body to alkaline and the other claims an acidic body resists infections. One wants you to go Italiano (though you live in Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh in India) and the other would like you to weed out the sea floor and gulp down the muck.

But our "normal" Indian lady being eagerly committed to her plans of dieting is not deterred. Something can be surely worked out from this labyrinth of ideas.Visits to the poshest dietitian in the city, flipping through glossies and talking to girlfriends result in one common plan.

Salads.
Whole grains and seeds.
Lean protein.
Boiled Vegetables
Low fat skimmed milk in some form or the other, except butter and cheese.And Ice cream. And cream. And rich, full fat yogurt. (wonder what that some form or the other is?)
Fruits (except bananas)

NO COLA. NO PIZZA. NO PASTA. NO BURGER. NO FRENCH FRIES. NO CHOCOLATES. NO SWEETS.NO ALU PARATHA DRIPPING WITH DESI GHEE. NO BIRYANI. NO KORMA. NO KEBABS. NO WHITE RICE. NO PRAWNS. NO LOBSTERS.NO SEA FISH. NO LAMB. NO CRAB. NO POTATOES. NO BEETROOTS. NO OKRAS. NO WAFERS. NO BAKERY PRODUCTS.

AND NO CHEATING!!

BASICALLY NOTHING.

But this gutsy girl is still determined and has to plan precisely to avoid falling into the common trap "I ran out of veggies and had instant noodles. Just once."

So she logs in to the net and writes out her list of diet food to buy.

Later at the local vegetable market, reading out her list she sounds like someone who's shouting out exotic swear words to the irritated vegetable vendor.

Lollo Rosso lettuce? No? Iceberg lettuce? No? Romaine Lettuce? No? Radicchio? No? Red Oak Lettuce? No? Lollo Biondi lettuce? NO NO NOT ROSSO...THAT WAS THE FIRST ONE ON THE LIST. BIONDI? No. Lollo verde? OK I GET IT, NO LOLLOS. Batavia lettuce? No?

Watercress? No it's not a lettuce. It's simply watercress. No?

Let's try chinese. How about Pak choy and galangal? No I do not want spinach and ginger. See, the list says Pak Choy and Galangal. No?

Shallots? (I DO NOT MEAN ONIONS. KYLIE KWONG KEEPS CALLING THEM SHALLOTS ALL THE TIME ON THE TRAVEL CHANNEL.) No?

Ok. Let's try tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes? Not cherry the fruit. No? Grape tomatoes? No. Plum tomatoes? NO NO NO...I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHERRIES AND PLUMS AND GRAPES AND TOMATOES.

To cut a very long shopping spree short, all our lady brings home that day is cucumber. Plain, simple, normal cucumber.

And a cup of double cream caramel coffee at the local coffee shop. Come on, who doesn't get tired after veggie shopping?

Cucumbers are good. Nice and juicy and cool and watery. Lots and lots of cucumbers.Crunchy. Ummm. Crunch. Munch.

Well.

After having nothing but a plate full of cucumbers for lunch, for three days in a row our lady reasons out that it really won't be too bad to have a real thick, smooth chocolate mousse.And anyway she is on a strict diet. And one is human after all. Why would have God created the cocoa beans of the cacao plant if chocolate was that bad? Come on, who can question God's creation?

After the raw food detox is over, our heroine is supposed to eat boiled, blanched and steamed veggies. Or ever so slightly sauteed in olive oil. Do you have any idea how much good quality virgin olive oil costs in India? Well, a lot. It's a delicacy, to be tossed on ornate, colorful salads when friends come over. Not something to cook your meals in. We have Sundrop Sunflower Oil for that. Thank you very much!

And boiled, blanched or steamed veggies? They taste like hot glue. Boiled socks. Old jute sack. (please do not ask me how I know what hot glue, boiled socks and old jute sacks taste like.)

Boiled lean undressed chicken tastes like a wad of leather.

Low fat yogurt is neither here nor there. It's non existent. It is nothing. (what is yogurt if it cannot make you swoon with its rich creaminess?)

And what the hell do they mean by low fat cheese? That's the biggest oxymoron ever. The hugest double standard. Cheese...low fat. Those two do not go together. IT IS A CRIME.

Our lady's lady friends at office inform her enthusiastically that a new salad bar is up and coming in the office cafeteria.

When it finally does come up, all it serves is raw vegetables (cabbage, broccoli, bell pepper, tomatoes, cucumbers and the like) choking to death in a gloop of low quality (not low calorie) mayonnaise and blue cheese dressing. Oh! the salad bar also serves fruit juice. Packaged. Artificially sweetened. With preservatives galore in every sip. Yummy!

Her perusals through endless issues of Cosmopolitans and Prevention mags tell her that sea weed soup and quinoa seeds are the latest in thing. They are bound to work.

Though she knows she is going to be disappointed, the first trip is again to the local veggie shop.

"Bhaiyya, samundar ke neeche jo ghaas patte ugte hain, woh milega?" our girl asks.

(lemme translate that for you. "Do you stock the grasses and leaves that grow under the sea?")

This time he doesn't even bother to reply. He is more comfortable selling potatoes, onions and pumpkins to the benign looking normal people.

"Normal" woman asks around at office. Where do you think I can buy sea weed? What for? People shoot back. Bio fuel research?

Funny! Yes. It is a part of my diet. Bio fuel indeed!

Others tell her that sea weeds are used for industrial production of agar (that jelly like thingy microbiologists grow bacterial colonies on) and other similar horrible smelling things.

A friend suggests the Godrej Nature's Basket store (in one remote corner of the city) and specifically their "World Food" section.

Ummm....world food! Sounds so cool and fancy that this will surely work. I mean how can something that sounds as classy as world food not work!

It works. They have sea weed. For human consumption. Just that the price is printed in Euros.That one packet will set our girl back by around 2000 bucks in Indian rupees.

And it will last her for three seaweed soups.

Still, what has to be done has to be done. These are marginal costs. And she really earns well and spends better.
She buys it, comes home and cooks good ol' home style soup. Ah! The very sight of soup simmering away in a pot in the kitchen is so comforting.

The taste however,is a different story altogether. Have you ever imagined eating slimy, slippery, gooey algae which is an evil shade of green in color?
(Now, I know normal, mentally sound people do not imagine such things. But still, try imagining once?)
Yeah. That's right. Yes...that's exactly what it's like.

The next day it is the best friend's birthday and really, cribbing about food at someone else's party is not the done thing. It's horrible manners. So a large piece of the richest chocolate cake, mac and cheese, a big glass of the fizziest cola, butter garlic prawns and deep fried chicken nuggets is all she has. Later some ice cream.

It's ok. It is absolutely fine. God knows it was the best friend's birthday. And anyway, one is on a diet.

The dietitian goes ballistic listening to our lady's one time fling with non diet food.

"Do you know how much motivation this requires? How do you think all the actresses stick to their diets?"

The culprit who is the victim of her own crime hangs her head in shameful silence. But that's just out of politeness. She has the answer ready inside her head.

"If I was offered a million bucks, a foreign location shoot with the best looking actor, endless red carpet walks and unending attention in return for giving up food and living on grass and fresh air I too would be highly motivated."

********************************************

And over the next few months our girl continues shelling out insane amounts of money and energy in pursuit of insane tasting food. Diet food.

Just that, she now feels sleepy in office most of the time. And when she is taking calls from home and sitting in front of the laptop typing away furiously until 3 am, coffee is the only lifesaver, no matter what the diet chart says about coffee. It lies. Coffee is good. It keeps your eyes open even when you want to die.

She starts to avoid going out with friends for the fear of being forced to consume non diet normal people food. Such accidents have happened in the past and she doesn't want to repeat the same mistake. So best is not going anywhere near the source of temptation.
The peachy glow on her face is gone and the bright sparkle in her eyes is dull almost beyond recognition. She looks unintelligent and always in a state of unrest. She looks stupid.

The clothes have started hanging slightly loose, though.

With the last remaining vestiges of motivation and spirit, our educated, working, juggling-ten-things-at-a-time, "normal" Indian woman who is still single, goes to the next level.

Quinoa seeds. Read Keen-Wah (psst...it is the latest buzzword. All the B-town beauties are hogging quinoa like there is no tomorrow).
It's a psuedo cereal, it's actually a seed, the friend who is doing her PhD in botany informs our girl. But it's supposedly very good.

Good? Good, my foot! One, it's hardly available. Even in the superstores. Two, it looks like Styrofoam granules.

And three....soak it for sometime and cook it....and ta da! you have something that has a 99.78% resemblance to frog spawn sitting in front of you, waiting to be consumed.

Ok...well...to be very fair, it doesn't taste as bad. It's kind of nutty and creamy and fluffy and everything. But it is nothing to a bowl of sugar frosted, chocolate coated, artificially sweetened, breakfast cereal!

(NB - THIS ARTICLE DOESN'T END HERE....DO CARRY ON READING AFTER THE LITTLE HUMOROUS BREAK.)

************************************************

Six months pass by.

Our lady hasn't had one fizzy drink. One tiny piece of macaroni. One thin slice of cake.

But she has understood this.

Dieting is like widowhood. You are so numbed by the pain of loss that nothing matters anymore. What you are putting inside your mouth, what you are chewing, what you are swallowing is of little consequence. Because the one thing you loved, you truly dearly loved is gone forever. Life will never be the same again. You will never be able to go back to those days of happiness.

Your relationship with food is over. The aromas, the colours, the fragrances mean nothing to you.

Your mind is dull to pain.

Your taste buds are now useless. Mutated. Vestigial organs.

You are brain dead. Almost.

Our heroine is, at any rate.

That is until, one bright Saturday morning, while out to hunt for more sea weed, more quinoa, more raw veggies and lean chicken, she makes the wonderful decision of stopping by the local magazine stand.

Loudly, boldly, in the most vivid eye catching colors, the latest edition of the glossy that had been feeding diet tips to our girl for so many months, shouts out in the boldest possible print

"THIN IS OUT. CURVY IS IN"
"REAL MEN WANT REAL WOMEN"
"SHOW US THOSE CURVES, LADY"
"LOVE THAT CURVE"

Damn it!

%$#@$! &*^%! %$&#!

For lunch today - Prawns tenderly simmered in a spicy coconut cream gravy with fragrant white Basmati rice.
You are invited!

*******************************************************************************

P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

THE GHOST IN MY HOUSE!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:11:00 +0000

.....is a thief of the first grade!!

For a very long time I have wondered where my numerous pens, pencils, erasers, handkerchiefs, hair bands, clips, bits of paper on which I scribble phone numbers and countless such knick knacks of supreme importance vanish off. I mean, whenever I buy a set of six hankies, by default within the next five days (or even less) one is gone.
My pens disappear from my table very silently and discreetly.
I have no idea where all those hair scrunchies and fancy hair clips which I started accumulating at the beginning of the year, have gone.
I do not use pencils and erasers much ever since I left college and don't have to draw intricate biological diagrams, but come on, once in six months I do give in to my artistic cravings and pretend to sketch in my rather school girlish sketch book! But then, hey hey, where are my pencils? And erasers?

Strangely enough, when I have absolutely no necessity of these small things, I can clearly see them lying in abandon on my table - pens, pencils, erasers, hair clips, hankies and what have you. But the moment I need anything direly, you can bet your salary, it is gone. It's abso-freaking-lutely gone. Which is so humorously frustrating! (though not all that humorous when I have to note down this urgent number and I can't locate either pen or paper)

And I know who is behind this disappearing act.

It is the ghost. First rate thief ghost....sorry, ghost thief I mean. Whatever.

It never haunts or scares us.Neither does it cackle in spectral laughter in the middle of the night nor does it drape itself in a white chiffon sari and hold a candle in its hands to stroll around the entire house singing songs full of pain and longing in the distinct voice of Lata Mangeshkar. It is not even a handsome ruby-lips-diamante-skin vampire a la Robert Pattinson.

In fact, I have no idea what it looks like.

IT'S SIMPLY A BLOODY THIEF!!

Though I know how it came into our lives - well, my life to be precise.

Long long ago when your's truly was a toddler in pastel lace frocks, knickers and bibs, mommy dearest absolutely detested if any benevolent relative handed me a chocolate or a bag of potato wafers. Mum believed in Mother Nature and healthy home treats more than she did in Cadbury's or Lay's. So out the goodies went through the window...or in they went to the trash bin. And all I got to hear from her was "Boo Boo ate the choco." And the idiot that I was, I fell for it every single time.

And now, Boo Boo has grown into a full blown Frankenstein's monster.

Boo Boo now steals pens, pencils, erasers, bits of paper, hair bands, clips etc.

Of course, now when my mother asks me about my many missing things I do not blame the ghost. The one time I did, she looked at me as if I were a retard. Nobody will really believe that my knick knacks go missing because Boo Boo steals them.

Sometimes, though, I think the ghost is only trying to help me, you know. By giving me the perennial excuse for buying shiny, new, nice smelling things. Come on, how is a girl supposed to write if she can't find her pen? Or her five pens? Or seven? What can she do under such circumstances but go and buy herself a shiny new one!
And what about handkerchiefs? Am I not a well groomed lady of fine manners who carries dainty floral hankies with herself wherever she goes? Also, I happen to have some kind of collector's mania for handkerchiefs - the lighter, the whiter, the daintier the better. So when these cloth beauties are nicked by our ghost-in-residence, I need to replace them by...yes...purchasing more!!

I also think that the ghost is trying to make me aware of the many technical wonders of my mobile phone (apart from calling and texting) - so I can give up scribbling numbers on random bits of paper and can save them in the phonebook of my cell at the first go!

And anyway, somebody somewhere probably doesn't want me to ring up all those numbers I lost on random bits of paper.Divine conspiracy....or spectral...uh oh..don't know which.

************************************************************

My life with Boo Boo wasn't very bad you know, it was quite tolerable. Till Boo Boo crossed a line!

(pssst....I know it would have been better in terms of composition had I written the entire first part which you read above in past tense....but some how I didn't feel like using past tense.)

It so happened that we were told at the office to submit photocopies of our academic certificates and mark sheets starting from those of 10th standard. Therefore, one Saturday morning, at around 11 am, I hunted all my old certificates and score cards out, got sentimental looking at them and then walked off to the local shop that would make the desired number of photocopies and walked back home at around 12:30 pm.

LUNCH TIME!

I quickly dumped slash threw all my original mark sheets, certificates and their copies on my table and sat down at the table to hog. Weekend lunch....yummm....

Later in the afternoon, I caught a Weekend Special movie on a random TV channel and snoozed for about 45 minutes. After downing a plate of fruits around 5 pm, I put on my fancy Nike shoes and fancy clothes and went for my routine evening walk/jog/run (depends).

I came home at 7:30 pm (having stopped on the way to treat myself to an ice lolly), hit the shower and then prayed for a while. It is mandatory for everybody in our family to attend the evening prayer. I basically spend this time in begging the Almighty for a lot of things that I am not sure I deserve...or need. (I mean I have never worked hard enough to own a Mercedes. And nor do I have that kind of parking space.)

Then I pretended to help Mom in the kitchen for a while, stuffing random eatables into my mouth, before declaring that I was starving!

Dinner! Then some TV.

By 10 pm, when I finally retired to my den, I noticed my certificates and score cards (records of my merit, diligence and hard work and...well, a lot other sentimental things) lying in wild abandon on my study table. I felt bad for them. Poor certificates.

As I bunched them up, separated the photocopies that I had to submit the coming Monday and was about to tuck them safely back into the top drawer, I froze in terror!

The top most certificate on the pile of certificates, my class XIIth mark sheet, my ORIGINAL class XIIth marksheet was missing.

I look around like a fool for sometime and try to recall if I may have left it at the copier's store.

ummmmm......

ummmm......

No. I haven't. I am sure I haven't.

THAT WAS THE LAST STRAW! Clearly the ghost in our house had exceeded its limits. Pens and clips are fine. But important make or break mark sheets with nice marks? NOT FINE!

************************************************************

The next day, Sunday, when the domestic help arrives, Mom orders me to push my study table aside from its years old position and asks her to clean behind and under the table.

HORRORS!

I assure mom again and again that I will accomplish this very task the next weekend myself. Without anyone's help. (I am not really sure I want my table to be removed in front of my mom and the domestic help....I should have kept cleaning under and behind it at more regular intervals than.....well....than....well....once a year)

But she will have none of it. She wants it done right here, right now. My mistake. May be I shouldn't have let it out in the morning that I cannot find my XII Boards mark sheet.
And so, with a great deal of energy and all sorts of sounds, I push my heavily laden study table from its old position.

The next few seconds pass in slow motion as three pairs of eyes collectively gaze down at the unraveled scene.

THERE IS POTENTIAL FOR THE GROWTH OF A WHOLE NEW CIVILIZATION DOWN HERE!

Over the next two rather long hours, I watch our resident ghost being exorcised slowly yet thoroughly.

Five pens long considered lost, seven handkerchiefs covered with layers of time (read dust), four hair clips and an equal number of hair bands, two permanent markers, one old CD (with a crack), three pencils, one eraser, one pencil sharpener, two combs and an old key ring. Along with random bits of papers with phone numbers and messages scribbled ("going to movie.back by 5", "keys in top drawer" etc), which have blown off or slipped from my table and gone under it...........and the most prominent item of them all, the mark sheet of my XIIth standard board exams. (It must have blown in the wind and slipped and fallen under the table yesterday, when I had dumped all the certificates on my table and gone ahead with the rest of the evening)

In short, I get to see all my things, treasures, knick knacks and stuff the ghost in our house had stolen over the course of the last year.

While dusting the dust out, the maid is repeatedly questioning me about what is to be kept and what is to be discarded.

