Beauty and Beast

Today the Indian subcontinent witnessed one of the most spectacular diamond rings in the sky, when the annular solar eclipse was sighted from the Southern most tip of the country, and there were a lot of people flocking to Dhanushkodi and to Kanyakumari! One may still remember that these are the very places which had witnessed some years ago one of the worst onslaughts of tsunami! The spectacular show has come as a consoling factor to the tsunami ravaged coastal region of Tamil Nadu, which is still to rise from the harvest festival Pongal slumber. So the wonderful celestial sight was a feast to the star-gazers, if not the coastal fisherfolks, for whom the eclipse was nothing more than a sophistication of a natural event.

But day before yesterday nature showed its ferocious face in Haiti, when an earthquake devoured over 50,000 men and women. Seven richter scale is nothing so low to bring down buildings, and there were people who were buried under the debris, and never to see the light of day. There are more and more natural calamities over which the human beings have too little control. Nature however had its own mechanism to avert major calamities which would cost the earth dearly; but the human intervention has undone these mechanism, to such an extent that it is hard for nature not to be stern. And when nature is hard, the first casualty is the human persons en masse!

If the earthquake has shaken Haiti day before yesterday, our turn may come any time; we are called to be prepared to face the tune of the angry earth. The human race which had mercilessly killed nature’s sap, are to replace them with their own blood, and yet it is doubtful if the earth would tally the accounts and start life anew! But one of the most nagging questions which disturb many of the underdeveloped or developing nations is, why they be held responsible for the destruction of the earth and her resources by the developed nations? Who are the people who have plundered the earth’s resources and filled their pockets? Is it not unfair to make the innocent people held responsible for what they do not know?

The irony of earth’s divine sport is that on the one hand she reveals herself as one of the most charming, beautiful of all created things; and on the other side is her ferocious side! Beauty and beast seem to co-exist, and who else but Lord William Blake can try to reconcile these contradictions. Without contraries is no progression, Blake was to have told, and that is why he brought in Lamb and Tyger (Blake’s spelling), representing innocence and experience. True, the humanity was innocent some centuries ago, and today the experienced men and women would only find ways of exterminating any beauty still left on earth, and it is proper that we see the beastly face of earth!

Humanity is all in praise for the wonders of the earth, and they will make melodies to sing her praises, so long the charm is still there, and she shows her beautiful face, spilling innocence. Humanity is frightened of the other side of the earth, the angry planet, ready to teach humanity a fitting lesson, so that they do not play with fire, which can devour all that is, and is yet to be! As we admire the most spectacular diamond ring of the century, let us not forget the hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti, who are fighting with their lives for no fault of their own, and bring them to our consciousness, so that their cry, pain and anguish may heal our greed and selfishness, so that we may in turn heal the wounds of the earth!

Let the rice over-flow!

It may be a matter of shame, that being a Tamil, I do not know the origins of one of the most popular festivals of the Tamils, the Pongal, celebrated yesterday. Living in a culturally uprooted environs, I sometimes forget that it was Pongal, until a friend or two call me up or send me an email note wishing 'Happy Pongal', and there is hardly any remembrance of the harvest festival in the houses I live, for the simple reason the festival does not much matter to the people of this place, and I am happy to keep it to myself! But I know I am not alone in this, all the Tamils who are outside Tamil Nadu may go through the same.

But today I wish to re-create the Pongal myth and origins, and it may just be the pigment of my imagination, but coming from an agricultural background this is what I strongly feel. The harvest festival of the Dravidian tribe reminds me of the good and bad times our ancestors had in the land, with a name 'adi dravida' (which has come to connote for the mainstream the 'low caste' people). I imagine a time when crops failed, and there was too little at the end of the harvest. The people who had been hungry for days and months, looking eagerly for the harvest to have a stomach full, brought the fruits of their labor home, pounded the paddy, and got fresh rice for cooking.

The whole family gathers at the courtyard to cook the first meal from the harvest, and ready to have have their stomachs full, after days and months. There is nothing much to add with this - no special side-dish or normal festive dishes, only the 'pongal'. The festivity is shown through rejoicing when the rice bubbles up, and over-flows from the earthen pot, and when each member of the family goes to the neighbors asking them if the rice is over-flowing! That is the beauty of this festival, not being contended with the pot full of rice, people are concerned that their neighbors also have a pot full of rice to have their full!

Pongal, as far as I am concerned, is a cultural festival, which unfortunately is appropriated by the Hindus as their religious fesitival. As in most cases, the dominant group had the tendency to appropriate all the good things from the minority groups, and probably that is what happened with Pongal too. The cultural festival had been given a religious coloring, with the addition of a few religious rituals, but leaving aside the rituals and the religious connotations they may signify, the festival is basically a cultural one, and it has to be seen as such!

I would be very happy if there is a pot-full of rice in every house in Tamil Nadu, my homeland, on this day; that there is not a single soul going hungry to bed at least on Pongal day, and it is only under such circumstances can we all celebrate the festival meaningfully. Not being content with the pot-full of rice at home, if everyone moves out of their houses, to check with the less fortunate and the unfortunate ones to ask them that proverbial question 'pongiducha?' (has the rice over-flown?), and if they get an affirmative answer, then the festival can be deemed truly meaningful!