Oh Shiva, where art thou?
After the third time orange flower petals were scattered on my head, I was ready to call it quits. At least though this time I wasn’t sprinkled with ghee that I had a hard time washing off my favourite red kaftan (next time they ask me to wear a festive dress at an Indian ceremony I will politely but resolutely refuse).
As the 8th member of a disparate group of people, mostly women, I was crammed into the small antechamber of an equally small temple in a Rishikesh ashram to attend the second part of a puja, a traditional Hindu ceremony dedicated to one or more deities that consists of a plethora of rituals and offerings. We had just finished the first stage of the puja dedicated to Lord Shiva outside, one hour later according to schedule (but does anything in India ever go according to schedule?) and had decided to start the second ceremony dedicated to the Devi, the Goddess, even though the time was not as auspicious as we would have hoped. Even taking that decision was fraught with logistical challenges brought by the fact that the swami that was performing the ceremony, not only had to carry out complicated time calculations on his phone, but could only communicate his findings through cryptical writings on a piece of paper, as he was in the middle of his yearly silence practice.
A bramhin gives prasadam (food that has been first offered to the divinity - here Durga Maa - and therefore blessed) to a participant.
I’m not sure about its cosmic auspiciousness but in hindsight I can say for certain that, with the progress of the second phase of the puja, the smoke in the room got so strong that it definitely was not auspicious, neither for my throat nor for my eyes.
All the puja’s I had attended up until then always had a brazier or fireplace for the sacred Agni, the fire that was going to be fed with a mixture of herbs, seeds and ghee, with loving hands. “Like we were feeding a baby” as the swami told us once one of us, fearful of getting burned, threw the mixture a bit too forcefully in the sacred fire. In addition to the ever-present fire, each puja would invoke a plethora of deities and make a variety of offerings in the form of flowers (scrunched into petals or whole depending on the specific phase of the puja), ghee, yogurt, multi-coloured threads, coloured pastes, fruits and sweets.
Every puja appears to be somewhat the same as any other so that, to an untrained eye, they blur into one another but, at the same time, they are also sufficiently different so that I’m always confused as to the next step in this complicated ritual procedure. Which mantra should be chanted at which time? For how many repetition? Where should the holy water be poured? With which hand? And which fingers?
Even the swami, while not breaking his devotional silence, showed us a rare mischievous smile by the fourth time my friend Cece fumbled with the oil lamp, quite unclear on whether she should rotate it clockwise or counterclockwise in front of the fruit offerings.
While I was quite curious about these rituals at first, the long sitting times and lack of understanding of the meaning behind all these apparently mechanical and slightly baroque proceedings, got me further and further away from any sense of the divine. To be able to survive the puja I had to spend most of my time either focusing on the hand movements I had to replicate when my turn came, trying not to fidget after too much time spent sitting cross-legged on the floor or making sure I was quick enough to take the next pinch of herbs mixture to feed to the fire and not disrupt the rhythm of the chanting.
A henna decoration typical of Kali Maa [photo by Anna Daza].
Every time a puja finished, instead of feeling refreshed and blessed by the various divinities invoked, I have to admit to feeling mildly relieved that it was over. A part of me feels quite guilty and a bit envious of others, like my friend Karolina, that truly connect with these ceremonies and gain a sense of peace and openness. Truth be told, she has spent more time in India, is married to an Indian husband and has taken to all these cultural practices as if she had always grown up surrounded by incense, colourful powders and a pantheon of weirdly shaped Gods and Goddesses.
Since that ceremony, I’ve attended other pujas. Most of them including a ritual for Agni, the sacred fire, and his consort Svaha. Admittedly one of the best elements of Hinduism for me is the celebration of both the male and the female side of the divinity - more on that in future posts. I’ve chanted dozens of mantras for hundreds of times, thrown kilos of herbs and seeds into the fire, rotated fire holders in front of statues, shiva lingam, sacred basil bushes and even cows - I wonder if the cows even noticed. I’ve sat in dusty cold yoga shalas, in sacred temples dedicated to the Goddess and on rooftops.
Writing the sacred symbol for OM on a gigantic shiva linga at the Shri Saccha Akhileshwar Mahadev Temple Rishikesh.
Admittedly though, I’m still feeling a strong sense of dissonance. With rare exceptions, in no ceremony I have been able to get a glimpse of the existence of something sacred that is beyond the ability of my senses to perceive it but it’s there nonetheless and permeates and gives breath to us and everything that surrounds us. After overcoming the first self-doubts “Am I doing it wrong?”, “Am I too analytical, too rational, too rigid to let some subtler perceptions in?”, I accepted that ceremonies are not for me. I feel more connected to this sense of the sacred, of the divine, when I’m not distracted by the external world but I turn within. When I listen to the sound of nature or of my own breathing. Sometimes when I have time to sit in front of a statue in a deserted temple small temple and melt into her garishly painted eyes. When I close my eyes and open them to a wider inside world. When I can savour the words of a mantra and let them melt on my tongue and in my heart. While I know the rituals that are part of puja have a specific significance and symbolism, I can’t connect to them now - maybe never will.
Ultimately rituals are procedures that have been designed and honed to achieve a certain effect, so, as Sadhguru says “If it’s working for you, what is your problem? If it’s not working, drop the damn thing and do something else. […] Somebody is doing yoga as a ritual, somebody is doing puja, somebody is uttering a mantra, somebody is singing a song. If it is working for them, what the hell is anybody’s problem?”.
