For the Love of God and Man

Guess you’ve heard about the middle-aged Uttar Pradesh Inspector who has suddenly discovered his love for Krishna in the manifestation of his lover Radha, and has started dressing up in a ghaghra and odhni with a nose-ring, floating around singing and moving his hands Kathak-style and declaring his love for Krishna while ignoring his earthly family? Yes, he still goes to work, but no one can respect or obey him now, a harsh plight indeed for a man in a profession typically famed for its discipline and obedience (not that his heart is in it – though isn’t there something in the religion about doing one’s duty mindfully?)

Well, what is duty, you would ask? Is duty towards the feeling you have for your God greater or the duty towards the earthly family who is tied to you by institutional and karmic bonds?

Is it less excusable for him to be Radha than it is for the 15 year old boy in Orissa to be Bhagmati, as he has declared himself to be (why can't I find a link relating to this - I saw it on Aaj Tak on saturday night!)? Is it all in the mind? Is it a publicity gimmick? Why would one want to be an object of ridicule without the support of something greater than himself?

What about that woman in UP, who after seeing Wasim Akram win in some match in 1997 has declared herself to be his wife, ignoring her existing marriage and kids and deciding to live only as his wife, despite never even having met him? (She sounds a bit like me at the moment hehe!)

What’s happening? Well, I could liken Mr. inspector to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, or Meerabai or Mahadeviyakka, or the Radha of our Geetagovinda. We revere them, these people who deserted their families and ties for to wander around singing and preaching, but deride these males who wish to practice their faith in the comfort of their own homes? Simply because we cannot condone the idea of crossdressers in our extremely dichotomous society where gender roles have become so defined and segregated?

What’s the issue? That it’s a novel occurrence in our age? Another example of the progressing-in-one-direction, regressing-in-another hypothesis of mine? (I would dearly love to have it disproved). What’s wrong with spiritual union that these men probably feel (if they’re not some sort of impostors. I feel bad being skeptical like that – this age desperately needs some miracles) that supercedes the physical union of the sexes through sexual intercourse? Not as big a hoohaah was made about the woman who married a portrait of Krishna a little less than a decade ago I think. Why? Because it’s okay for a woman to devote herself to religion like that? Because women are the keepers of tradition and traditional followers of bhakti-yoga, that may be practiced in the comforts of their own home and with the sanction of their community – all that bhajan-kirtan singing and praying and temple visiting?

We’ve had eunuchs in India forever, to guard the harems of women in our palaces. We have a eunuch/transvestite/transsexual – I know they’re all different terms but I’m not sure what he is – priest in the Shrinathji temple, Nathdwara in Rajasthan. Is it okay if the person is a priest and hence already in a religious profession, and in one of the richest temples in India? But not if the person is an ordinary commoner?

Every sexual deviation in India, except probably Sado-masochism, exists in India, and has throughout history, yet we hide behind censorship of pre-marital sex though it’s a glaring reality and AIDS is an imminent epidemic on the verge of affecting the best and brightest in our society? It’s not a scourge of the poor or prostitutes, it’s looking for a crack in your skin through which it can sidle into your home and conquer your soul. And you don’t want to guard yourself and your loved ones to this mind-and body-numbing disease while hiding in denial under a veil or dead and imagined morality? What nonsense.

India is the land of tradition, of religion, of spirituality. India is also the land that recognizes the fluidity and intertwining of the many definitions of the above. Just as India is the land of elephants and maharajas and beautiful women and sages, India is also the land of men dressed as women who marry other men and call them their husband – yes, being a woman is that enticing. India is the land where domestic manservants use nailpolish. India is the land where news that Ajay Mafatlal has made has had queues of people outside his cosmetic surgeon’s door, of people demanding a sex change.

India is the land where both duty and religion are represented by the same words – Dharma. And yet we ignore the beauty of the subjectivity of those two words and impose our own views on others to follow a monochromatic path towards doom. We are relying on a dominant collective memory of a blinding past we cannot begin to imagine for the betterment of a future we are afraid to foresee.

We should face our own fears like Tantra tells us and overcome them. Only then will we be able to live in peace and harmony.

P.S. As for the woman in love with Wasim Akram, can we expect anything less from a nation that idolizes cricketers given the current fervour for devotion to the unseen? Poor husband. I’m not condoning her act, I personally think it’s rather nonsensical, (what’s the proverb – a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?) but I have to admire her determination and faithfulness to an idea (unfortunately she’s bound by a worldly reality she rejects). I can sorta empathise with that.

I guess the husband should start practicing cricket. Or alternatively declare undying devotion to HER.

Tsk tsk. Aspiration really seems to be knowing no bounds these days!

What a beautiful day today has been! 3 whole posts!