Kindling

A burnt child dreads the fire. 

Din, chagrin, frivolous felicities.

Enter: congregation of gullible people, ailing from a common misdemeanor: being ignorant. I assure you, dear reader, I was not one of them.

I was too observant to be ignorant.

Yet, you cannot blame fate when it turns on you. With this setting in mind, I will now proceed to what I do best: complain. Most regard it as a weapon of the weak, a child's natural response to peril, but it somehow has become a reason for why I pick up the stylus (or the keyboard, depending on the situation)...

So it goes.

⚜

A cluster of perspiring human beings strewn across the floor in different stages of exhaustion; all related to each other by blood, or marriage. Some genius from the family had decided there was no better time to put up an altar in the verandah, cover the rest with sheets, and enjoy the burning fumes of a generously-fed fire than on a  sweltering day at the end of June.

A single fan was laid out to aid the elderly, in case the heat got to them.

Some uncles, aunties, cousins, a sibling, two parents, and I.

Fourteen in all, 

And the pujari.

The altar itself was no mean feat- it had withstood human aspirations and beliefs being burned inside itself for decades. 

The sheets were placed in a dichotomous intersection. All attempts at locomotion were thwarted by the possibility of tripping and falling for the amusement of those in the assembly, and for fear of the humiliation to be suffered afterwards, several years after the fact.

What happens in a join family, stays in a joint family.

For decades.

Therefore, being the rational creature that I am (not to boast), I chose to sweat my woes and sit silently next to a younger cousin. 

No sooner had the youngest ones started fidgeting, the intermediate between God and ourselves (the pujari) started drawing these lurid shapes of his paraphernalia onto the tin plate my aunt had so laboriously cleaned an hour ago.

"Like a taantrik," I whispered to my cousin.

He snickered.

Later, the exorci-

Uh, I beg your pardon.

The priest. The priest.

He started mixing the saamagriyaan, as one is supposed to. The end result was such a mixture of colors that it was impossible for me to fathom what it contained. 

At last, they placed the logs into the altar, alighted a lamp beside it, before my parents, and asked my father to

"Dharti ko jal arpit karein."

"Kumkum samarpit karein."

"Dharti ko bhog lagayein."

 After all, all that the Earth needs is chullu bhar paani, a chance to play holi and some sweets to satiate its hunger. Not like the soot from this altar will affect the octegenarians or anything.

But naturally, no one listens to the young female (that is, if your young female dares to intervene in matters of religion.)

Our young female, however, was doing no such thing.

I was, in fact, drenched in sweat by the time this business went through. 

A toddler, barely half my height, decided he wanted to paint people's faces with the vermillion in place of the priest.

We acquiesced.

He went by the line, carefully making a tiny dot on the female foreheads, a resplendent vertical line on the male ones. Kyunki tilak ka bhi gender hota hai.

He reached me. We made eye contact.

And in that moment, I knew.

He was going to paint my whole face red.

But something even more scandalous happened.

I was adorned with the long, vertical mark reserved for the powerful.

I was a man.

They laughed it off. I didn't. I noticed some passing glances of disapproval among the elderly.

I loved it.

Next came the red and yellow string you tie on your hand, which binds you to religion. A cousin my age stepped up to do the honours. I asked him to keep the knot as loose as possible.

I wanted to be free of these bonds as soon as time permitted.

He laughed. I didn't. I noticed the tension in the air, the dichotomy of morality.

I loved it.

His hands tried to wrench the strings once they had looped around mine, but the strings did not give in. I had to break the thread with my feminine, slender wrists.

He was annoyed. I wasn't. I could see the balance of power shift with every step I took.

It loved me.

The fire in the altar seemed to speak to my passionate fancies. It danced like ribbons over the hardened wood, mercilessly gnawing at its exposed flammability.

In the merciless June heat.

स्वाहा

                                   We sacrifice our intellect for idolatrous faith.

स्वाहा

We sacrifice our woes to the flames of our faith.

स्वाहा

We abandon all reason to be slaves to our faith.

I was beginning to be hypnotized by the shapes I saw in the fire.

The cousin seated next to me tugged at my arm, "Didi, why are we having this havan today?"

"For peace and prosperity."

For ignorance and gullibility.

The wood smouldered. Those saamagriyaan had started wilting before my eyes, the jaggery melting to take a honey-like hue on the drying wood.

The wood perished slowly, a martyr to human will.

The pujari had done what he did best: harness fear and hopes to tantra and mantra.

In the end, the leftover saamagri was thrown into the altar.

The flames rose up to devour what was left of it. Burnt with brighter tinge, lunging at the ones it's supposed to nurture. 

Get up. A shower of molten ghee.

Human greed.

The heat scorched me.

I knew what would happen next.

The soot from the spoon which partook of the tribute offered to Agni Dev was distributed. 

Put it on your heart, forehead and left arm.

So that you don't feel, think or act.

Engulf us in iconolatry.

I passed the mirror in the hall when I left the verandah. The tilak ran down my forehead. My newfound masculinity was gone with yet another stream of red.

I could only be a man for so long.

Author's Note

This content does not aim to hurt the sentiments of any religious communities.

It is only an honest observation of the hypocrisy in our social stratum through the medium of realistic fiction.