Let me not go into what I heard from my mother as these things were in the process of retrieval. Its not really the proudest moment of my life.
The only hint is that words like "careless", "lazy", "useless" featured largely in her impassioned speech.

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Now I keep all my things sorted and do not dump anything and everything on the table. I make ample use of its three spacious drawers and I check under and behind the table regularly for small things that may slip off and fall. I also keep a track of how many pens and hankies and clips and stuff I am purchasing and how many I actually have in my possession. I do not lose things anymore.

And with that the ghost in our house is gone forever. It is dead if ghosts can die.

Just that, it wasn't the thief I always thought it to be.

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P.S - Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
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Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

The Rainbow in My Heart - an ode to unrequited love

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 10:23:00 +0000

The other day I was talking to a close friend of mine about broken relationships and broken hearts. I heard some very romantically heart-wrenching real life incidents during that conversation. Things about people moving on and never looking back at the devastation they caused. Stories of people living in the present clinging on to the memories of their past. Of people who are never able to move on. Of people who move on in the blink of an eyelid. Of relations that were meant to materialize and didn't -causing immense suffering to all involved. Of relations that weren't meant to materialize and did - again causing immense suffering to all involved.

I am not unromantic myself. I feel too deeply. I care too much. Though I reasoned out with my friend using cold logic and said that I do not advocate people wasting their entire lives for the sake of unrequited love...in my heart I can understand how it feels to be discarded, rejected and left behind...to be made a partner for some vividly colored warm days and then, to be left alone forever...to face the cold, grey days of loneliness.

I haven't tasted it yet,but I know its bitter. I haven't touched such loneliness, yet I know it is cold. I haven't seen such devastation with my own eyes, but I know it's shade is a morbid, dirty grey.

Here's a poem. Dedicated to all those who have loved from the depth of their beings, from their core, from the deepest reaches of their heart...to those who know that irrespective of whether lovers meet or not...life and time aren't powerful enough to wipe all the remembrances away. Once touched by the rainbow hues of romantic love, a part of your soul will forever be vividly colored...no matter how grey the cold days of loneliness. A part of your being, somewhere deep inside, will be a tiny rainbow, as long as you live.

(pssst....this is the first non rhyming poem I have composed. I didn't have much regard for non rhyming poems till late. But I am opening up now!)

The Rainbow in My Heart

I still remember

Those days of old

When you and I

Walked hand in hand

Along sea shores

Collecting shells

Milky white and Chocolate brown

And oyster shells

No pearls inside

All cream and beige

And then we found

One rainbow hued

Those days of old

When you and I

Walked hand in hand

Through green fields

Collecting flowers

Red and white

Purple, blue

Yellow and pink

With pollen dust

and fragrant dew

And then we found

One rainbow hued

When the days were young

And so were we

And hand in hand

We walked along

Through winding lanes

Treading gently

On fallen leaves

"rustle" "rustle"

Yellow, Orange

Autumnal shades

And then we found

One rainbow hued

Borne along

In the cool breeze

Of virgin nights

You and I

Walked along

Hand in hand

Counting stars,

Little lamps

On ink blue sky

And those that fell

On Earth's breast

And then we found

One rainbow hued

On lazy, cozy winter noons

Wrapped in fluffy

Cashmere wool

You and I

Walked along

Hand in hand

Watching birds

And counting them

Robins and sparrows

Parrots and koels

Flamingos too

And then we found

One rainbow hued

On evenings drenched

In the silver light

Of a full moon bright

You and I

Walked along

Hand in hand

Picking pebbles

On railway tracks

Black ,white, grey

Shiny, round

And cool and smooth

And then we found

One rainbow hued

I can still feel

The first rainfall

That drenched us both

You and me

Our hands entwined

Loving the sight

Of raindrops weaving

Myriad patterns

On spider webs

Countless drops

Diamond flecks

And then we found

One rainbow hued

In the warm circle

Of your arms

I first felt

Whatever it feels

When heart and mind

Lose partnership

When across distances

Meet two pairs

Of restless eyes

That moment divine

Coloured my life

With vivid tints

All rainbow hued

Nothing lasts

Forever, I know

The brightest rainbows

Fade with time

And leave behind

Moments covered

With layers of dust

The dust of time

Can't wipe this dust

It gets in the eyes

And tears fall

Salty droplets

Just a few

And amongst them one

Is rainbow hued

The shells collected

From the sands of time

The flowers - Red, White

Yellow, Blue

Fallen leaves and broken stars

And birds that have now flown away

The pebbles remain

With me, still

But the raindrops

On the spider's web?

I cannot find!

My arms outstretched

And your's withdrawn

I am a stranger now

To those restless eyes

But I am coloured

From head to toe

Violet, Indigo

Blue and Green

Yellow, Orange

And passionate Red

All rainbow colours

I stole from you

Oh! Owner of

My heart and soul

Just tell me once

You need not speak

A nod will do

Is a part of you

Still rainbow hued?

- Pallavi, 24th June 2012, Pune

Do you have such a personal rainbow somewhere in your heart too? Do you know someone who has?

No matter what the nature of your love story is, I hope you rate forgiveness and kindness towards the object of your affection, the highest on the list of virtues. Love that doesn't mold us into superior, better, more forgiving, kinder persons; cannot be love in its truest form.

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
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Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Cheers!

The Muse of the Taj - Mumtaz Mahal

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:31:00 +0000

17th of June in the year 1631.

It was a warm night in Burhanpur, a small Deccan town in present day Madhya Pradesh, and the most important woman in the sub-continent was about to give birth to her fourteenth child. It was not the place for her to be in. She belonged to the luxuries of Agra, not a war camp in Burhanpur. Yet, there she was, where her husband, the most important man in the sub-continent, was stationed to suppress a rebellion.

No one was excessively worried because her thirteen previous pregnancies had been pretty smooth and uncomplicated. Though seven children had either died at birth or within a few years, the mother had been in perfect health. (and why not? She was no ordinary woman, she was the sweetheart and chief queen of the heir apparent to the Mughal throne, Khurram - later Shah Jahan).

But this time, the slight shadow of doubt that gnawed at everyone's heart was that she was thirty eight years old....almost forty. Certainly not a proper age for having children. Oh! But nothing could happen to Mumtaz Mahal. The Emperor's dearest consort. Why! The whole empire might collapse if anything happened to her. Who knows what Shah Jahan might do if he lost Mumtaz. Nah! She would come out of this slightly complicated pregnancy unscathed.

And yet, Mumtaz Mahal died.

And the baby she gave birth to, Gauhara Begum, lived. Lived till the age of 75 years. And lived with the accusation of having snatched away the empire's and the emperor's most precious jewel.

"After the passing of midnight...a daughter was born to that tree of the orchard of good fortune, Mumtaz Mahal, whereupon her feverish temperature transgressed the bounds of moderation...This unexpected incident and soul rending disaster filled the world with bewilderment.." - From "Badshah Nama" by Abdal Hamid Lahauri - as quoted by W.E. Begley and Z.A.Desai - Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb

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I am with an elderly lady. Her hair is white with experience and wisdom and her wrinkles only make her look more pleasant and motherly. She is simply dressed, though I am told that she wields immense power within the walls of the Mughal zenana and has a considerable income. But she has no airs. She is simple, warm and welcoming. Why not? After all, the story I have requested her to narrate is her own favorite too.

Her name is Sati-un-Nissa. Chief lady-in-waiting and personal attendant to Empress Mumtaz Mahal, from the time before she became an empress. She was also a teacher and governess to the empress' children.

Sati-un-Nissa Begum is from a highly educated Persian family. She is a scholar herself, they say. Though not much of a looker, she is as perfect an assistant and as perfect a nanny as any new empress and young mother could wish for. She knows exactly what to say and what to do. And what not to say and what not to do!

So..from the beginning please.Its comforting to settle down cozily on richly woven cushions with a plate of the choicest dry fruits to munch on and an ornate glass of cool Khus sherbet...I always had a thing for such languid, comfortable story telling sessions. Only this time...it isn't a story...it all happened....centuries ago...for real. (And no! I do not smoke the hookah.)

"It was a love and arranged marriage."

That's new! No rebellion against the father? Isn't it mandatory for all Mughal princes to rebel against their daddy to win throne and ladylove?(my mind is partly fed on Hindi movies like Mughal-e-Azam and Taj Mahal). No schemes and scandals?

"Can I please continue in my own way, without unnecessary interruptions?" Sati-un-Nissa says in a strict, teacher like tone.

"Arjumand Bano was the daughter of Asaf Khan, Noor Jahan's brother. That made her Noor Jahan's niece. A position that sometimes went for her and sometimes against her."

"Noor Jahan was the most powerful Empress in the entire history of Mughals. She had Jahangir entirely under her control and was used to never-seen-before privileges like holding durbaars, giving orders to the army, signing the royal decrees and getting coins minted in her name. She was as famous for her tantrums, her temper and her shrewd political intellect as for her beauty and charms."

I know...I just wrote a long article on her. :)

"Noor Jahan had a daughter from her previous marriage to a Subedaar of the Burdwaan district in Bengal, Sher Afghan. Her name was Ladli Begum and she was forever under her ambitious and dazzling mother's shadow. But Noor Jahan had grand plans for her daughter."

"She was keen to make sure that her bloodline would intermingle with that of the royal Mughals for at least another generation. She carefully studied the four sons of Jahangir, with a hawk's eye...to determine who was being preened to become the next emperor."

"The eldest son, Prince Khusrau was already married and he was blind. Blinded by his own father as a punishment for trying to revolt earlier in life. The second prince, Parwez was hardly seen in Agra and was a Subedaar of some distant province near Surat. He was notorious for his love of narcotics and bribes. The youngest prince Shahryar was weak. He was called nashudani - good for nothing."

The one that remained then, was the handsome, brave, strong and well educated Khurram. The third son of Jahangir. It was Prince Khurram whom Noor Jahan earmarked for her daughter.

Ladli Begum must marry the Emperor's favourite son, Prince Khurram, and become Empress.

"Yes. Noor Jahan went to great lengths trying to secure Khurram's romantic affection for her daughter Ladli. To her eyes, nothing could be better. Ladli married to a brave prince who had a great royal career waiting for him. But fate had other plans."

Destiny was to usurp Noor Jahan's plan...in the form of her own niece - the exquisitely beautiful and almost ethereal Arjumand Bano.

Sati-un-Nissa's eyes light up at the mere mention of Arjumand.The memories she has of the deceased empress must be really fond.

"All the beauty in Noor Jahan's family seemed to be condensed in Arjumand. Not only beauty of the form but also immense beauty of the soul. She walked on such light nimble feet that it felt she was floating in the air and she was ever so gentle with her words. If you ever saw Arjumand laugh, you'd want to laugh with her.She was like a beam of sunshine."

"She was merely 14 years old when he first saw her. He was just a year older than her.She was Ladli's cousin and friend and often visited the royal zenana quarters. The first time their eyes met, they were besotted with each other.Totally smitten. I am sure he must have inquired about who she was and then gone running to his father, the Emperor Jahangir, to declare that he really really liked Arjumand."

That simple?

"Khurram was Jahangir's dearest son. He had constantly proven his merit to his father and appeared noble, rational, intelligent and a deft warrior. Khurram's wish wasn't to be taken lightly."

"Empress Noor Jahan was not very pleased, understandably. She knew Ladli did not stand the remotest chance if there was to be a competition for Khurram's attention between her and Arjumand. She tried to pressurize her husband into ordering Khurram to marry Ladli."

But that obviously didn't quite work out, did it?

"The concoction of love, beauty and youth is the most powerful and dangerous potion in the world."

"Much as he was controlled by Noor Jahan, Emperor Jahangir was wise enough to see that. Why? Hadn't he himself got into trouble more than once with his own father, Emperor Akbar, over matters of the heart? He asked the young prince if he wished to marry Ladli. And Khurram refused in the politest possible manner. He only had eyes for Arjumand."

So what did Noor Jahan do?

"Oh she was clever beyond her years. She was not the one to be fooled by that thing called love. She calculated shrewdly and drew a compromise. If not daughter, then let it be the niece! Arjumand too was family after all. Her bloodline would still remain royal."

"And who knew? Khurram might not become emperor in the end.She now set her eyes on the simpleton Shahryar.With a little maneuvering, Ladli could still be empress...if Shahryar became emperor."

In the year 1607, Arjumand Bano, the daughter of Mirza Asaf Khan, the niece of Empress Noor Jahan, was engaged to be married to Prince Khurram, the third son of Emperor Jahangir.

"But they couldn't marry immediately. She was 14 and he was 15 when they were engaged. Emperor Jahangir had made promises to rulers and governors of other lands. Promises of marrying off his brightest son Khurram to their daughters, in order to become political allies."

"Through such political promises of the emperor, Prince Khurram married Akbarabadi Mahal and Kandahari Mahal. Kandahari Mahal Begum was the daughter of Muzaffar Hussain Mirza, the governor of Qandahar. Khurram was polite to them and fulfilled his conjugal duties. He made sure they were never out of money or fine jewels. But the person whose company his heart craved for was undoubtedly Arjumand."

Finally, after court astrologers calculated a wedding date for them, to ensure a happy marriage, five years after their engagement to each other, in 1612, Prince Khurram and Arjumand Bano were married.

"Oh it was a beautiful wedding. The bride looked like a dream and the groom couldn't be happier. I won't say it was the grandest wedding in all Mughal history, but it was full of joy and laughter. The preparations and the celebrations spanned an entire month. Everyone was more or less pleased with Arjumand and Khurram's wedding."

"Few marriages in polygamous households have been so happy....Arjumand Banu...surrendered her mind and soul to her husband..." - Beni Prasad - The History of Jahangir

"It was a very successful, very happy marriage." Sati-un-Nissa pauses, as she reminisces the royal romance she has witnessed from such close quarters.

"He bestowed upon Arjumand the title of Mumtaz Mahal. The best jewel of the palace. The Chosen One of the Palace."

"The pleasure and pride that filled their eyes whenever they so much as looked at each other was boundless."

I know from my own research into the Shah Jahan - Mumtaz Mahal story that right after his marriage to Arjumand, Khurram gained immense success in his military campaigns on behalf of his father, Jahangir. It was Jahangir who granted the young prince the honorific title of "Shah Jahan" in the year 1617, announcing publicly that he was indeed favored over and above his brothers as the heir apparent.

"But still, Khurram rebelled."

In 1622, Khurram, supported by the arch-enemy of Noor Jahan, Mahabat Khan, declared war on the imperial army. Arjumand was with him. Wherever he went, all the time, everywhere. And she was pregnant.

Why should he rebel, one thinks? He was already the favourite of the emperor, he already had his Arjumand...then why did he rebel against his father like most of his predecessors before him?

"Do not forget, Empress Noor Jahan was still the "power behind the throne". When she could not get her own daughter Ladli married to Khurram, she turned her favours and attention to Prince Shahryar. Shahryar was now Ladli's husband and so she pushed his case forward with Emperor Jahangir. Who was by now ill and totally dependent on Noor Jahan and opium." Sati-un-Nissa's voice is soft and cautious. As if she still fears the long gone Empress Noor Jahan might hear her and punish her.

"Khurram was now a man with a purpose. He had his Arjumand who kept telling him that he indeed was the best of the Mughal princes and that the only wish she had was to see him on the throne of Agra.A family man, with a loving wife and small children, Khurram now had to stand up and fight for what was rightfully his.He did not want to remain a by stander to Noor Jahan's sovereignty. He had to prove himself to Arjumand."

"Through those treacherous days and dangerous nights, in the rough terrains of the unfamiliar Deccan plateau, while Khurram planned his rebellion with a handful of trusted men, while he fought the hopelessness of the idea of challenging the mighty imperial army, it was Arjumand who kept him company. Faithful and rock steady.Not for a moment did she let him drown in pessimism. She never complained about her personal discomfort. Every ounce of courage Arjumand had, at this delicate time, she shared with her beloved husband Khurram."

This only strengthened the bond of faith and mutual dependence between Khurram and Arjumand. Their marriage had stood the test of tough times.

Finally, after struggling for five whole years, in a very hard won victory, in the year 1627, Shah Jahan (Khurram) became the fifth Mughal Emperor of one of the world's mightiest and largest empires.

"Nobody, but nobody could have been happier than Arjumand. Her dream to see her husband successful was fulfilled. And then, once on the throne himself, how could Shah Jahan forget that one woman who had fueled the fire of his success and happiness? He declared Mumtaz Mahal his Badshah Begum, the chief lady of the court and gave her the imperial seal - Muhr Uza."

"But privately he always called her Arjumand. Both of them preferred it that way.They read to each other, discussed philosophy and she sang to him when they were alone. She never pulled him away from the duties of the court...instead she took immense pride in the fact that her husband was proving himself to be an able ruler." Sati-un-Nissa smiles indulgently.

"And when free from work, it is anybody's guess whom Shah Jahan spent his time with. Arjumand. Mumtaz Mahal."

At this juncture, I want to go a little deeper than just the popularly known love story. What made Mumtaz Mahal the way she was? Her Aunt Noor Jahan was notorious for her political ambition. Her father and brother too were prominent members of the court. She could have used her powers on Khurram and her powers as Empress in any way she wished. Then why did Mumtaz Mahal remain a quiet supporter all her life?

"Arjumand was made of a different material altogether.Her love and respect for Shah Jahan were genuine. The true affection of childhood sweethearts. She wasn't the one to use her famous husband to fulfill her own political ambitions." says Sati-un-Nissa. And I am ready to take her word for this. For it was she who helped the young wife, mother and inexperienced empress to run everything smoothly.

