Invariably on Herath — the festival celebrating Shiva’s grand wedding with Parvati, like a miraculous white Christmas, Pandits expected snow. During the Afghan rule in Kashmir, Jabbar Khan, the governor of the valley barred all Hindus from celebrating Herath in winter. Since they usually expected snow and worshipped a Shiv linga made of snow he decided to kill the celebrations by asking them to celebrate in the summer. Anecdotes say that although it was Haar (summer), it snowed that year creating an often repeated moniker of Janda (ragman) for Jabar. It goes like this:
Wuchtan ye Jabbar Janda,
Haaras ti korun wandaLook at this ragman Jabbar
He made winter out of the summer as well
Although I am in Michigan, it did not snow today. We’re very much in the middle of winter so I could expect it. But I didn’t think of it. I thought about recreating what Herath meant for me as a child growing up in Peerbagh, and cooked a few things. I did not however go through the two-hour Pooja rituals and nor did I clean the house with the intensity with which my grandmother and mother would attack the day. Then I felt intense guilt for not doing much and asked my husband why I wasn’t doing it despite no Jabbar in my life.
The only way to do more would be to take a day off. In a day full of back-to-back meetings, it’s hard impossible. I’m having a hard time disconnecting from the hamster wheel of parenthood and work. But I also lack the social push or family pressure to recreate everything. Yet, I have Shiva tattoed on my back for life. Will He save me, or the Vatuk that my baby and I offered loose sugar to instead of a Kand. I wonder what truly defines a community. Shared rituals or a need to preserve them blindly?
On a mildly related note, two nights ago, I dreamed of my grandmother sitting on a chair in what felt like a family gathering. She was enquiring and learning about my father’s illness. I was not in the frame but seemed to be listening in. I tried finding meaning to this and finally settled on my fear of the results of a blood test from a day before. Each night I tell Adi stories of Nana and Big Mummy, and I wonder how he’ll remember her, having never met her except for a photograph from my wedding dutifully pasted on a wall at home. Will he see her as a bapoo-giver to Nana or a safe space his mother keeps finding ways to go back to?
How there can be a place
so cold any movement saves you.
Snow, Naomi Shihab Nye – 1952
P.S. In book news, I finished reading Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve. I have so many feelings about it. Markandaya wrote this book in 1954 before both my parents were born. She was born in 1924 before both my grandparents were born. Unlike my grandmother, she went on to attend University and had a flourishing career as a journalist and author. She lived in privilege but her bestselling book shared the deep wounds of rural India post-independence. Several famous authors after that have hailed her for being relevant even in today’s time. Luckily her heroine is not a sacrificial goat but a survivor who feels grateful in all hands of fate she is dealt with. The West hailed Markandaya as a diverse voice bringing the stories of true India to the English reader. It’s how most Americans understood India. Now in 2022, I see her as a privileged voice speaking for people whose life she could not have fathomed. Rural has so much nuance to it everywhere, and among a billion people I question the authenticity of one urban woman’s broad-stroked narrative.
Someplace Else 