Bhubaneshwar Diary -- Prologue

So I set out on yet another train journey, or rather yet another train journey to Orissa, to the state where I grew up, a state which always has that familiar echoing call of home.

Apart from the fact that I caught the train literally by the skin of my teeth (my ticket got confirmed only in the morning, just two hours before the ETD of the train) and the fact that I managed to get off it literally by the skin of my behind (I was in deep sleep when the train reached Bhubaneshwar), the journey was more or less uneventful. But for the fact that I again couldn't read or write much and that, that I was yet again allotted a side upper berth (which surprisingly enough don't have a charge point).

Gosh!

Did I say the journey was uneventful? And I also mentioned sleeping! Lest you get the idea that I spent the whole journey flat on my back, here are some highlights.

I had to break my recently undertaken vow and buy a plastic bottle of water. But I stuck to that one through and through the journey (and can use it on my return journey too). Which meant that I (unlike most who travel AC and reserved) was part of the great Indian Railway stampede headed for the drinking water taps, at a number of platforms that the train pulled up at, in between Kazipet and Vijayawada, when the heat was at its hottest. Part of the stampede of forearms and shoulders, each intent on muscling bottle mouths to taps, for that most precious of "free" commodities, water. And -- in keeping with the panic of summer train travelers -- most of those bottles were big and even being lined up in twos and threes, while all I wanted was just one tiny bottle of water.

All this is in passing more or less, I survived all those stampedes as would anyone who has traveled enough to learn a bit of patience, a bit of consideration for his fellow man.

It's just that, during one of those stampedes, a forearm was crowding mine with a huge green bottle (that looked like a veteran of many a tap-side battle) shouldering into my puny Bibo water bottle. I felt like pushing back, but just in time, I saw a tattoo on the forearm -- MAA, in Odiya script. And all I did was half raise my arm and say something like "Ruho Tike", peace reigned and the green bottle withdrew back. I walked back with a bottle of water and a touched feeling, for once again having an intense encounter with the mystique and power of the mother cult.

It was pretty late, 10ish more or less, when the train passed through the total darkness of Elamanchili railway platform, halting barely for the 2-3 minutes it is scheduled to, almost as if it was a forced gesture. And for absolutely no reason -- no one was coming to meet me, nor did I need to buy anything to eat or drink -- I decided to wait up till the train reached Vizag. That wait which I had estimated to take no longer than 45 minutes, ended up taking close to double the time. Meanwhile I was lucky enough to witness the "hills of Vizag" standing sheer and dark like massive fort walls or the coils of some prehistoric snake against the lights of the industrial areas around Vizag...and the far off lights of the city itself. The night breeze as the train cut through it was cold, there was a hint of rain in it...and of course a hint of that peculiar cocktail of a smell too -- of sweat, salt, casuarina and coconut -- that announces Vizag to the olfactory part of me. Maybe it was worth waiting up for, I thought...while standing on Vizag platform and (off all things) charging my cellphone at a deserted charge point, watching people (many of them heavily laden) running helter kelter over a slippery platform (it had just been washed and many puddles remained) to reach the unreserved compartments up ahead, in all probability intent on making it home to Orissa, somehow or the other, in time for Maha Vishuba Sankranti.

To wind up, sharing a "discovery", you can travel without ticket on the Indian Railways now. All you need is the SMS sent to you by the IRCTC, in lieu of a print-out of your ticket. How progressive, no?

Shamanisms and the Mother cult

By my own account I am not a very religious person. For as long
as I remember, I have never believed in rituals and orthodoxy
and nowadays, I am of the firm opinion that it’s important
for a poet to be a skeptic and iconoclast – if required of
his / her own beliefs.

But somehow (maybe because I don’t know any better) I have
always believed in the Mother cult that is in many ways
central to Hinduism. The cult that glorifies, venerates
and worships Shakti in her various forms and
Avataras – as Durga, Parvati, Ambika, Manasi, Tarani and
so on.

Does one belief lead to and feed another? Does my
relatively early exposure to the Mother cult (while
growing up in Orissa – where Durga Puja is an
overwhelmingly colourful festival of pomp and pageantry;
where almost every third temple is devoted to a
goddess – Maa Tarini, Maa Birija, Maa Samaleswari,
Maa Sankata Tarini, Maa Singhavasini, Maa Tara Tarani
and so on) explain my fascination with everything to
do with Shiva?

I really do not know.

But yes, somehow the very mention and memory of “Maa”
evokes a very blissful and humbling feeling in me. And
conjures the image of an all-understanding, fiercely
protective mother, in whose presence one relatively feels
non-existent in terms of ego and totally a wide-eyed child.
An image of goodness that will triumph over evil, come
what may, because that’s the way things are destined to be.

Need I say that I feel overwhelmed by the same childish
wide-eyed wonder and feeling of smallness when I experience
the grandeur (and mystique) of nature? Or when a poem comes
unbidden, with more meaning than I can understand, words
falling into place like some shaman’s chant?

I really do not know. But these are good problems to
have; these are deep waters worth contemplating.

One man’s prayer my be plain gobbledygook to the other,
but here’s a lovely link to a prayer / chant / bhajan / song
that has given me goose pimples from the very day I heard it.

And I will say the same thing yet again before I conclude
this post, there’s more meaning than I can understand
in Ai giri nandini,
I don’t claim to understand it all, but it’s a good
problem to have :-)