"Arjumand was intelligent.Very intelligent in her own way. She had grown up watching her aunt, Empress Noor Jahan. And she did not approve of her unhindered ambition in a male dominated society. She didnot approve of how Noor Jahan made life complicated for everyone around herself. Arjumand knew, that sooner or later, with the kind of powerful enemies she was making, Noor Jahan would fall flat on her face. The men did not like taking orders from her and they doubly did not like the way she influenced Jahangir."

"Arjumand therefore carefully charted her own way to stardom. Super stardom. She knew that love kept people alive in public memory for a longer time that hatred or fear. And that's what she did. Conquered by love."

I know this for sure that Mumtaz Mahal was not only famous for her divine beauty but also for her graceful and kind nature. There were quite a lot of times she intervened on behalf of the poor and the destitute.In fact many believe that after his ascension to the throne, when Shah Jahan put his step mother Noor Jahan on trial, he was so furious that he was about to give her the death sentence. Till a gentle word from Mumtaz Mahal reminded him that he ought to be nobler than what his step mother had been. That intervention, that act of kindness by the Mumtaz saved Noor Jahan's life and she was exiled to Lahore.

Understood. Mumtaz Mahal or Arjumand as I prefer to call her, was angelic. Intelligent yet good natured. But I want to know what drew Shah Jahan so strongly to her. He did have other wives. And a Mughal harem was always full of dancing girls and concubines. So why was he so attracted to Arjumand? So much that he totally neglected his other wives. Like TOTALLY.
(Shah Jahan did marry other wives even after his marriage to Arjumand, but again, all of them were political marriages. He could never feel for any of them the way he felt for Arjumand.The wives that came after Arjumand were - Hasina Begum, Moti Begum, Qusida Begum, Fatehpuri Mahal Begum, Sarhindi Begum and Srimati Manbhavati Baiji Lal Sahiba)

Ever since Khurram got married to Arjumand his relation with the other wives,

"...was nothing more than just the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favour which His Majesty had for the cradle of excellence (Mumtaz) exceeded by a thousand times what he felt for any other.." - Motamid Khan - Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri

"Has anybody been able to decipher the secrets of a happy marriage?" smiles Sati-un-Nisaa

"Tell me, in your mythology, there is this flute playing God Krishna. I read that he had countless milkmaid girlfriends and admirers, three wives and sixteen thousand women whom he rescued from the clutches of some demon king and married only for namesake. Is that true?"

And yet, its only Radha who is the constant companion of Krishna. In our prayers at least.

That is a new angle! I never thought of it that way. Despite the presence of many women in his life,Krishna's eternal love story was with Radha. Despite three wives, Rukmini, Satyabhama and Jamwanti, who were major beauties in their own right and despite all the women who literally swooned over him, for thousands of years, we have always worshipped and cherished Krishna with his childhood sweetheart Radha.

Could it have been the same way with Khurram and Arjumand? That despite manifold temptations and distractions, in times of happiness and sadness they only reached out to each other? That Shah Jahan had found his soul mate in Mumtaz Mahal? May be not. But may be! One has to keep an open mind!

"As a boy, Shah Jahan grew up in a palace full of women who kept no stone upturned to be the centre of the Emperor's attention.When he was a baby, he was taken from his own mother Jagat Gosini, and handed over to his grandmother Queen Ruqayya Sultan Begum, a wife of Emperor Akbar. Just because she felt lonely and wanted to have a kid around her to keep herself occupied. He never got the affection of his own mother. In fact, he did not even know who his biological mother was till very late."

"In his impressionable growing up years, Khurram saw the royal women do little less other than throwing grand tantrums, spending fortunes on themselves, trying to beautify their forms when no natural beauty was left and scheming and scheming and scheming. Sometimes the schemes were harmless enough like one woman eavesdropping on another and sometimes, they ranged from smuggling unauthorized and illicit lovers into the harem, to causing deliberate miscarriages and induced abortions through herbal poisons and even murder. On tip toes of course. When such things happened, everyone came under suspicion, but hardly anyone was ever caught."

Wow! Mughal harems must have been rather interesting places! Everyone was out for everyone else's life. Since their very existence and the favours they enjoyed depended solely on their proximity to the emperor, there was nothing that grand mothers, mothers, step mothers, sisters, wives, concubines, mistresses, daughters would not do to make sure they alone were close enough to the sovereign. From back biting and seducing to downright poisoning.

"And then Khurram saw Noor Jahan, his step-mother. Though initially he was one of her supporters, because he thought her to be wiser and more astute than the Emperor himself, slowly he got embittered by her constant domination over all royal matters."

"And as a young prince, Khurram never quite understood the deep bond between his father Jahangir and that woman who came from nowhere and started ordering everyone about, Noor Jahan. He was forever in the dilemma. How could his father become so attached and so dependent on a woman who too would probably start scheming at the first given opportunity."

Anyone can imagine the image of women the young prince had in his mind from his growing up days. He must have determined never to take any woman seriously, never to take any woman beyond the bed, to his heart - or else they would turn into nasty, scheming, poison spewing vixens who'd ruthlessly use him to get their will done.Till he met the divine Arjumand.

"It took him very long to actually believe that Arjumand, with all that ethereal beauty that she possessed, was a very normal girl, who wished nothing more than to have a happy marriage and who actually prayed for her husband's success."

"Perhaps the fact that Arjumand had grown up in a normal family with a doting father and a loving mother, in a stable home, away from the palace zenana, away from the grandeur and power play, contributed to the fact that she was immensely well mannered, simple and good natured, didn't bother to spend her time scheming and planning wicked things and was pleased at simple acts of affection. She was no Noor Jahan. And that's how she remained till the very end."

"And this is what drew Shah Jahan magnetically to Mumtaz, even after they had many children and many years of marriage between them. When she said she cared for him, he knew no one could have cared better or cared more. He knew he could depend on her.She would never try to snatch power by unfair means or try to dominate. She had stood with him when he was facing the imperial wrath. She still stood with him when he was emperor himself. With her support, and her love, he actually felt like his title - Shah Jahan - the king of the world!"

Hmm...sigh...really, Mumtaz Mahal shouldn't have died. (An acutely selfish part of me thinks that we'd never have the lovely Taj Mahal if she hadn't.Bad me!!)

Perhaps it was the punishment Shah Jahan got for killing his own brothers and cousins to establish his right on the throne. (Not that they were any good themselves. Mostly useless.) In fact, so stark was the flip of fate that Shah Jahan lost his dearest Mumtaz in the very same town of Burhanpur, where once he had murdered his blind and almost demented brother Khusrau.

But it is unfair to sit in 2012 and judge people who lived in 1600s. Judging historical people by modern standards is not correct. And moreover, one cannot be a ruler and yet be too kind. At least to people who he knows will draw out their daggers the moment his back is turned.There is a famous saying "Kingship knows no kinship".The famous Emperor Asoka was very cruel before turning to Buddhism after the devastating war of Kalinga (where he was the person who caused the devastation). So I am not sure how high Shah Jahan rates on the cruelty meter.(If you are already hinting at the story of his order of chopping off the fingers/hands of the construction workers who built the Taj, I am dealing with that a little later.)

But we'll go back to the rest of Sati-un-Nissa's narration.

"They had become Emperor and Empress after a very hard struggle. And they were determined to enjoy the happiness they both had fought for so long. But it was not to be."

"Arjumand, with whom Shah Jahan had wanted to share every bit of his joys as new emperor, was Empress for only four years. Death soon crept up stealthily on the happy couple."

It was such a shock to Shah Jahan that Mumtaz was no more, that he didn't believe it for many days after her death. He simply locked himself up in a room, refusing food and water, thinking that may be when he opened the door, the nightmare would be over and everything would be as it was. Mumtaz would be there, with her ready smile.

So great was his grief that court historians have recorded, he was not seen in court for a week, and for the next two years gave up listening to music, wearing luxurious jewels or even clothes of any other colour than white. He even considered giving up his throne immediately and living a life of seclusion.

"Even though the Incomparable Giver had conferred on us such great bounty, more than which cannot be imagined, through His grace and generosity, yet the person with who we wanted to enjoy it has gone.." - Abdal Hamid Lahauri - The Badshah Nama Of Shah Jahan

An excerpt from a letter written by an honorary uncle of Shah Jahan reads,

"If he continued to abandon himself to his mourning, Mumtaz might think of giving up the joys of Paradise to come back to earth, this place of misery - and he should also consider the children she had left to his care"

Seventeenth century French traveler to India and a doctor, Francois Bernier recorded, that the emperor's grief at the death of the empress "crumbled his mountain like endurance" and that "when he unlocked himself from his room after many days of seclusion and mourning, his beard and hair that earlier had no more than twenty grey hair, had turned completely white from extreme shock."

The exact same incident is also recorded in the Badshah Nama, penned by Abdal Hamid Lahauri.

Is all this true?

"Yes it is." says Sati-un-Nissa.

Then she asks in a bemused tone, "But ,what do you want to believe?"

Beg your pardon?

"Its very rare to find companionship like that which existed between Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. And so many don't want to believe it. People are more comfortable with stone-dry theories without an ounce of romance. Because that's how most people live out the entire course of their lives. Incapable of loving someone dearly and incapable of receiving love from someone."

"So eventually we believe what we think we are comfortable believing. What do you wish to believe?"

Uh oh! Sticky wicket! Much as I would like to believe it - really really believe it -my contemporary mind throws up many questions.

"You people love conspiracy theories don't you? When you have the court chronicles clearly stating Shah Jahan's love for Arjumand, you will still go looking for something sinister and come up with bizarre explanation of events."

What happened after Mumtaz's death? He did have a lot of women around him, didn't he? Am I expected to believe that Shah Jahan remained celibate from the time of Mumtaz Mahal's death till the time of his own demise? Not only do I know from my research that it wasn't so at all, even if I hadn't done any research I wouldn't buy that.

"When did I say anything like that?" Sati-un-Nissa is sounding rather amused.

"Are you confusing between physical needs and romantic love? Does anyone in your society remain celibate if their partner dies an untimely death? But does that mean they never felt anything akin to love for their partner?"

"And, is it sane, is it humane to ask the living partner to give up everything, stop feeling like a normal person just because he was unfortunate enough to loose someone special?"

Erm.....I guess not. Old Sati-un-Nissa seems to be more advanced in her thinking than I am.

"What you do not understand is, in our times polygamy was the accepted trend of the day. In fact, monogamy was an idea people weren't familiar with, neither men nor women. And for an emperor marriage was a key way of making political allies."

Shah Jahan was lost in mourning for about two years of Arjumand's death. And then he went quite wild. He was on rebound from Arjumand's loss.

"He was angry and frustrated. In every face he looked at, he desperately searched for something that resembled Arjumand. It was as if he was angry with her for leaving him before time. And so came the string of women. From the much ignored other wives, to concubines and dancing girls. For Shah Jahan to prove to Arjumand that he could live without her."

"The reality was, he couldn't. No matter who he tried to recreate that same kind of affection with, he failed miserably. These women could never replace Arjumand in Shah Jahan's life.The better he understood that fact, the sadder he became. And the sadder he was, the wilder he got. Women were brought to him in hordes and he overdosed himself with aphrodisiacs. Shah Jahan had clearly lost control over himself in a way he never had when Arjumand was around. But no matter what escape he sought, Arjumand's absence haunted him day and night."

"Why he felt so perturbed was, that being Emperor, he could literally do anything he wished. Get anything and anyone he fancied. But not that one woman who had been his solace in troubled times. Mumtaz was gone. Forever. Life would never be the same again."

With the death of Arjumand Bano, an era of bliss has ended in Shah Jahan's life. His children were growing up and two of them, Aurangzeb and Roshanara, weren't showing the right traits.He hardly looked at the way the children were turning out to be. So lost was he in his own world of alternating grief and fits of angry passion. It was only the docile, caring Jahanara who was something like her mother and it was she who took over the duties of the Badshah Begum, the chief lady of the court, after her mother's demise. Jahanara and the saintly Dara Shikoh ("Darius the magnificent") were the only two children who had the angelic traits of Mumtaz Mahal.

In the meanwhile, Shah Jahan commissioned the construction of Taj Mahal. The land was purchased from Maharaja Jay Singh in return of a large, luxurious palace Shah Jahan gave him.

I have a question here. Was it Mumtaz's dying wish to have a "monument of love" constructed in the memory of her close relationship with her husband? Or did Shah Jahan go about building it own his own?

"No one knows." says Sati-un-Nissa

"The answer could be both no and yes. No, because normally one wouldn't think that in such weak health and pain, in such crisis, Arjumand would have thought of asking Shah Jahan something like that."

"And yes because, all her life, Arjumand had been a quiet supporter. She had been in the background. Silently and devoutly dedicated to her husband's cause. But in her heart, she must have craved for some show of her influence over Shah Jahan, some display of their love for each other - as she had so resentfully and quietly seen her father-in-law Jahangir loudly exhibit for her aunt Noor Jahan by making her his co regent.So perhaps when she sensed death was near, she made that last wish. No one will ever know."

Whatever be the case, the construction of the Taj Mahal started in the year 1632. Shah Jahan was excessively and personally involved with all the details of the building. He held meetings with architects and supervisors on a daily basis.

"When the courtiers came to know that the emperor wished to create a marvelous, never-seen-before mausoleum for his beloved empress, many suggested he should build a palace of gold and silver. But that didn't appeal to Shah Jahan."

"The Taj was to be Mumtaz's final home. It was to reflect her persona. And gold and silver wouldn't have portrayed the gentle Arjumand correctly to the world. She was too soft and those metals too loud. The way Shah Jahan visualized it, the mausoleum was to stand for everything Arjumand herself personified in his life. Peace, beauty, chastity, modesty, devotion, compassion and untarnished purity of body, mind and soul.A drop of paradise on Earth."

"It was also to be a representation of heaven, where Arjumand lived on in eternal peace."

What else could be better suited to portray such a beloved empress to the entire world, than pure, milky white and cool marble.

Makrana marble was brought all the way from Rajasthan to Agra. For the fantastic and intricate floral pietra dura work, the inlay of vividly coloured stones into the white marble, semi precious stones were brought in. Turquoise from Tibet, jasper from Cambay, malachite from Russia, Lapis Lazuli from Ceylon, Carnelian from the bazaars of Baghdad along with jade, black marble, amethyst and quartz.

"You won't believe, but even the Yamuna river, that seemed to come in the way, was carved away from her millenia old original path to curve and flow gently past the Taj."

"An entire city of twenty thousand workers, masons, stone cutters and craftsmen - Mumtazabad - was erected around the site of the building."

"There were gold wall panels inside the tomb, the main doors were solid carved silver. A gold railing surrounded the sarcophagus. And right above the sarcophagus, a velvet canopy richly embroidered with pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds covered the sleeping Arjumand" - Indu Sundaresan - The Feast of Roses

The Taj Mahal was finally completed in the year 1653. Twenty two years after Arjumand left Shah Jahan. Arjumand had first been buried temporarily at Burhanpur, where she died, then she was buried at Agra while the Taj was under construction. Finally, she was moved to her permanent resting place, Taj Mahal.

"By this time, Shah Jahan was weak and ailing. And still very upset about Arjumand's death. His son, Aurangzeb was getting rather desperate to be crowned king."

"Aurangzeb, then Prince Muhiuddin, always thought himself more capable than all his brothers. And he did not approve of the amount of money and time Shah Jahan spent over the Taj Mahal. He arrested his own father and imprisoned him in the Agra fort, from where, it is said, Shah Jahan kept staring at the Taj Mahal. Aurangzeb clearly thought his father had completely lost that edge an emperor ought to have to be able to command the fear and respect of his subjects."

"And may be it was really so. After Arjumand's death, Shah Jahan wasn't really the strong, brave, intelligent, fire-brand emperor he had been."

There isn't much of the narration left after this. When Shah Jahan died on 31st January 1666, he was interred in Taj Mahal, beside his beloved wife, childhood sweetheart, trusted companion, confidante and soul mate, Arjumand Bano Begum - Empress Mumtaz Mahal.

That was the beginning of the decline of the mighty empire of the Mughals, which, on the eve on Shah Jahan's death, spanned about three hundred thousand square kilometers.

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THERE IS NO HISTORICALLY VALIDATED PROOF OR REPUTED AND RELIABLE SCHOLARLY DOCUMENTATION THAT SHAH JAHAN ORDERED HIS MEN TO CUT OFF THE FINGERS/HANDS OF THE WORKERS WHO BUILT THE TAJ MAHAL.

HISTORIANS ARE IN FACT OF THE OPINION THAT IT WAS A PROPAGANDA SPREAD BY THE BRITISH, TO KEEP AWAY PEOPLE'S ATTENTION FROM THE FACT - THE VALIDATED FACT - THAT THE BRITISH DID NOT ENCOURAGE THE ART OF THE WEAVERS OF THE FINE DHAKA MUSLIN CLOTH (so fine that an entire muslin saree could pass through the hole of a ring) AND CUT OFF THE THUMBS OF THE MUSLIN WEAVERS IN DHAKA (BANGLADESH)...TO KILL THAT ART ALTOGETHER AND PROMOTE THE TRADE OF LANCASHIRE CLOTH THAT CAME FROM ENGLAND.

*********************************************************************
Whether you believe it or not, behind the magnificent Taj Mahal, lies a love story. That kind of sublime beauty cannot be visualized and created without love being the main inspiration.

