Devotion

Monsoon has had us in a split state.

On one side we celebrate the arrival of Śrāvaṇa (श्रावण) by putting on beautiful clothes, getting ready for Tīj (तीज) with henna on the palms and green bangles on the arms, adorning our hair with blossoming jasmine that has a fragrance so heavenly that it takes you to some other dimension. Each morning at sunrise, I see people walking to their nearby mandirs (मंदिर) carrying pañcāmṛta (पञ्चामृत) in gaṛvīs (गड़वी) along with flowers and fruits, displaying a beautiful cadence of collective devotion. There is a different kind of calm in the garbhagṛha (गर्भगृह) next to the śivaliṅga (शिवलिंग) these days. I described it as “ṭhaṇḍak” in my last post.

On the other side, we are startled each day by the magnitude of destruction that the monsoon seems to bring with it. We come face to face with how majestic the force of nature is and how it only takes seconds for that energy to transform the landscape entirely, like an artist brushing over the canvas with a whole different set of colours in just a couple of strokes and changing the emotions of that art completely. It makes one feel so small in the grand scheme of things. Looking at countless homes and people uprooted, trees displaced, lives changed and lives over is devastating. It might shake your belief and make you question the essence of the motherly nature.

In those moments, however difficult it might seem, I try to zoom out. It is hard to think past the grief that attachment instils, yet I try. I try to go back to the road to Hanle that crawls next to the blue waters of the Indus River. I fly back in time when I was standing there with my feet in the deep blue waters and was floored by how beautiful they look next to the contrasting shades of the deserted landscape that seemed so untouched as if no one had ever walked past the mountain behind the river. The landscape around me warped in my imagination as though I was standing on an onion that is revealing itself layer by layer going back in time, unfolding everything the river witnessed downstream, over centuries.

Śrāvaṇa is the first full month of Cāturmās (चातुर्मास), when as they say Nārāyaṇa the preserver sleeps and Śiva-Śakti take over. Śiva, whom we see not just as a destroyer but as the Śakti that renews. We are witnessing the cosmic dance of renewal and the beauty within the havoc it wreaks can only be seen through devotion. The devotion in the intent of the universe, the love in the scolding of parents, the wildfire that makes room for sunlight to reach the soil so new plants can grow, micro tears in muscles that might give them more strength and size, cyclones that take heat away from the equator ultimately doing the work of balancing, the surrender to the flow of prakṛti (प्रकृति).

The destruction makes it difficult to see through any of it, and rightly so, as the scale at which entire lands move and the people we lose is absolutely devastating. It is time that we offer the same devotion that we have for the divine, to the divine within each human. It is time that we have empathy for affected people and offer some pañcāmṛta to humans as well.

This reflection sits at the intersection of Nature & Cosmos, Philosophy & Existence and Travel & History.