The people in the love story had their share of flaws, but they were very much in love. If not, then tell me, why is it that we cannot readily (wihout googling) name any other wife of Shah Jahan other than Mumtaz Mahal? Why was only Mumtaz chosen to be the Badshah Begum, out of all the other women in the harem? She was no royal princess, nor was her father a mighty ruler.Why is it that Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal had fourteen children together, whereas we hardly know anything about his children with the other secondary wives?
Why is it that out of all the women in the royal harem, only Mumtaz Mahal lies in the Taj? Why is it that the Taj isn't built in glaring red sandstone like all other Mughal monuments? Why is it pure white? Because that is the only colour that represents with near accuracy the kindest queen in Mughal history.
Why is it that, while all other Mughal emperors have their own very grand mausoleums, where they lie alone as the supreme sovereign, away from their spouses, Shah Jahan never bothered to commission one for himself? Why does an emperor, and a mighty one at that, lie next to his wife in a mausoleum he built for her and not for himself?

Most importantly, if we can readily believe in the love stories of movie stars, common people, people in our neighborhood, people in our colleges and offices - then why do we find it so hard to digest that a king was deeply in love with his queen?

Arjumand, the beautiful and dutiful wife of Shah Jahan, the empress for four short years, would never know, that her Khurram would go on to create the magnificent, sublime and exquisite Taj Mahal in her memory and place her in eternal sleep there. That Khurram would make sure of all Mughal women, it was the shy, gentle and loving Arjumand who would be firmly embedded in the memory of time.

She would never know that when his turn came, he would be right there beside her, like he had been in life.This time, for eternity.

If in life, she had, in even one moment of human weakness, envied her aunt - the much pampered Noor Jahan - then in death, and hundreds of years after death, posterity would remember her in tender, endearing thoughts- Empress Mumtaz Mahal - the muse of the Taj.

Like the Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore called this dream in marble - A teardrop on the cheek of time.

I grant you that Shah Jahan's exclusive adoration for Mumtaz was unfair for the other wives. They lived out their entire lives in Arjumand's shadow and even after her death, Arjumand Bano reigned supreme. But love isn't a rational feeling. You cannot feel the same way for every person in your life.Can you? You do love some more, some less and some none at all. Don't you? Remember, its always Radha and Krishna who we love to see together in our songs, metaphors and prayers....never mind all the wives of Krishna!

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Ref: The History of Jahangir - Beni Prasad
Iqbal Namah-e-Jahangiri - Motamid Khan
The Badshah Nama of Shah Jahan - Abdal Hamid Lahauri
Travels in the Mughal Empire - Francois Bernier
Taj Mahal - The Illumined Tomb - W.E. Begley and Z.A.Desai
Beloved Empress Mumtaz Mahal - Nina Epton
The Feast of Roses - Indu Sundaresan
Shadow Princess - Indu Sundaresan
Wikipedia

The Rise and Fall of Light - Empress Noor Jahan

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:50:00 +0000

“Nature had endowed her with a quick understanding, a piercing intellect, a versatile temper and sound common sense. Education had developed the gifts of nature in no common degree..” - Beni Prasad, History of Jahangir

“But there was one fatal flaw in her. She was a woman.....And in the prejudice of the age, women had no public role and ambition was the prerogative of men..” - Abraham Eraly, The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals

“My darling daughter, forgive your poor Ammi. Have mercy, Allah! One who looks after the king on his throne, will look after this helpless baby in this vast desert”, Asmat Begum prayed and wept as she hid her new born girl, her fourth child, near a thorny desert bush.

Fleeing from Persia, Ghiaas Baig and his wife Asmat had lost everything they possessed. Starving themselves, they could not afford to feed another child. It was a sad decision no doubt, to leave the new born baby, born in a makeshift tent during a devastating storm, in the middle of the hot desert. But they had no choice. The other children were grown up enough to follow their parents back if they were left somewhere. Hence, the only person fit to be discarded was Mehr-un-Nisaa, the new born with eyes as blue as the cloudless summer sky.

What happened next is still hazy. Some opine that in the struggle between affection and affliction, affection won and Ghiaas and Asmat retraced their steps and rescued their baby daughter and decided to take her along for better or for worse. The other, more interesting legend is that another caravan found the discarded baby. They followed the party that had just left....which was Ghiaas and Asmat’s...and on reaching it, they asked around and handed the child over to the hapless parents. Along with a bag of gold coins to provide for her and a sound advice to never discard her again.

And this baby, once left alone to die in the desert by her own parents, would grow up to become the mightiest Empress India had ever seen. Empress Noor Jahan.

I will not bother you with dates. Dates make history boring and troublesome. Just so you can easily visualise the era that I am writing of, this much should be sufficient that Noor Jahan’s life spanned from 1577 to 1645.

At this point, let us discard prose. I am not going to write the major part of this article in prose. Noor Jahan was an accomplished poetess and thus, it will only be suitable to write about her life in poetry. I will take you from the beginning to the end of a mighty empress’s life through verses. My own verses. (And I must admit here, writing prose has never given so much pleasure to me as composing verses).

It is, I agree, a tad bit difficult to portray all incidents in such an eventful life completely in rhyming verse...not because of the scarcity of vocabulary but because a poem thus composed would be unmanageably long. In the end, prose will again come to my aid to fill in the blanks of my poem with important extracts from books of note on Empress Noor Jahan.

And I have a special treat for you in the end....a four liner poem written by the most powerful Mughal empress of India, Noor Jahan, herself. (Research! Research! Phew!)

NOOR JAHAN

Noor Jahan, in Shahdara Bagh, Lahore,

Sleeps forever on plain, cold floor

Mighty Empress of Hindostan

Bereft of all regal élan

Near her lord Jahangir’s tomb

With Ladli, the sole flower of her womb

Calm and quiet in death she lies

Withdrawn from all worldly ties

To penniless parents fleeing homeland,

Born in Qandahar’s scalding desert sand

A great storm raged to declare her birth

A girl heralding neither cheer nor mirth

Mehr-un-Nisaa, Ghiaas and Asmat’s child

Abandoned by them in the terrain wild

Saved by her Maker, the new born girl

Destined to be the brightest Mughal pearl.

In the heart of the bountiful Hindostan

The Mughal court was where her tale began

Through the paths mapped by fate and love

Mehru’s star steadily soared above

The girl once abandoned by her own

Was to be mistress of the Mughal throne

The course of this verse will unfold

Her ascent to power, written in gold

Mehru grew up bright and fair

From humble roots a blossom rare

Excelling in the arts, math, and law

A rider and archer without a flaw

Her zealous mind began to form

Notions on power, might and royal norm.

Never of her ambitions ashamed

For the moon and the stars, Mehru aimed

Enter Ali Quli Khan, a brave young man

Killed a tigress, became Sher Afghan

Asked for seventeen year old Mehru’s hand

And took her to Bengal, an eastern land

Unhappy Mehru, her royal dreams crushed

By marriage and child her free songs hushed

Domestic duties were never her style

Sad Mehru by her own fate beguiled

But one who is destined to be a star

Cannot from her own stage be far

Ali Quli Khan drew his last breath

And widowed by his sudden death

Mehru did to her beloved Agra return

Wherefrom the course of her life would turn

Now Ghiaas and Asmat’s bereaved daughter

A protégé in Begum Ruqaiyya’s quarter

It was Navroze, the New Year’s gala fest

Meena Bazar was decked up at its best

Lovely women selling stuff of dreams

Gems, silks, perfumes; all lavish extremes

Mehr-un-Nisaa, bereaved and sad, walked in

To cheer herself up in the merry din

And then she caught the eye of the man,

Who was born to rule Hindostan

When he returned that night, Prince Salim

Had in his eyes, a romantic dream

Who was that vision in flowing white?

So sad and yet so exquisitely bright?

That porcelain face, those tender arms

Who was this mistress of divine charms?

He swore she was the love of his life

And thus, became Mehru, Salim’s twentieth wife.

Emperor Jahangir, bestowed upon his girl

A title, Light of the Palace – Noor Mahal

Not the first in the king’s amorous life

But she surely was the last royal wife

With patience and sharpness, tact and skill

Shortly Noor’s wish was the Emperor’s will

Jagat Gosini, chief queen, schemed and wailed

But Salim’s promise to Mehru, never failed

Wedded to Mehru, Jahangir Salim

His visage was with love agleam

From duties of the court did hide

Lost in the magical charms of his bride

For Noor Mahal was everything condensed in one

Amongst all the stars the brilliant sun

Designer, perfumer, poetess bright

Goddess of his morn and Queen of his night

And Noor Mahal, she knew in her heart

Despite all her charms, skills, and art

Without her lord Jahangir’s loving hand

Her powers and tantrums would not stand

For the Mughal zenana was on tip toes

To destroy Jahangir’s new found rose

And yet in some years her new role began

Noor Mahal now, Light of the World, Noor Jahan

With Jahangir sunk in eternal opium haze

Given to morbid dark alcoholic ways

Noor Jahan took control of the Mughal durbar

Called in royal ministers from near and far

Threw out the rebellious Mahabat Khan

For the failing empire drew her astute plan

For she was the Queen, the Consort Royal

To her King, Lord and Country, forever loyal

In her husband’s eyes, her heightened appeal

Made her Badshah Begum, wielder of Mughal seal

Co regent of Jahangir, Empress Noor Jahan

Unmatched in title, wealth, might and élan

Never before had the Mughal world seen

Currency minted in the name of a queen

She made grand enemies, she garnered applause

Firm she remained on her King’s cause

Armies and ships did Mehru command

The Mughal world moved on her farmaan

Then came ambassador Thomas Roe

Empress Noor Jahan to him did show

The unparalleled grandeur and majesty

Of Hindostan’s great Mughal dynasty

And Roe, to England, his report did send

“to a mighty woman’s will all bend”

A faithful wife and a loving mother

Noor Jahan did have her personal bother

For her lord’s rapidly failing health

Death would follow sickness on stealth

Her daughter Ladli, from first marriage

Was the subject of general disparage

She had neither ambition nor skill

Nor Noor’s steely, unbending will

As destiny likes to play around

Once a widow, now mistress of endless ground

In a sweeping move did Noor Jahan

Wed step son Khurram to niece Arjumand

For Ladli, her only and dearest child

She chose Prince Shahryar of manners mild

She made sure that her bloodline would

Remain royal as far as it possibly could

Days at the court and nights by the side

Of an ill husband, tired Mehru did confide

“Without you my world will cease to be

You know not what you mean to me”

“My dearest wife,” said the drugged king

“Despite my failing health and suffering

I know my court is in the hands of the best

And therefore here I sit and rest”

“Oh Allah! Have mercy on me

My beloved ailing I cannot see

Though I am now the co-regent strong

But the path ahead is winding and long

And in every timid and unsure breath

Mehru is Salim’s in life and death”

Noor Jahan the mighty Mughal queen

Mehru at heart she had always been.

Good times have a mean, mischievous way

At the height of joy, they wane away

Noor Jahan could now foresee

Her royal career’s declining destiny

Jahangir ailing and now Khurram a rebel

Dumb Shahryar like a useless pebble

In desperate measure did the queen react

Khurram to Deccan, away she packed

That one mistake, she would later know

Caused her great regret and endless woe

Alienated by now from her own clan

She lost the powerful Khurram “Shah Jahan”

It was finally the time for Salim’s death knell

“Goodbye my soulmate, fare thee well”

Shunned by brother Asaf and father Ghiaas Baig

Exhausted Mehru cringed with heartache.

Tables turn and stories change

All things once lucid now seemed strange

Khurram took Agra and the throne

Mehru, again abandoned by her own

Husband, father and brother, all gone

Left lonely, defeated and forlorn

A prisoner in her step son’s home

Again in a widow’s black monochrome.

Noor Jahan, dowager empress, stood up straight

Walked towards Shah Jahan in regal gait

In a public trial for her apparent “crime”

Of influencing an Emperor’s will all the time.

She stood quiet with her head held high

And took an unnoticed glance at the sky

“Salim, your Mehru is down and out

Without you I am filled with doubt”

“My lord, my master, my beloved mate

The sun has set and closed is the gate

When, beloved husband, you chose to die

Why didn’t you let me beside you lie?

Your Noor Mahal is tired, Salim,

Her life is going all downstream

For the last time, love, for your honour’s sake

I won’t let Khurram my spirit break.”

Then in the durbar which she once ran

Empress Noor Jahan’s trial began

“Punish me, proud king Shah Jahan!

Punish me severely if you can

Yes, I had sent Mahabat Khan

To the far away Afghanistan

It was I who sent you, light of our clan

To perish with your wife in Deccan”

“I have connived, t’was entirely my plan

Reprimand me all that you can

I drew up plans, it was all my scheme

But all was in pursuit of my poor Lord’s dream

A wife to her husband and a queen to her land

Must lend support as the left to the right hand

For King and Queen are like the Sun and Moon

When one wanes the other should come up soon.”

Passionate words from a mighty queen

Once more powerful than any Mughal had seen

Mehru, Noor Mahal, Noor Jahan

It all ended in Agra, where it once began

Accompanied by Ladli, shown the door

Noor Jahan was exiled to Lahore

Jahangir’s last wife, for the rest of her days

Doomed to loneliness for her “scheming” ways.

Thus ends the tale of love, fate and might

The saga of waxing and waning light

Never before nor after Noor Jahan

Came a queen like her in the Mughal clan

Iron fisted ruler, devoted wife

The muse of her beloved Salim’s life

For a girl once at the peak of royal bloom

Mehru lies today in the humblest tomb

Noor Jahan, in Shahdara Bagh, Lahore,

Sleeps forever on plain, cold floor

Mighty Empress of Hindostan

Bereft of all regal élan

Calm and quiet in death she lies

Withdrawn from all worldly ties.

-Pallavi Dasgupta, 6th January 2012, Pune

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Did you like my poem? It is very close to my heart. Let’s continue in prose now to fill some blanks.

In popular culture, Noor Jahan has been always portrayed as a scheming, power hungry woman. Well, may be that is true. But what does a wife and a queen do when her husband, who is supposed to be the decision maker and ruler, whiles away his time between sickness, opium and alcohol? Do you think it was wrong of her to stand up against a system that thought of women as nothing else than mere wallflowers, for decorating their drawing rooms and bedrooms? Was it wrong for her to hold up the pillars of an empire that was otherwise doomed thanks to Jahangir’s love for narcotics?

There was love between Jahangir and Noor Jahan. Though one may feel she only used him as an instrument to achieve the status of the “power behind the throne”, on careful study, it can be noticed that after Jahangir’s demise, Noor Jahan doesn’t show any further interest in holding on to authority.

“The Conqueror of the World was the slave of a woman – his consort, Nur Mahal or Mehrunnisa...” - William Foster, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India

But in his own words, Jahangir claims no one loved him more than Mehru.

“A few days passed in this manner, and I only imparted this to Nur Jahan Begum than whom I did not think anyone was fonder of me..” - Emperor Jahangir,(on his continued illness) Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri (Translated by A. Rogers)

However, the way she expressed her love for her husband wasn’t the run-of-the-mill, docile, subservient way. Mehr-un-Nisaa had entered the Mughal harem as the twentieth wife of Jahangir. Surely it was a rank of hardly any consequence. She had a lot of other wives, concubines and mistresses to compete with. So she chose a radically different path. She was a demanding wife. She chose to argue with him at times and not speak to him when such arguments happened. She made sure in some way or the other she was always the centre of his attention. Instead of her giving in completely to him, it was the other way round...she made him give in to her.

“she gave Jahangir to understand that the only way of being pardoned for the affront was to throw himself at her feet...” – William Irvine, Translation, Storia de Mogor by Niccolao Manucci

And yet, disregarding the counsel of all his ministers and friends, the Emperor of India, Jahangir always turned to his wife for advice. She was more of a best friend, philosopher and guide to him. He knew she loved him and was always there by his side and she knew she’d be a non-entity without him. While she did object to some of his annoying habits, Mehr-un-Nisaa was immensely indebted to Salim for having brought her out of a widow’s miserable life and made her the most important woman in the whole empire. And from this gratitude and sense of mutual trust, sprung devoted love.

“He hath one beloved wife..that wholly governeth him” - William Foster, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India

Jahangir saw in her the talent that everyone else at court couldn’t or refused to see. She had genius, foresight and political and administrative acumen. And she could balance all this with feminine charms. While on one hand Mehru had her own army and a fleet of powerful ships that traded on international waters with China and other foreign countries, on the other hand, she designed exquisite and innovative garments, made perfume out of Damask roses, gave generously to the cause of women and paid off the dowry for poor girls. She commissioned the most painstakingly beautiful gardens, monuments and inns. She was a brave hunter and is known to have shot down tigers on many occasions. She was a poetess and a philosopher of great talent and a patroness for bright young poets. No wonder then, in a palace full of air headed females and a court full of murderous wazirs, Jahangir chose to trust the brilliant and suave Mehr-un-Nisaa.

“Her abilities were uncommon; for she rendered herself absolute, in a government in which women were thought incapable of bearing any part....Noor Jehan stood forth in public; she broke through all restrain and custom and acquired power by her own merit...” - Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan

Such was her power at court and hold upon the Emperor that soon after she was declared Badshah Begum (the first lady of the court), she started signing royal decrees with an authority even the Emperor could not invalidate. No other Mughal empress ever had her name imprinted on currency. But Noor Jahan had her’s...in style

“By the order of Jahangir, Gold attained a hundred times its beauty when the name of Nur Jahan, the first lady of the court, was impressed on it !” – Inscription on coin from the latter years of Jahangir’s rule

Upon gaining power, one of the first things she did was to depute Mahabat Khan, Jahangir’s childhood friend and advisor and her own sharp critic to the extreme north western frontier of the empire,Afghanistan (Qandahar) on the pretext of work.

Noor Jahan wanted to marry off her daughter Ladli Begum to her step son Khurram (later Shah Jahan), for he was the brightest of Jahangir’s sons. But it was the meeting of the ethereally beautiful Arjumand and Khurram which made her tweak her plans slightly. Arjumand was her own niece. So she pushed forward their wedding. For her own daughter she had to suffice with the rather idiotic and alcoholic Shahryar. This arrangement would make sure that Mehru’s bloodline would be a part of the Mughals for at least another generation.

Noor Jahan had already garnered Khurram’s support long back. But, with wife Arjumand in the picture, Khurram wanted his right...the Mughal throne. He did not want to remain merely the support behind Noor Jahan’s sovereignty. Also, Noor Jahan was now inching steadily towards Shahryar as he was her own daughter’s husband....Arjumand was merely a niece...Ladli was her own blood. In this conflict of interests, Noor Jahan persuaded Jahangir to send Khurram into the troubled lands of the Deccan. He would either die fighting the rebels and if at all he survived, he’d be made a small time “subedaar” of some region. Ladli had to be empress after her...not niece Arjumand.

“In a single empire there was no room for two such masterful spirits as Nur Jahan and Shah Jahan. Each had known the other too well to be under any delusion. The issue was perfectly clear – Nur Jahan must either soon retire from public life or supersede Shah Jahan by a more pliable instrument.” - Beni Prasad, History of Jahangir

But as luck would have it, Khurram rebelled. Some say it was wife Arjumand’s idea that he should fight for his right. At this juncture, another calamity struck Mehr-un-Nisaa....the man who had helped her to become the formidable power she was...Jahangir, left for his heavenly abode.

In a quick succession of events, her brother Asaf Khan put her under house arrest, Shahryar was killed, Khurram took the throne, styled himself Shah Jahan, and Noor Jahan was tried at court for her various “schemes” and attempts “to take power in her hands by unfair means” and “ influencing an Emperor’s free will”.

By now all Mehru wanted was to leave. She had no further desire or energy to remain the centre of attention. She defended herself in her trial and when she was exiled, she requested to be exiled to Lahore, where her beloved husband Jahangir was interred. With the small pension given to her, she commissioned Jahangir’s mausoleum and a little distance further from that, her own, in Shahdara Bagh, Lahore.

For a woman who wanted nothing but the best for herself, who challenged convictions of her time, lived unapologetically and had supremely refined and expensive tastes, who defied the defined perimeters for a Mughal queen and a woman, who held in her dainty hands the reigns of one of the mightiest and wealthiest empires in the world, Noor Jahan’s tomb is surprisingly unremarkable, threadbare and simple. No marble domes or proud minarets or inlay of expensive gems for her resting place....just a simple structure made of bricks where she lies in eternal sleep with her daughter Ladli Begum.

Before I leave you to ponder...here are a few lines composed by Mehr-un-Nisaa...the light of the world – Noor Jahan

Dil basurat na dahum naushuda seerat maloom

Banda-i-ishaam wa haftad wa do millat maloom

Zahida haufi-qiamat mu dar dil-i-ma

Hauli-i-hijran guzra na dahum qiamat maloom

(I give not my heart to form (surat) if the disposition (seerat) be known

I am a slave of divine love!

O Ascetic! Cast not the terror of the Judgement Day into our heart

We have lived through the terror of separation and we can see what Judgement Day may be like..)

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Ref: Encyclopaedia of Indian Women Through the Ages: Simmi Jain

History of Jahangir : Beni Prasad

The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals: Abraham Eraly

The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India : William Foster

Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri (translated by A.Rogers)

Storia de Mogor by Niccolao Manucci (translated by William Irvine)

The History of Hindostan : Alexander Dow

The Feast of Roses: Indu Sundaresan

Transitioning...from what could have been to what definitely was!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:16:00 +0000

We have spoken to Sita. We have heard the story of Draupadi’s life and tried to delve into her psyche. And now, on the “Extraordinary Women” series, it is the time to leave the world of mythology and take a look at two outstanding women of Indian history. While Sita and Draupadi are two of the strongest female characters in Hindu mythology, the next two are exemplary women in pre-dominantly Islamic settings.

While one chose to be famous voluntarily and worked hard to achieve a status which was unparalleled by any other woman during her time, the other had a very different take on life, love, ambition and other such matters. While one ruthlessly broke all contemporary customs for females, the other through her simple and gentle ways made sure her name would never be forgotten by the world.

Without further ado, then, its story time!

Fire and Ice - Yagyaseni Draupadi

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:17:00 +0000

Fallen on the cushion of soft white snow, on the ridge of a peak somewhere in the Himalayas, abandoned by her co passengers and left alone to die – lay the empress of Indraprastha and Hastinapur, the proud Pandava queen.

Ironical, isn’t it? A woman who sprang forth from fire, to make history, died shivering in ice. Surely VedVyas (who dictated the Mahabharata to the elephant-headed God) could have given his heroine a better, more comfortable and more honourable farewell? My first reaction is - Draupadi has always been wronged by the men in her life. Even by the author who created her in his vision.

On more thoughtful reflection I think - may be...just may be...the wise sage knew that only the iridescent, chilled, pure white snow of the austere Himalayas could finally calm and extinguish the blazing fire that was Draupadi.

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“Ati Keshi Pati Nasha” – I first heard this Sanskrit phrase from an elderly domestic help. She had some kind of a grudge against her new daughter-in-law, who, she claimed, would surely bring about the downfall of her son. Literally translated to English, it means – “A woman with long voluminous hair brings about the destruction of her husband.”

This is how the story of Draupadi’s life has impacted our society. It is extremely rare to find a girl named after Draupadi. One of my friends pointed out “it’s not cool! And she would be at the receiving end of jokes.” But is that the only reason? Do parents in small town and/or rural India care about cool names? Also, I do not think anyone of us have even a grandmother or great grandmother in the family, named after Draupadi. No, she seems to be the one-whose-name-mustn’t-be-used. Why? Because she is a wife to five men! Horrors! Because she has been humiliated like no woman should ever be! God forbid! But most importantly and primarily, because the self appointed guardians of our society have branded her a kritya – a woman who brings about the destruction of her own clan.
She is the bloodthirsty, angry, violent woman who will not blink an eyelid before avenging herself on her own people.

And yet, after all the charges and allegations we level at the princess of Panchala, she remains, without the hint of a doubt, the most written about and extensively researched female of Indian mythology. Countless scholars have given in to the sheer spell of her dark charms and many papers, theses, books, novels, articles and thoughts have tried time and again, to define what made Draupadi the fiery star of the greatest epic in the world.

Without Draupadi in the Mahabharata, there would have been no Mahabharata. She is the cause and all that followed, the effect.

Draupadi is a far cry from the controlled, restrained, gentle Sita. She is forever beyond social rules. She will not obey and nothing in the world can make her obey. She has a quicksilver mind of her own and a heart that refuses to listen to norms. And that is what she remains forever. That wild, magnetic, sultry, free thinking girl every boy’s mother has warned him about!

From her fiery birth to her icy death, she has to be different. And she is. Delightfully different. Here’s taking a look at the First Lady of Indian mythology.

First and foremost, Draupadi is Yagyaseni – born from the flames of the sacred fire. She doesn’t have the mortal need for the matrix of a human womb. In Sanskrit, she is “ayonija sambhava” – not-of-a-woman-born. She can bring herself forth. She doesn’t need to be given birth to. First rule, broken.

And she is dark. Very dark. Hence one of her names is Krishnaa. That’s another patrician rule broken. Here again, Draupadi stands out. To be born into a north Indian, Aryan society, with even a shade less than a rosy, milky complexion would have guaranteed any other princess lifelong spinsterhood and no suitors. But not Draupadi! This dark, proud girl is called, upon her emergence from fire, “the most beautiful woman in the world.” (And she lives her life like the “most beautiful woman in the world” would - with constant, unending and mostly unwanted male attention.)

It is also quite possible that Draupadi is the girl child King Drupad never wished for. Though it has never been actually stated in the Mahabharata, it can be made out from the fact that King Drupad was a revenge-hungry, beaten man who wanted nothing more than a warrior son to capture and punish his friend turned foe Dronacharya. But he gets more than he bargained for when after the emergence of Dhrishtadyumna (the desired warrior son), out springs a young, slim, dark and beautiful maiden with eyes like “the leaves of the autumn-lotus”. At her emergence, her fate is branded. The air reverberates with the celestial message –

“This is Panchaali, a daughter for the King of Panchala. A gift from the Gods. Look after her well, O king! For dark of skin and the most beautiful of all women, peerless in manner and virtue and tender of form, she is born to change history. She will cause the most devastating war in the story of mankind. It is she who will bring about the downfall of the Kurus.”

(It will interest us to note that the word “panchaali” has a double meaning....it is also a synonym for “puppet”. It’s ironical, for someone as vocal and exuberant as her. But again, as we can see, it gives us a peek into how Draupadi is going to live out her entire life, acting out her father’s vengeance and also being a key instrument of the Gods to bring death to the mightiest Kshatriya clan of that era, the Kurus)

Yet again, the “peerless princess” shatters the norms of convention when she quietly gives in to the seemingly horrific idea of being the common wife of the five Pandava brothers. Everywhere else in the epic, Draupadi screams out for justice. Then why is she quiet at this unnatural arrangement? There are only two reasons I can think of.

One, Draupadi has been silenced and her dialogues obliterated by some deft hand. Epics are written and rewritten, modified, edited, added to and deleted from over centuries. While the backbone of the story remains the same, other imaginative authors make changes to epics and hence there are multiple versions. So it is a possibility that Draupadi’s expression of shock at being married off to five brothers has been conveniently removed.

The second reason why I think she keeps quiet at this crucial juncture is because she has astute political genius. This is a woman who knows when to prioritise the cravings of her heart and when to play along with the strategies of the mind. While her father and brother are raving and ranting about the never-seen-before arrangement, Draupadi is calculating the pros and cons. Here is how I think Draupadi’s mind must have worked.

First, she is aware of the fact that if she raises too much of a hue and cry and the Pandavas decide to call off the wedding and walk away, no matter how beautiful, she will never have another suitor all her life. (In those days no one would have come forward to marry a princess who has been discarded by her spouse(s)-to-be due to her vociferous protests). She has already spoken her mind once during her Swayamvar in front of mighty kings, when she rejected Karna outright by saying the steely words that haunted the most tragic hero of all times, forever – “Naaham Varayaami Sootaputram” (I shall not marry a charioteer’s son).

Second, Draupadi knows that all of the five brothers desire her. She is totally aware of the power of her immense beauty. She understands that there cannot be complete fraternal harmony amongst the brothers if she lives amongst them as the wife of only one. It would be a very awkward situation. She knows that harmony amongst the Pandava brothers is absolutely essential for them to achieve what they have been brought up for. It is also important for her to achieve the objective that was the reason of her own birth.

Third, Draupadi can clearly see why her mother-in-law Kunti has tightly held the five reigns in her hands and has been the chief decision maker for all her sons. This position is now for Draupadi to take. She knows that the destiny of the Pandavas is to battle their enemies one day and that is her fate as well...and it is a common enemy. So instead of all the five brothers entrusting five different women with their affection, thoughts and confidences, she alone can exercise control and influence the thoughts of all the brothers.

Fourth, living the crude, dangerous jungle life the Pandavas were living at the time of their collective wedding to Draupadi, taking care of and protecting five different princesses would have meant a considerable loss of time, energy and resources for the Pandavas. One woman, beautiful, intelligent, accomplished in every way and the daughter of a powerful king, is indeed the ideal spouse for all the five Pandavas.

The fifth and the most important reason is the symbolic meaning of this unique union. The firebrand heroine of the Mahabharata is a human incarnate of Shree (the goddess of fortune, harmony, joy and victory). The five brothers represent some indispensible qualities that must come together to ensure victory and harmony.

Yudhishthir is Righteousness, Justice and Wisdom, Bhima is Physical Strength, Arjuna is Skill, Charm and Power, Nakula is Beauty of the human form and Gentleness personified and last but not the least Sahadeva represents Learning and Knowledge of the secrets of nature. Draupadi is their joy, the source of their harmony. True, all the brothers have their own individual wives as well, but no one can ever replace the special affection they have for Draupadi, because she is their best friend, confidant and at times their moral guide. She is the only consort who has been the companion of all their joys and sorrows. She is their “Shree”; their divine luck. She is the silken thread that runs through the heart of five priceless pearls, thus binding them to each other forever.

(You may point out that together these six have faced the worst of times, but you must notice that jungle or palace, the Pandavas have never starved, never squabbled against one another or given in to sibling rivalry, they have never been attacked fatally after their wedding to Draupadi and in the end have managed to emerge victorious. With their “divine luck” by their side, no matter how harsh the conditions, the Pandavas have had the last laugh.)

After her marriage to the Pandava brothers, there is a subtle yet noticeable shift in the central female character of the epic. So far, it was Kunti, the mother, who gave her sons her steely devotion and was a strict disciplinarian. Now, the balance of power tilts in favour of Draupadi, the wife who will bind them together with affection, presence of mind and great tact.

There is an anecdote that shows Draupadi’s wit. Duryodhana’s wife Bhanumati makes a snide comment to Draupadi, regarding her multiple husbands - “kena vrittena Draupadi pandavan adhitishthasi” (how does Draupadi manage to control her five husbands?). Not the one to keep quiet, Draupadi retorts “pativriddhi kuley mama” (“there has always been an excessive number of husbands in my in-laws’ clan”....referring to the fact that her and Bhanumati’s common great grandmother-in-law Satyavati, grandmothers-in-law Ambika and Ambalika as well as her mother-in-law Kunti have sexually known more men than one).

Many say that it is the sharpness of her tongue that led to her biggest humiliation. She never learnt to hold her tongue. But looking at it from another perspective, if Yudhishthir hadn’t agreed to the gambling match it wouldn’t have happened. Any which way, once Draupadi was staked and won, the lecherous sons of Dhritarashtra would have done something obscene or the other – with or without Draupadi’s caustic remarks.

Tired after her long journey from Indraprastha, menstruating, clad in a single sheet of cloth (as was the custom in those days for menstruating women) and shocked out of her senses, the beautiful daughter of the King of Panchala, the proud sister of the brave Dhrishtadyumna, the devoted wife of the greatest warriors of all time, the Pandavas – Draupadi is dragged by her open hair into a court full of leering men on one side and defeated, beaten, mute elders and husbands on the other. Initial shock over, Draupadi immediately calls upon her knowledge of the Nyayashastra (book of law) and asks two questions which remain unanswered through the entire course of the Mahabharata –

"Is a wife a commodity or cattle or owned property that she can be staked?"
and
“Can a gambler who has lost everything, including himself, retain enough right on his wife so as to stake her in a gamble?”

Her knowledge hasn’t deserted her in her greatest crisis. She is jeered at, called a whore (by who else, but Karna!) and her attire is pulled at violently for all the men to stare at her bare body. After her initial cry for help to her husbands and the elderly, Draupadi must have understood that no one could shame her if she didn’t do anything shameful herself. They were only shaming themselves. She stops struggling completely and for the last time, asks help from one person who she knows will never fail her – Her best friend, the flute playing cowherd, Krishna.

Let us step back for a moment from the hedonistic court of Hastinapur where Draupadi is being publicly disrobed.
Let us for a moment; take a look at a small interaction between best friends Krishnaa and Krishna, which is a glimpse of the simplest, purest and best relation between two human beings. Let us go back to the royal hall of Indraprastha where Krishna has just killed the abusive Shishupala with his divine Sudarshan discus and all are staring quietly in awe. Only Krishnaa steps forward and points out to Krishna that he has cut his finger from using the discus and is bleeding. Krishna acts cool and says it's nothing. With an indulgent smile and concern in her eyes, Krishnaa tears off an end of her abominably expensive saree and bandages her best friend’s bleeding finger.

“Oh my dearest Krishnaa,” smiles the protector of all universe, himself protected by a woman’s pure concern, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes “You have ruined that lovely saree of your’s in attempting to heal my wound! But do not worry; I will surely replace that saree one day, though mine may not be as expensive!”

Need I say anymore? Though they never claimed to be brother and sister but by this simple and innocent act of love, together Krishna and his sakhi Krishnaa set off what we celebrate as Rakshabandhan. That torn and jagged piece of Draupadi’s saree, tied around Krishna’s finger to stop the bleeding became the first Rakhi ever and the never ending saree that clung to Draupadi during the worst moment of her life, protecting her honour, was her best friend’s promise fulfilled.

Let us now return to the court of Hastinapur – Draupadi is standing, trembling with rage, near the heap of the never ending saree that appeared from nowhere and draped her safely the moment she thought of Krishna, the wicked Dussasana is panting with exhaustion and others are either staring in amazement or hanging their head in shame. Her words are dripping with sarcasm and cynicism when she addresses the Kuru elders -

“One duty remains, which I must now do as your junior and the royal daughter-in-law of the Kurus. Dragged by my hair by this mighty hero, I nearly forgot to salute all of you. I was so confused. I was so scared. I was so ashamed. Sirs, I bow to all of you now, all my elders and superiors. Forgive me for not doing so earlier. It was not at all my fault, gentlemen of the sabha.”

She then curses the entire Kuru clan with destruction for the humiliation of a helpless woman. The diplomatic Dhritarashtra immediately starts a consolation speech for the violated queen and begs her to take her curse back. The blind king offers her three boons.

At this juncture, the innate nobility of Draupadi’s character springs out, as Karna (who didn’t conduct himself chivalrously at all during the high drama), points -

“That day Panchaali did a deed exceedingly pure and difficult. Herself and the Pandavas she lifted up like a ship from the swell of the terrible sea. None of the world’s renowned beautiful women have done such a deed.”

She frees her husbands and herself in lieu of the first boon. For the second, she only asks back the weapons that belong to all five of her husbands. The third boon, Draupadi refuses with fierce dignity. She knows in her heart that with her mighty husbands free from slavery and their weapons back, she doesn’t need any other gift or boon from anybody. She will now prepare them to extract the bloodiest revenge in history.

The attempted disrobing of Draupadi in the court of Hastinapur is the most decisive moment of the entire epic. Nothing ensures more strongly that now brothers will spill the blood of brothers to avenge the grave humiliation of a woman.

Later, when the Pandavas are sent into exile, Draupadi chooses to accompany them. She could have stayed back like the other wives. But she doesn’t. Reasons being – one, to signify their “Shree” or luck has not abandoned them and two, she does not want them to forget for a moment in the peace of jungle life that they failed her as protectors and husbands. Throughout their twelve years of forest exile and one year of staying incognito, Draupadi with her open uncombed hair, her tears and her caustic, bitter remarks, keeps the fire of revenge burning in the hearts of the Pandavas.

When Draupadi finds, to her horror, that all her husbands and even her unfailing best friend Krishna are inching towards a compromise with the Kauravas and begging merely for five villages to look after instead of the entire Hastinapur that is rightfully theirs, she brings forth her entire feminine armoury of tears, command on language and the bruises on her honour that refuse to heal, to turn the course of events inexorably towards war. She upbraids Krishna thus:

“How could your sakhi, the wife of the Pandavas, Dhrishtadyumna’s sister be dragged into a royal assembly as I was done? I was in my period, I was wearing a single cloth, deep in anguish I was shaking all over, and I was hauled by force into the assembly of the Kurus. Those sinners, evils sons of Dhritarashtra, they laughed seeing me there, in the middle of that royal assembly, in the midst of kings, my saree being pulled off my body."

"While the sons of Pandu were still alive, while the Panchalas were still alive, while the Yadus were still alive, they wanted to enjoy me as a slave is enjoyed."

"Shame on the strength of Bheemasena! Shame on Arjuna’s Gandeeva! Shame on them that they sat enduring my ill-treatment! Shame on Yudhishtira! Shame on them if Duryodhana lives even for another instant!”

Draupadi, crying aloud inconsolably in the jungle, wailing again and again, forlorn, heart-broken, desolate, disconsolate, her heart sinking with the grief of her boundless sorrow, tells Krishna:

“No, Krishna, I have neither husbands, nor sons, nor relatives. I have no brothers, I have no father, nor have I even you! Because, Krishna, you all ignore how I was outraged in that assembly, as if that grief does not touch your heart. I can never forget for a moment how Karna laughed at me, seeing my plight then.
Remember Krishna, you had the responsibility to protect me forever for four reasons: because you are related to me, because I am an honourable woman, because you are my friend, and because you are capable of doing it.”

It is exceedingly difficult to find this kind of vociferous eloquence and passion in any female character of any epic in the world. On one instance she simply asks Krishna, if she chose to forgive the Kauravas completely, would he promise that no woman would ever be humiliated again? Draupadi is power, eloquence and assertiveness personified. Giving in to her, finally Krishna says:

“The Himavant hills may move, the Earth may shatter in a hundred pieces, heavens may collapse; but my promise stands…You will see your enemies killed.”

The war begins! The great war of Kurukshetra. Where brothers fight brothers. Where grandsons fight their beloved grandfather and students fight teachers they once revered. There is rarely a parallel to this war in recorded history and/or mythology. Draupadi has her wish. Draupadi finally has her revenge. She emerges as the prima donna of Mahabharata. A role etched out exclusively for her.

In the process of extracting her revenge, fighting for justice and fulfilling the prophecy made at her birth, Draupadi makes heroes out of the Pandavas. The same five brothers who sat and watched their wife getting publicly belittled, the same five who had given up all hope and were ready for the paltriest compromise, fight like tigers in the war for honour and righteousness.All thanks to only and only the princess of Panchala who kept the fire burning in her heart and theirs through years of hardship and pain. It is Draupadi who pushes them on the path of heroism.

Her next responsibility is that of an empress. But before that, Draupadi brings back Yudhishthir from the edge of post-war depression. He doesn’t want to rule a kingdom he has obtained by killing his relatives. Draupadi first gently and then aggressively reminds him of his duty. She reminds him that she too has lost her father, her brother and her five sons and after a major tug-of-war with Yudhishthir’s looming guilt and melancholy, she reinstates him as the King of Hastinapur.

Finally, after decades of ruling, when it is the time to leave the worldly pleasures in search of salvation, it is again Draupadi out of all the other Pandava consorts (Devika,Hidimba, Valandhara, Ulupi, Chitrangada, Subhadra, Karenumati and Vijaya) who voluntarily chooses to accompany her husbands. She could have stayed back. But she doesn’t. Whether she really romantically loves each one of them or not is a difficult question to answer, and most probably she doesn’t, but never does she desert them.

Draupadi has to be the heroine till the end. She will not sit behind in some dark deserted palace, grow old and toothless and spend her last days with gout and gossip, teaching her great grand daughters-in-law the trick of making the perfect mango pickle. Can you imagine Draupadi like that? I can’t. She herself couldn’t. She’d rather perish suddenly and heroically on a journey towards heaven. And that is what she chooses.

If Sita is the fair, domesticated, gentle Gauri - the Goddess of domestic bliss and marital harmony then I guess we can compare Draupadi to the untamed, angry Kali, the Goddess of war.

The cult of Draupadi Amma in south India, Singapore and Sri Lanka, celebrates and reveres Draupadi as a folk deity who is a representation of cosmic power and eroticism. In Hindu holy scriptures, Draupadi is one of the five sacred virgins – the Panch Kanya (along with Ahalya, Tara and Mandodari from the Ramayana and her own mother-in-law Kunti). How can a woman with five husbands be a “sacred virgin”, one might ask. Well, as you may have noticed all the women who make up the Panch Kanya are married. So the virginity is metaphoric. Here being a virgin isn’t a bodily condition, but it refers to an inner state of the psyche that remains firm and unshaken in its quest for its goal. The virgin is capable of making choices, rejecting offers, making her ideas heard out loud and getting her wishes fulfilled. Physically she may not be a spinster or a maiden. In Panch Kanya symbolism, she is a psychological virgin. As opposed to the non-virgin, who continually keeps adapting to others’ needs, a Panch Kanya virgin is clear about what she wants and will work hard in such an intelligent manner that people around her are convinced to help her in achieving her goal. Thus Draupadi finds place of pride amongst the Panch Kanya of Hindu mythology.

While we are fine with worshipping Sita in temples, we will perhaps forever shy away from welcoming Draupadi into our hearts and homes as a good daughter or the stereotype of an ideal wife. We will always look at her with some kind of a frightful reverence. Draupadi is a questioning woman. A rebellious woman. A powerful, assertive, eloquent and passionate woman. A fearless woman with an unbending will. She is the rule breaking wild child with a mind of her own. So it’s best to keep her at a distance, not use her name and never make a goddess out of her. That is what the custodians of our society are comfortable with. As for Draupadi, knowing what I know of her, she wouldn’t care two hoots about what others think!

Is Draupadi for real? Is she history or is she pure imagination? Or is she somewhere in between reality and myth? Oh let us not bother to bind a timeless woman to a particular period in time. That will rob her magnificence. To be relevant in the contemporary world, the fiery, path breaking idea that is Draupadi, has to be beyond time and space and free of historical and geographical boundaries. There were Draupadis born in the past, there are such women in the present and there will be Draupadis in the future. Women who dare to break rules and challenge conventions.

The Mahabharata is a symbolic narration that reflects the thoughts and feelings, social interactions and reflections of the Indian people over centuries. That is what makes the Mahabharata an epic, because we will forever identify with its imperfect, flawed characters and complicated situations.

Likewise, Draupadi is the symbolic representation of the doubts, concerns, the endless unanswered questions and the uncomfortable topics we prefer to keep under the carpet. And that is exactly why Draupadi will remain the first eloquent and vociferous pioneer of women’s liberation....the thinking, questioning woman, who will stand up for justice and take the most unconventional stand.

She keeps questioning our beliefs on - what is cultured behaviour? What is the nature of morality? Is respect a birthright or does it have to be earned by actions? What is the place for women in a society that keeps changing its rules at its own convenience? Who will make rules for those who make rules for everyone else?

She is the Devil’s Advocate in the epic.

The beautiful, intelligent, strong willed and controversial heroine of the Mahabharata, who created heroes and anti heroes out of the characters that crossed her path, is simultaneously ancient and ever-new in her ideologies.That is why the story of her life and times, and all the people who became a part of it, will continue to enchant and enthrall us just as it enchanted and enthralled generations for centuries.

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P.S - I think VedVyas was right in letting the fiery heroine of his epic fall off first. He made sure out of all the six who set off into the Himalayas, it was she who attained peace and salvation first. She doesn’t remain lingering and labouring behind to grieve the fall and demise of any of her husbands. She is spared. She is relieved the fastest. She is finally at peace.

Please do note that, only after Draupadi, the personification of “divine luck” granted to the Pandavas, leaves them, do they start falling off one after the other on their icy track.

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Ref : The Mahabharata (translated by R.C Dutt), Dent, 1910
The Palace of Illusions - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Picador India, 2008
The Cult of Draupadi,Alf Hiltebeitel Vol. I, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1988
She-who-must-be-obeyed; Pradip Bhattacharya, Manushi Newsletter
The Other Wives: Devdutt Pattanaik

The birthling of the Earth - Sita

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:37:00 +0000

“I am happy the way I am. Thank you very much. I have reached a peaceful compromise with life and circumstances. I do not need anyone, anymore.”

“And please do refer to me only as Sita. For that is my name. Sita, the birthling found in a furrow on the Earth (seeth). For once let me not be Janaka’s daughter Janaki or the princess of Mithila, Maithili.”

Vaidehi?

“Vaidehi isn’t my own name too. King Janaka, bless his soul, earned the sobriquet Videha and I his daughter, therefore became Vaidehi. Let’s please stick with Sita.”

Meeting Sita isn’t easy. She is quite a recluse. She isn’t the coquettish, talkative type. I don’t think Sita really likes people a lot. Can’t blame her, considering she has spent most of her life in forests, away from the mainstream crowd. She has probably come to love her solitude, which has been her constant and faithful companion, never mind all the rest.

Sita is inexpressibly beautiful. In the perfect conventional manner. A peaches and cream complexion, almond eyes, a royal, delicately curved nose and rosebud lips. Certainly not a person made to toil in jungles and unfriendly terrain. And yet, that has been her destiny. She is calm about it. No wild raving and ranting. There is a cool aura about her. But it’s not the chill of conceit. It is the calming coolness of a wise, loving woman.

She is also a princess to the last bit. Dignified, sophisticated and restrained.

“I wasn’t like that always. I have learnt it the hard way. There have been times when I have known no restrain. Like the time I first saw my husband at the Swayamvar hall, through my thin silken veil, my heart almost jumping out of my bosom. Like the time when my husband decided to leave for the forest to honour my father-in-law’s promise to Queen Kaikeyi. And leave me behind for fourteen years”

Sita first appears in the Ramayana at the wedding scene in King Janaka’s palace and is thus introduced:

“This is Sita child of Janak, dearer unto him than life

Henceforth sharer of thy virtue, be she, prince, thy faithful wife

Of thy weal and woe partaker, be she thine in every land,

Cherish her in joy and sorrow, clasp her hand within thy hand,

As the shadow to the substance, to her lord is faithful wife,

And my Sita best of women follows, then, in death or life!”

Sita has long been epitomised as feminine perfection in India. She is the ideal daughter, ideal wife and ideal mother. I guess our patriarchal society is more comfortable with Sita (as opposed to the mercurial Draupadi) because in her we see a soft hearted, tearful, gentle and almost subservient woman who is a picture of endless sacrifice.

But I think it would be absolutely unfair to judge Sita in the light of the contemporary, newfangled standards of women's rights without understanding her contextually. And she is not the permanent damsel in distress she is portrayed to be in popular culture. Considering the time period during which the Ramayana was composed, Sita is remarkably vocal in the presence of towering male characters.

“I did speak. Very passionately. Whenever I have felt unjust treatment was being meted out to me, I have raised my voice in my own way. When I got to know, right after my wedding, that I was to remain behind for fourteen years while my husband went to the forest, I was shocked. Here is your newly wedded wife, whom you have uprooted from her father’s home and all you decide is to abandon her for the sake of an act of unnecessary filial obedience?”

When instructed to stay back in Ayodhya for fourteen years, Sita is terribly hurt. She is consumed by the agony of a prolonged separation and says to her husband,

“For my mother often taught me and my father often spake,

That home the wedded woman doth beside her husband make,

As the shadow to the substance, to her lord is the faithful wife,

And she parts not from her consort till she parts with fleeting life.”

But these fail to move her man. Sita promises him she would be no trouble to him in the jungle. She would serve him constantly. The roots and fruits of the jungle would be enough food for her. The new bride who can’t bear the idea of separation throws herself before her lord and in the glory of her simple, pure and innocent love, proclaims that “she would be walking ahead of him in the jungle – so that she could crush under her feet the thorns, the knife-edged blades of grass and the sharp stones on the way and make his way smooth for him!” Yet her husband isn’t convinced.

Finally, with torrents of tears pouring down her almond eyes, the new daughter-in-law of Ayodhya cries in agony and anguish, “I wonder, Rama, if my father King Janaka understood when he got you as a son-in-law that he was really getting only a woman in the body of a man.”

Nobody has ever asked Sita before if she ever regretted her decision of accompanying her husband to the forest. For it led to many undesirable events later. Sitting alone in captivity in faraway Sri Lanka, did for once she think it would have been wiser not to come?

“I have never regretted any decision or action in my life.”

Not even her frenzy of momentary desire for possessing the golden maya deer? Had she not asked for it, her husband wouldn’t have gone in pursuit and long story short, she wouldn’t have been abducted.

“Well, it was a mistake. I erred and I got my share of punishment. More than my share. But at least I exemplified to the world that lusting after the mere pleasures of the senses, brings about nasty events.”

“You must not forget it was my brother- in-law who chopped off Shurpanakha’s nose. That itself was the beginning of the end. Ravana would have extracted his revenge one way or the other for the disgrace his sister faced. The chain of events was already set in motion. I never acted with foolish bravado or did anything out of the ordinary”

Coming to think of it, she is right. Ravana would have harmed the princes of Ayodhya one way or the other once Shurpanakha’s nose was gone. Sita’s desiring the golden deer, her persuading Rama to go looking for it and finally, sending Lakshman in search of Rama were nothing out of the ordinary. Anybody would like to have a nice, golden pet; anybody would want to rush to the aid of a person presumed injured. What’s so wrong with that? Are all actions only justified by the results they end in? If Ravana hadn't appeared on the scene after Lakshman left to look for Rama, then, Sita's longing for the golden deer and sending Lakshman after her husband would have been rarely noticeable, obscure, unimportant events in Ramayana.

“People have forever blamed me for crossing the Lakshman Rekha. But everyone forgets conveniently, in our times, giving alms to a Brahmin was not a matter of choice. It was what you absolutely did if a Brahmin came begging. It was an unbreakable code of Kshatriya conduct. It wasn’t a choice. It was a compulsion.”

Another aspect of Sita that comes to the front, as we ponder on her abduction by the King of Lanka, is her presence of mind.

Sita quickly recovers from the initial shock of being kidnapped and begins to throw her jewellery down to mark the way for her husband and brother-in-law, who she knew would come looking for her. I don’t know how many girls in the process of getting kidnapped can think that fast. Even today.

In captivity of Ravana, surrounded by demonesses, Sita uses her command on language, her passion and her powerful speech again and shatters Ravana’s supreme confidence into pieces. She is not the one to get swayed by Ravana’s riches or power or even threats. Much before her husband comes to Lanka with a large army, Sita fights Ravana off in the solitude of the gloomy Ashokvatika. Absolutely alone. Her only weapons – her chastity, her faith, the clarity of her mind and her eloquent words.

“Sure thy fitful life is shadowed by a dark and dreadful fate,

Since in frenzy of thy passion courtest thou a warrior's mate"

But heroines do not get respite very easily. Or else they wouldn’t be heroines.

“My moment of truth came right after the war. I wish I had seen it right then.” sighs Sita.

A faithful wife, who refused the great riches and material pleasures of Lanka, when reunited with her husband, is humiliated in the worst possible manner. Rama tells her in firm words that he fought the war only to save his Kshatriya honour and redeem his status as a great warrior.

“I was told that since I was touched by Ravana and I had stayed in his captivity unprotected, I was now free to go where I liked, the ten directions were open to me, and I could give my heart and body, to whoever I wished.”

Two teardrops shining like diamonds appear at the corner of her eyes.

“I told him that his statements weren’t fit to be spoken even by the cheapest of men to the worst of women. I did not want to prove my chastity by jumping into the fire. I just wanted to die.”

“But I didn’t.” she pauses

Does she blame her husband?

"I do not blame anybody for anything. Aren't we all merely puppets, dancing to the directions of a master puppeteer? I have long forgiven everybody all their transgressions against me. And my husband? Oh! I loved him! I loved him so much that I'd have cut my heart out of my body if he only just asked!"

"He had his compulsions. I always sympathized with his perennial need to prove himself a righteous and honest King."

And how about being a loving husband who would stand by her no matter what?

“You can’t have it all in one life. You win some, you lose some.”

Sita swallowed the agony of her humiliation by her own beloved husband and accompanied him back to Ayodhya. She played her part quietly in his coronation and for the next few years to come, happily provided her husband all conjugal pleasures. And then, in the manner of a very cruel and bad joke, in the sheer happiness of new life springing within her womb, Sita was told that her husband had decided to get rid of her. Her husband, perturbed by rumours of people talking about the chastity of a queen who lived all alone in Lanka, identified her as the single biggest hindrance to his position as the best king the world has ever seen.

“He himself was in a difficult situation. In some ways, whatever he did would have displeased someone or the other. Was his primary duty to his kingdom or to his wife? His was an internal struggle between the king and the husband.”

After rallying from the initial shock, brave, strong, dignified and ever so kind, Sita tells her husband soothingly to act in a manner befitting a king. She knows no matter where she is, his heart will be her’s forever. Sita doesn’t, for a moment, suffer from insecurity about her marriage and relationship. She has a simple and strong conviction that is very endearing.

Pregnant, banished and unofficially divorced, Sita is quick to gather herself, cheer up and move on with life. She brings forth new life in the jungle hermitage of Rishi Valmiki. The twins, Lav and Kush.

Sita is now the single mother. But she doesn’t let her melancholy affect her children. She brings them up disciplined, brave and strong. Though unhappy herself, she teaches her children to respect their father. She never teaches them hate and vengeance. No one could say her children came from broken homes.

In contemporary society we are anguished to face separation, divorce and single parenthood. Sita went through it with all her love and patience.

“It was he who suffered more. I had my children with me. He was lonelier. Can’t you see, he always had to let go of the people he loved the most. I always saw his inner struggle between an ideal king and a man who wants a normal happy life. Do not judge him harshly. He was very sad.”

“I, on the other hand, always made peace with my situation.”

Sita never saw herself as a miserable victim. In her mind and in her conduct she was always a greatly dignified royal princess and a faithful wife who loved endlessly. She never begs, never rants and never makes a scene to be taken back and restored as a queen. She never goes marching back to demand her equal rights. Neither does she run to her father’s house wailing and complaining. She is the ever understanding wife. The ever loving mother.

And she is also the picture of restrained royal dignity. Once her sons are accepted as the rightful heirs to the throne of Ayodhya, Sita’s job is done. She no longer needs to prove anything to anybody. And so, calling upon her mother, Bhumi (the Goddess Earth), Sita leaves. She brings her story to an end and leaves others to carry on with the miseries of life. Sita, unlike many of us, knew where to draw the line. Like I said, a princess to the very end.

I have one final question. What should contemporary women, so empowered in every way, (and even men for that matter) learn from the story of a woman who lived and loved thousands of ages ago?

“My life on Earth as a human will only be successful if everybody learns little more forbearance. Learn from my follies."
"Understand that between soul mates, like my husband and me, there exists a bond greater than that of expressed love. If hardships and physical separation sever the ties that bind two hearts, then it's not love, it's just convenience."
"Learn how to bring up balanced children even when faced with marital difficulties."
"Understand that being chaste and pure is a state of mind and soul, not a bodily parameter. An attack on the physical body doesn't take anybody's honour or purity away."
"Do not use my name to awe your daughters, wives and daughters-in-law into docile submission. Submission comes out of deep love, not force. I had spoken my mind in my time. Let them speak theirs'. I held my moral ground. Let all women hold theirs'.”

Finally Sita says, in her cool, gentle manner, before she chooses to leave my dream like rendezvous with her –

“We live as humans in a human world. We make mistakes, we face troubles and sometimes we get into very complicated situations. You can either choose to crib about the hardships for the rest of your existence and blame everybody and be bitter. Or you can choose to forgive and move on. I chose the latter.
Forgiving is healing, calming and strengthening.”

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P.S - Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule and reading my blog.

If you are enjoying reading these articles, may I request you to please follow this blog by signing into Blogger with your Google ID and share the link to any article that you like the most here - on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and any other social media you may be using...so your friends can visit too? :)
I am a new author and I would be grateful for any kind of encouragement from my readers. It is a tough world out there for new authors!
Thanks once again! Hope you love reading my articles as much as I loved writing them!

Ref: 1. The Ramayana (Translated by Romesh C. Dutt), Dent, 1910

2. Brockington, J. L., Righteous Rama: The Evolution of an Epic., Oxford University Press.

3. Milton's Eve and The Ramayana's Sita: Two female archetypes.

Curtain Raiser - A sneak peek at what's coming soon on Ionosphere!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:27:00 +0000

(This is a brief introduction to the topic, theme and mood of the next few blogs I will be writing)

I am not a feminist. Well, at least not the hardcore bra-burning type feminist.

Oh yes, I totally agree that men have ruled the earth and fought terrible and violent wars. Men have been great heroes and greater anti-heroes. Men have, since time immemorial, laid down rules for other men and definitely for all the women. Men have had their stories told and retold in epics and other great documents that have passed the test of time. People like Alexander, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka, Akbar not to forget Lord Rama and the Pandava brothers.

It certainly cannot be denied that through the ages Men, their motives, thoughts and actions have shaped our society as we know it today.

(Oh come on, for every female scientist you name I can name five male worshippers of science and for every queen, ten better known kings. For example, who was Queen Devi? Who was Queen Tishyarakshita? Without Googling please. No? Not in any book you read in school on Indian history? Of course you know who King Ashoka was! The women I named were two of his wives. But who cares, really! )

I pay my respects and genuflect in awe, for these men have left no stone unturned to see to it that they will forever be deemed as no less than Gods walking on earth.

And yet, for some strange reason, whenever I indulge in history and/or mythology, I tend to gravitate more towards HER-story than HIS-story.

To some women scribes have been kind, to others very harsh. For example, while you may still find a rare Sita or Janaki (mostly down South), it is next to impossible to find a girl named Draupadi. (The only time someone has that name is when her parents have been advised by the astrologer that the name "Draupadi" is an “upaya” - a way to ward off ill luck by using the name of an ill fated one.). Most of our mythical women have been avoided meticulously at least in names. In North India, it’s very rare to find names like Sita, Draupadi, Kunti, Shakuntala, Damayanti. Not that you absolutely can’t, but if you do, there is always a story on how that name was given to the person bearing it. (In sharp contrast are the Westerners. While Eve, I grant you, is rare, Helen is very common although Helen of Troy was a siren at the root of a great and devastating war. )

Cutting a long story short, I want to write the next few entries about women. But fear not! I am not writing about women you have never heard of. Because it is very likely that I haven’t heard of them myself.

I will be giving my time to four very well known, legendary, extraordinary Indian women. Two are from the ever so hazy realm of mythology touching the edges of history and the other two are shining jewels of documented Indian history. Two are very well known figures of Hinduism and the other two outstanding women in Islamic society.

Of course all historical and mythological ladies have been written about umpteen times. But this time, I’ll go beyond facts and dates, I will humbly delve into their psyche and try to understand the very essence of their nature. Why they did what they did and how they managed to carve out niches for themselves in our very volatile memories and short attention spans.

These four women, two mythical and two historical,have always been quite the darlings of researchers, thinkers and authors. One has been put on the pedestal of eternal maternity and worshipped, her needs and wants totally obliterated. Another has been either harshly criticized or valiantly glorified. The third lady has been held as an example of what not to be and what not to do in a male dominated society too egoistic to acknowledge her fine talents and the last one has been loved by a man like no other woman in history, present and may be even the future.

Whatever be the differences of their respective natures, their approaches to life, their world views and their responses to situations, one common thread binds these four women I am going to meet…they were destined to become famous and have their names etched in gold and fire, across time.

I sincerely hope you will enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed researching and writing about them.

Long time no see....

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:38:00 +0000

Its been a long time I wrote something worthwhile.....time and energy are limited and excuses abundant!
But I am working on stuff that requires a little in depth research and can't be written in a hurry, for that'll not only be controversial but also incorrect and unfair....

The only thing I can promise is...it may come a little late...but it will ,by no means, disappoint! (fingers crossed)

P

The Celebrations of Those Who Left Home

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:06:00 +0000

6^th of October, 2011, Thursday, was the last day of this year’s Durga Puja. We call it VijayaDashami (Bijoya Doshomi...keeping true to the Bong pronunciation). I was whiling away time, sitting inside the pandal of the Pune Camp Durgotsav, watching the colourful mayhem. (I don’t think “Pandal” is a proper English word...its one of our many lingual gifts to the Queen’s language. The English word for Pandal is “marquee”)

The ladies were busy stuffing the divine Goddess’s mouth with sweetmeats and smearing vermillion on Her hair parting, so that She doesn’t forget the hospitality She received at Her parent’s home and that She remembers Her marital status and behaves in a manner becoming of a married lady with Her forgetful, ash smeared, tiger skin clad, yogi of a husband. And then, after the ladies promptly reminded each other that they all are married too (by smearing vermillion on one another - Shindoor Khela), it was time for our dear Goddess to leave us and embark on the journey back to Her husband’s place. (She must have had a gala time with us here, in this beautiful mellow October weather,away from the freezing peaks of Kailash, where She lives with her absentminded husband Shiva.)

Here in Pune, along with the Goddess, it was time for Mansoor Dhaaki, who beats the dhaak (the dholak like instrument, only bigger, which is an integral part of all Durga Pujas and has amazing potential of making you nostalgic & homesick as well as driving you mad, with its sound) to go back to his native place, Murshidabad (West Bengal). Satwant Singh, the tall and burly Sardar, who was in charge of managing the queues at the Pune Camp Durgotsav for these five days, will now return to his duties. Dr. Khan will get back to his clinic, attending to people’s teeth (for he is a dentist) and Mr. Iyer will now resume his desk job at some important state government office. Mrs Pandey, who chopped kilos of fruits meticulously, every single day during the Puja and blew the conch shell whenever the purohit (who arrived all the way from Calcutta) asked her to, will now go back to her duties of playing the perfect wife and gracious hostess of the parties at the Army Officer’s club. She will also resume her role as an active member of the Pune chapter of AWWA (Army Wives’ Welfare Association). I too will return to my mundane life, till the Goddess comes to pay us a visit again next year.

Durga Puja is the one of the times in the entire year when I regret living so far away from Calcutta. But thankfully, there is no dearth of Durga Pujas, conducted in the most authentic fashion, here in Pune.
However, the most noticeable part of the Durga Puja here in the Pune Cantonment where I live, is the immense involvement of people from all communities and religions.

All the five evenings, from Panchami to Navami were replete with colourful, entertaining and sometimes downright hilarious programs. On Panchami evening Mr. Iyer, who hails from Tamilnadu, and somehow got associated with the group that organises this Puja every year , recited Chandi Paath (a beautiful Sanskrit invocation to the Goddess) followed by a musical soiree by the AWWA ladies. On Shashthi evening, the local Army band played popular songs followed by a hilarious skit, under the direction of Dr. Khan. (I missed Saptami as I was down with fever and Ashtami evening I went to another Durgotsav in the city). Navami night at the Pune Camp Durgostav was again full of songs and dances, this time only to make us hold our breath and clap our hearts out as the specially abled youngsters (who attend a special school run by a local NGO), presented a complicated Tagore dance drama, Shyama, with meticulous perfection!!

Many of them weren’t Bengalis. Quite a few not Hindus either. What was it then, which brought so many people, who weren’t even related to each other, together, under the warm and gentle gaze of the Goddess, sharing a few moments of simple, wholesome and unadulterated enjoyment, before we all went our own ways till the next year’s Puja?

Mansoor Dhaki, pulls a rickshaw for most of the year in Murshidabad, but came all the way down to the Pune Camp Durgotsav in Pune, this year to play the dhaak. He has learnt the art of playing Dhaak from his father who in turn picked it up from his...and so on. It runs in their family, he says, playing dhaak at Durga Pujas. He doesn’t even remember what his actual family surname is, for they have been called Dhaki since the time of his great grandfather. He has been to the Durga Puja festivities in Allahabad, Kanpur, Jodhpur and Indore, beating the dhaak. Now, he’ll go back to Murshidabad. Till, next year, some other association organising Durga Puja, will need his services and summon him to another state.

Auntie Agnes is a widow. So old that probably you can’t get any older. Yet, I have never failed to notice her each year for the last 8 years that I am here, sitting by herself in the Pune Camp Durgotsav pandal on Dashami morning. Looking like a small white mouse in her paisley printed calf length dress, she carries a rather English looking cookie tin in her old hands. She hails from Panjim, Goa. Her son, Percy Fernandes,has just got a job here in Pune. He dutifully brings his old mother along every year. This year Percy volunteered to help in managing the crowd during the Thakur Boron (farewell to the Goddess by married women) and immersion.

Though I have never done so myself (a little odd behaviour in a 25 year old, I think), after the Goddess is taken for immersion on Dashami, I have noticed that children playing around in the pandal playfully say “Shubho Bijoya” to Auntie Agnes, probably thinking she won’t understand what they are saying and it’ll be a great joke to laugh about. But every year, she hands out chocolate cookies to all the kids who wish her VijayaDashami.

Mr. Roy, who is a civil servant, currently posted in Pune, has been sponsoring one entire day’s Puja here, for the last three years. His family is in West Bengal. There is no doubt that he misses them sorely. But he can’t take long vacations and visit them often. So it is this Pune Camp Durgotsav, which makes him feel a wee bit closer home, with all its loud camaraderie, sights and sounds.

This, perhaps, is the harmony fostered by transferable jobs that pull you out of the comfort zone of your hometown. The pain of separation from your hometown and your own people and the feeling of loneliness in a strange city, perhaps, binds you even tighter to all those who you find to be in a similar situation. And then, perhaps, your definition of “own people” starts changing and broadening. (Is this what those ancient people, who had laid down the rule that the Durga Puja will be an “open to public”, social celebration and not a do-it-yourself affair in the remote corners of individual residences, had in their foresighted minds?).

May be, what makes staying away from Calcutta during our biggest festival endurable are these small but meaningful intermittent interminglings we have with one another - like when my mother greets Beejal auntie (a newly married Gujarati lady who comes to the Pune Camp Durgotsav) and smears vermillion on her hair parting, exchanging sweets made of milk..........like when another lot of unruly kids run to Auntie Agnes and say “Shubho Bijoya!” in a singsong tone and she merely blinks, smiles and hands out chocolate cookies.........like when Arindam Mukherjee, a young IT professional , helping others with lifting up the heavy clay idol of Durga for immersion shouts out to his fellow mate “ Rahman, pull the idol up from the left, yaar! Move it, man!”

I think this is one of the reasons why She comes to us year after year. To make sure we all are bound tightly to each other, in bonds of mutual comfort away from our homes.

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PS- As a very young girl, in Calcutta, watching from the balcony of my residence, I would burst out crying when they took the idol of Durga away for immersion. The year long wait seemed impossible. I always asked my mom, “Why can’t we just keep her all year round, like they keep idols in a temple? Why can’t we have Durga Puja for the entire year?”. My mom always replied, “How can she come back if she doesn’t go away?"
Today I know, She is the perfect Atithi (guest). She will come, charm everybody, fill everyone’s lives with joy and celebrations while she is here and demand everybody’s attention....but under no circumstances will she overstay her visit. She goes so that we yearn for her to come back...for your return is only significant when you first go away.

The Head that Wears the Crown of Thorns

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Team Anna has won. Though there's still a long way to go and this is just half the battle won, Congratulations! It is a great victory of the ruled over the rulers.

But this article is not about the glorious revolution and its dramatic conclusion we all have witnessed.

Did you watch the live telecast from Lok Sabha on Saturday, when the Parliament unanimously agreed to Anna's terms? Were you watching Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's heroic attempt to inject political statesmanship and spirit into the LokPal debate, while basically conceding to the public's demands?
Who do you think was cutting the most sorry figure out there, sitting quietly with his arms folded, on the left hand side of the finmin? Who is the one man who is completely out of place in this entire spectacle? If you still haven't guessed it, its our honourable Prime Minister Dr. ManMohan Singh. A man whose personal record is as spotless and neat as the bright white clothes he wears. Honestly, my heart goes out to Dr. Singh...a man caught in the wrong job.

For a few moments let's forget...or try to forget...the many scams and scandals that have grabbed headlines during all these days of Dr. Singh's tenure. Lets just simply look at this highly educated, globally respected 78 year old gentleman (and gentle he definitely is) who happens to our Prime Minister...a position which no one wants to touch with a barge pole today.
A gold medallist in Economics from Panjab Univeristy,a PhD scholar from the University of Cambridge, a Professor of International Trade at St. John's College, Cambridge,a DPhil from University of Oxford, Honorary Professor at DU'S prestigious Delhi School of Economics and at JNU, Delhi, Chief (Financing for Trade Section), United Nations Secretariat, Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Ministry of Finance, GOI, Director and Governor of Reserve Bank of India, Director of IDBI, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India, Finance Minister, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and finally...the honourable Prime Minister of India. A globally renowned Economist, "one of the world's most revered leaders" and " a man of uncommon decency and grace" (as The Independent describes him), "a virtuoso among Economists" as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen calls him.......... Tell me, is there any other Prime Minister or even any Head of State (including Presidents, Kings, Queens, Sultans, Princes, Chancellors) in the world who can match upto this man's educational qualifications or job experience?
And I have not even included Dr. Singh's 30 odd honours and awards including a "World Statesman Award", an "Outstanding Parliamentarian Award", a "Padmavibhushan", a couple of "Finance Minster of the year" awards.

Today, Dr. ManMohan Singh has been slandered in every possible way. Social networks are full of hate messages for him and people have very very serious doubts about his leadership. He has long been criticised as a puppet PM and the recent scams and scandals have bruised Dr. Singh's image very seriously in the eyes of the common man. Young IIT graduates spurned him publicly at their convocation and refused to receive their degrees from him. (Now, that was bad!). How could a group of fresh college pass outs mock a totally untainted man of his academic and scholarly calibre?
Today when things have gone wrong, when the gutsy storm of public awakening is rocking the foundations of the Government, Dr. Singh has been made the scapegoat. Public ire is focussed like a laser gun on this man and his glorious past record has been blissfully forgotten.

Rewind to 1991, when Dr. Singh was chosen to be the Finance Minister of the PV Narsimha Rao government. When he stepped in, India was in a deep deep deep fiscal deficit of around 8.5% of the GDP. The Balance of Payments was too much for us to pay back.(Balance of Payments accounts are an accounting record of all the monetary transctions between a country and the rest of the world).The nation had a foreign reserve of only..ONLY USD 1 billion!!! (for an entire country..that's peanuts). That amount was just about enough to pay for only ONE WEEK of imports. Cutting out the complicated economics of it...the country was in deep debt and facing grave financial crisis. It was Dr. ManMohan Singh who was instrumental in bringing in relief in the form of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization), ending the infamous Licence Raj (a system that inhibited the prosperity of private businesses) in India and bringing in the desperately needed IMF (International Monetary Fund) cash to bail us out of our poor economic situation. Dr. Singh, along with his associates, opened India's doors to Foreign Direct Investment and thus, brought the country's markets closer to the global playing grounds. Dr. ManMohan Singh liberalized India's economy and opened us up to the world. Even as a PM, Dr. Singh has always been pro globalization.
If you were the monitor of your class and few students were caught cheating in the exams,would it be your fault?
True, this government has probably been the most corrupt since independence, but the PM is not.Definitely not.

Perhaps Dr. ManMohan Singh should have never stepped into the murky world of politics. The soft spoken, blue-turbaned economist should have stuck to academia...or at least the RBI. Why did he get spurned by a handful of kids at the IIT convocation? Is it because between a prestigious chair and an uneasy throne, he chose the latter? And now that circumstances have changed, the air is charged with the electricity of a nation rising in revolt, the youngsters see him more as a politician than an academic and intellectual of note.Till everything was fine, he was a great economist and a fine man. And now, he is just a mute representative of a group of corrupt people.
His lifestyle is frugal and he is an embodiment of highest personal integrity. Considering this is India's Prime Minister I am talking about,just so you know, the private car Dr. Singh owns, is a Maruti 800. (Every single person I know, has a far more expensive vehicle.)

When Dr. ManMohan Singh, economist, philosopher, thinker, teacher, chose to become a politician...he deprived the academia and intelligentsia of a great scholar and a rare gem.

I feel sorry for this man...caught in the wrong job...with a crown of thorns on his head.

Oh! Calcutta

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Before you say anything...yes, Calcutta is where I come from and I am totally, unabashedly partial to her. That said, let's begin the blog.

Bengalis love to call other Bengalis who live outside West Bengal (like your's truly) "Probashi". Either its some kind of class differentiation and they smirk at us secretly or it just makes them feel good and glamorous to say "My dada has come from Bombay (or Boston or wherever)". I have noticed that the resident Bongs (the non - Probashis) are perpetually complaining about..well...everything...weather, Government, politics, movies, literature, social and moral fabric of the city...you name it.

But Calcutta looks so different to my Probashi eyes.....here's a verbal glimpse..

Howrah station or NSC Bose International Airport, no matter how you approach Calcutta, its a splash of nostalgia, colour and warmth every time. She is a Mother. That is what I call her. Glamorous and gorgeous she may not be...but motherly, charming, graceful, warm and caring she most certainly is. From the days of Rabindranath Tagore's Kabuliwallah, where Kolkata was the abode of a Pathan from Kabul, to these days of the transient IT public, Calcutta has never turned anyone out. She has place, employment and food for the richest and the poorest. Not only has she lovingly laid her doors open to every community from India, other minorities in India like the Chinese, the Armanians, the Bohris, Tibetans,Greeks,Nepalis, Parsis, the fast disappearing Anglo Indians and many others, call Calcutta their home and contribute to her heritage. You will find their presence stamped all over the city in the architecture and culture...British, Gothic, Baroque, Roman, Oriental, Mughal....we have it all!

Prices of basic commodities in Calcutta are still not high enough to give you a myocardial infarct, unlike some of India's other Metropolitans and even some non Metros.Travel and day to day living are still comfortably affordable for pockets of all sizes.Calcuttawallahs (I know the right word is Calcuttans, but I felt like using this one), have time for all your questions, discussions, arguments and philosophies.We are genuinely interested in your life and your troubles and will not bat an eyelid before recommending a solution (solicited or otherwise) that we think is appropriate. If you don't understand Bengali, the Calcuttan will sweetly switch to broken (and hilarious) Hindi or English (with a strong Brit accent).Your local grocer will happily give a "home delivery" and also throw in things he/she thought you need but you forgot to write in the list. The school bus driver will not only drop your kids to school but also keep a watchful eye on them. Ask for directions at the corner Pan shop of some gully and there is high probability that one of the seemingly useless looking fellows will take you to your desired destination let alone just giving verbal directions. There is no hurry or rush in the average Calcuttan's behaviour and we have all the time in the world, while giving you our opinion, showing you the direction, telling you how to fill in a form or simply talking to you about life.

People from other Metros may well scoff ,"Thats because everyone is whiling away time and have nothing better to do".....but ask me, that is just an excuse they have invented to comfortably hide their complete lack of warmth and kindliness towards others..at least in the times of peace.We are friendly folk.

Though Calcutta was inhabited over two millenia, her recorded history begins from 1690, with Job Charnock and the East India Company.With the construction of Fort William complete in 1702, Calcutta was declared Presidency City..the capital of British India. So, we have been there and seen it and done it..before Delhi!! :P
And this can be said without the hint of a doubt, that no race in India is as anglicized as the Bengali Babu.
We have to have our daily dose of "The Statesman" or "The Telegraph". We absolutely love our Victoria Memorial and St. Paul's cathedral, Howrah Bridge and GPO, National Library and The Indian Museum, Presidency college and the utterly snobbish Calcutta University.We are tea lovers and can distinguish between our Assam and Darjeeling and Earl Grey with a sniff and a whiff. We still throng the theatres for plays (even in this era of multiple multiplexes) and value intellect above anything else.Calcutta remains the cultural capital of India.The birthplace of India's artistic and literary thought and the land of social reformers and many great men of science.

Our girls, in the similar fashion of British ladies of the bygone era, must be accomplished in more than one way...we have to necessarily take lessons in music or dance or painting (or sometimes, all of the three) besides routine academic education. And interestingly, I have never seen any Bengali family very keen or desperate to marry off their daughters in their early twenties. Daughters discussing and debating on politics, social structures, history,literature, finance etc with their Dad and Uncles is not an uncommon sight in the City of Joy. Little girls are as cherished (and may be a li'l more) than little boys.If any state achieved women's liberation before the world even thought about it, it was West Bengal (don't believe me...read up about the heroines of Tagore and Sharat Chandra and Bankim Chandra). We are a Goddess worshiping community and love our beautiful Maa Durga...but we aren't scared of her...she is worshipped on a grand, lavish scale every year as a symbol of the strength of a woman. She is pampered as a daughter who has come to meet her Earthly parents and loved as a mother who protects her children. We have managed to turn a divine Goddess into a family member! :D (and this, is one of the reasons, why Kolkata is the only city, in the world, where a young girl is not looked upon as an object for pleasing the eyes, but respectfully addressed as Maa, bestowing upon her the honour of the Divine Mother.)

I have missed many points which anybody writing about Kolkata should never ignore...like the Rossogolla, Macher Jhol and the Mishti Doi. like the permanent rivalry between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan Football teams, like the city's permament craze with Rabindranath Tagore, Satyajit Ray, Uttam Kumar-Suchitra Sen and Saurav Ganguly. Like Marxism and Communism, like the way Calcutta is depicted in movies, like the number of Nobel laureates the City alone has given the world...but thats ok....you may have read about all this over and over again. I just wanted to give you a glimpse of a place Dominique Lapierre lovingly christened The City of Joy, through my "Probashi Bangali" eyes.

Yes there is poverty that lines the sides of some Calcutta streets, and people do go on strikes at the drop of a hat and yes, it has taken us very very long to have a radical change in the state government. Yes, we still have Ambassadors and Premiere Padminis running on the same roads with the Mercs (not to mention the public buses that look either murderous or suicidal) and the private sector is yet to open its gift bag of obscenely high paying jobs...but the Calcuttan bears all these little hiccups of life in the most cheerful manner possible, with a few loud complaints and a sigh of affectionate resignation. Calcutta slowly seeps into you, creeps on to you, boos you from behind, laughs and cries with you, hugs you warm and tight and...by the time you think of leaving her, you find, she has stolen your heart!

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Zara hatke zara bachke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:20:00 +0000

Little did I realize how true these words were, when I heard this famous Rafi-Geeta Dutt song aired on Vividh Bharti numerous times! You see, I had never been to Bombay (Mumbai, as they call it these days) till last Saturday.

I was born in Calcutta (I prefer that over Kolkata), the undisputed culture capital of India (yeah yeah....Marxism too). I lived there till 15 years of age and then shifted to Pune, Mumbai's quieter and cooler cousin. Ever since, I have been living a quiet, happy, peaceful life in Pune. I do get shaken and stirred by the horrific attacks that rock the city,3 hours away from mine, year after year, but in the security of the selfish thought "at least we are safe here in Pune" (though the blast at my favourite haunt The German Bakery is making me rethink and reconsider). I love Pune...and given a chance, will never move myself out of this charming hill city.

But,on matters personal and professional, Lady Pallavi had to travel to Bombay the first Saturday of May. BOMBAY IS A VAMP.AN ITEM GIRL. Not the demure, shy, quiet heroine....Bombay is the tantalizing, titillating, seductive and glamorous vamp....promising you all the secret pleasures and then, leaving you to find it yourself, without help!
You can feel it the moment you set foot in Bombay. She's teeming with people who got seduced by her allure and left their own humble, modest cities to chase their dreams on the shores of the Arabian Sea.

From taxi drivers and road side stall owners mostly from of UP and Bihar, to Marwari business folk whose forefathers had great foresight and set up business in Bombay about hundred years ago, from the young B.Tech crowd who got placed in the various IT companies of Bombay and drink cheap beer in the name of "chilling out" and throng the malls on weekends to the good looking, beefy Jat fellows who want to become "FIL-MACTOR" and run around in autos and BEST buses from one studio to another, from one audition to another. Sometimes you get fleeting glimpses of the dabbawalas, but they are always in a great hurry.
Another breed that populates the city is that of MBAs from some of the country's best Business schools. IIMs, XLRI, SIBM, ISB..you'll find a lot of them here...mostly in the plush offices at Nariman Point. These are the ones that'll bloom into the movers and shakers of India Inc. in a few more years.And if you ever happen to know anyone of this breed you'll notice that they think they are God's own gift to the world. However, they are interesting in their plight. With their kind of fat, lardy salaries, in any other city of India, one could own a neat little bungalow with a lawn and a Mercedes Benz parked in the personal garage. But Bombay is too merciless to allow such luxuries. Like a vamp, she seduced them into accepting offers that brought them to her...the dreams of unlimited opportunities, unlimited money and unhindered ascent.....but gave them the reality of limited space, unaffordable housing, crowded local trains and cut throat competition, with no one to call truly your own. Bombay allows luxury to only those people who have been with her like a true ally for decades and proven their worth...a Raj Kapoor could afford a Krishna-Raj, a Dilip Kumar will have a palatial bungalow...an Amitabh Bacchan will have Jalsa and Pratiksha....a Shahrukh Khan will have a Mannat....but other stars..even those who earn in hundreds of crores....live in apartments.

South Bombay is, in one word, beautiful! Flora Fountain, The Gateway of India, The Taj Mahal Palace hotel, Marine Drive...south Bombay makes you feel like you are in London. Bold facades of intricate British architecture! Looking at the Flora Fountain...you can actually believe Bombay was the part of the dowry of Catherine De Braganza, a Portugese princess, on her wedding to Charles II of England in 1661....a thought thats far from your mind when you are travelling through the mad crowd of Chembur, Byculla, LalBag, Dadar, Malad (not necessarily in that order)

Writing about Bombay is tiring me...almost as much as getting stuck in the never ending traffic jams of Bombay in the scorching, sweaty heat. Bombay may titillate and tease as much as she wants, may promise me the skies or the heavens, may slither and wriggle like a vamp.....I prefer the quieter, cooler and more serene charms of my hill city Pune! :-)

Love

PS - Having lunch at the exquisite Taj Mahal Palace's Sea Lounge, sitting by the sea, being served by a handsome young man who has a wound on his temple from the infamous terrorist attack on the Taj, and is brave enough to come back to work in the same place....Bombay doesn't seem so bad after all!

Dreams made of Chantilly Creme

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:46:00 +0000

I am a great cook! I mean, I think I am a great cook...my parents think I am a good cook, friends think I cook well, my grandmother (and GRAND she is) thinks I am ok-so-so-will-do cook....in this fashion, opinions on my culinary skills differ from person to person, mostly in descending order. :-)

I was never brought up in the normal Indian manner of bringing up a girl. I was a tomboy as a kid and would climb trees, cycle around and steal pickle from the kitchen. I used to do pretty decently at school...and was therefore marked for activities of more intellectual nature since my early days instead of learning how to cook...many of my friends, by the time they were 15 or 16, were experts at all household chores...not me...I was lost in the world of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Tagore and Dickens, Austen and Bronte.College life in Pune did little to further my culinary training and once I was in B-school...fuhget it!!! Hardly had time to breathe...let alone indulge in the luxury of cooking. Fortunately my Mom has always been with me to take care of food...along other things like emotions, mood swings etc

The first food item, I ever learnt, flawlessly,from beginning to end, was Paneer Tikka Masala! And the credit must go to my sweet and dear friend Geeta who introduced me to the world of fine cooking. It is a complicated preparation if you want to make it the authentic way...and since it is my signature dish, I hand grind all my ingredients and don't go for readily available spice mixes. It was sheer magic the very first time onwards.....delicate, silky pieces of spiced cottage cheese melting juicily in your mouth. And that was my Eureka moment! It was the pinnacle of my feminine achievement...I COULD COOK!!! Like a married woman in our country, needs to mother a child in order to prove her fertility to the society, an unmarried one needs to know how to cook divine dishes without burning or cutting herself or leaving the kitchen in a rubble to prove her feminity.

After my grand success with my first attempt at cooking, at an age I am ashamed to disclose here, I kept learning one complicated dish after another. Next in line were Cheese Pasta with Mushroom and Broccoli (Italian style), dumplings, chicken curry, Biryani, Kofta, various rolls, salads, gulabjamun, many types of desserts......blah blah blah..and a happy cook was I.

My check with reality came when my Mom had to go to another city for a couple of days to attend a symposium.
Of course I was a great cook...and could manage on my own. I bade her farewell with a smile..I was the queen of the house for two days!!! La di dah!
I took out paneer from the fridge...and looked for curd...for thats an important part of the marinade....but there was no curd!!! HORROR! Couldn't make panner tikka masala. "Never mind...pasta may be", thought I...I had cheese, I had pasta, I had...wait a minute...I had no mushroom or oregano....OH NO! I can't make pasta without either.
Over those two days and endless plates of Maggi instant noodles....I understood I didn't know how to make Daal (lentil soup), how to make a delicious preparation of only paneer and potatoes and simple spices (which my mom can stir up in minutes), how to fry a piece of fish without rendering it charred and inedible....

I knew gourmet, I didn't know cooking! You cannot survive on Paneer Tikka Masala, cheese pasta, dark chocolate cakes with fondant, profitroles with chantilly creme..day in and day out.....you need your basic daal chawal!

Dreams with the theme of Chantilly Creme....are beautiful if they remain dreams....
Can't do without the soft, hot fulkas, daal and chawal..everyday!!

Love

When Night puts her curtain down.....and pins it with a star!

noreply@blogger.com (Pallavi Dasgupta) — Mon, 02 May 2011 17:25:00 +0000

Yesternight, at 2:30 am, it was, quite predictably, pitch dark outside. Most of the people were deep in sleep, some may be making love, some trying to, employees at BPOs awake over endless cups of coffee and constant chatter in fake accents, really studious students dozing over open books...but I was doing none of these.

For the past few weeks, I have turned an insomniac.I simply cannot sleep!! (and I am not even in love, for God's sake) .When my parents retire to their bedroom at night, I too walk off to my room and pretend to go to sleep. But sleep evades me. I simply toss and turn on my bed, listen to soft romantic songs on my MP3 player, read text messages from old friends and once-important people, stare out of my window and gaze at the moon, determined to follow her silvery journey across the night sky, think of the people who have moved on from my life (by which I do not necessarily mean a boyfriend)....I count sheep and then I count stars, then I observe my room keenly for the presence of ghosts or spirits (a la horror movies)......but alas! sleep is something that avoids me meticulously. Old memories of things that could have been done and words that could have been spoken to avoid many unhappy circumstances come back to haunt me every night when the lights are switched off and night tucks us all in her ink blue blanket...

This morning however, I forced myself to the swimming pool at the club (have been giving it a miss for many days now...because I am unable to get up on time...as I am unable to sleep on time :-) )....I splashed around in the pool for a good one and a half hour and then, I walked back home. I was tired. Then I took myself to office to slog for another eight or nine hours with a 30 mins "power nap" in between. I didn't take the lift at office and went up and down all the seven floors by the stairs...my legs were aching.

Came home, had a light, hot dinner....sat down to write my blog...and...YAWN! am bleary eyed....all I want to do is hit the warm cushion on my bed and the soft pillow....and its about 11:00 pm! YAY!! I defeated insomnia today....the moon may go for a toss if she wants...I am happily exhausted and sleepy! Goodnight! Or as the French have it..Bonne Nuit!