Holy Cow! Eating beef is sinful in Hinduism! The latest tempest in a teapot and the hypocrisy around it that has caught all of us up in its web is quite a meaty affair. Yes, I am referring to the recent heebie-jeebies sweeping across the country over consumption and banning of beef. And to make it meatier, another hullabaloo has to be about Sunny Leone featuring on a TV commercial that promotes Man Force condoms. I wonder what least could be left to my personal freedom and prerogative had my heart still been beating in the banana republic! I would have definitely been left nowhere jostled amidst a population of 1.28 billion mango people with a mercilessly self-righteous government putting its squeeze on me. To be precise, my decisions wouldn't have remained 'my decisions' anymore, as anybody in a frenzied fanaticism over religion and morality could walk up to me ask - 'Aap ke pati Beef khaate hain? Aur aap Pork? Aap Durga Mata ko poojte nahi ho ka?'
Firstly, I haven't even touched beef in my life till date,
not by the virtue of yelling out loud that my religious sanctity would scorn me
for doing so, but simply because the overtly fibrous look and pink tinge of it
doesn't draw my gastronomical appetite anywhere near eating the steak like a
horse. But I always wanted to marry a beef eater, as I knew, I will be moving
to an altogether different part of the world one day where I wouldn't want my
kids to freak out in their later years at the sight of an Ox tongue or Suckling
Pig being served at a premium gourmet restaurant. We like it or not, we surely
are torn in between the crude reality of animal trafficking and the urge to
satiate our appetite of a carnivore. Unfortunately, God has enabled our physical characteristics with a
certain purpose. In the manner that incisors bestowed upon us among the set of
teeth in the mouth doesn't really hold us back from predating and feeding on
other mammals that is inclusive of cows, goats and other cattle.
Who will
clarify to these confused trends cocooned in spurious devotion to a
holier-than-thou demeanor : there is no evidence that Ma Durga never enjoyed
the occasional Prime Cut Steak (Well Done) when out on a date with her pot
bellied husband with matted and piled hair tied with snakes and skulled
ornaments? Moreover, Hindu mythology
says it all. Leaf through the world history, and one can find - keeping most of
its religions in view, the ancient practices are sanctified to accept and
implement the slaughtering and offering of animals termed as 'bhog' or a
sacrifice. The infuriated avatar of the deity, Devi Durga Durgatinashini, better
known as the Chamunda, closely linked with Kali, is also known for being
offered human flesh and wine as a part of the ritual. One may worship the
Natkhat Nandlal on Janmashtami with coconut dumplings or may even desire the
consecrated 'bread of God' signifying the flesh of Jesus Christ at the holy
cathedral as a tradition of acknowledging His Divinely presence within one -
neither any of these venerates one to the level of a saint nor does one get reduced
to an atheist.
It's sad that despite arriving at an era of Globalization,
we are far from enlightening ourselves inside out and extremities of various
kinds are drastically impacting and negating our rationality day in and day out.
If we look back, it has almost always happened so, that in every field of human
endeavor - religious, political and social vetoes have increased the gap
between the gifted and the ordinary, the skillful and the amateur manifolds
rather than bridging it. It is off late that I am going through this feeling of
an intense transition that I can't help but remind myself of what my origin is
all about. Not that there aren't reasons enough to bloat like a proud peacock,
simply because the tricolored agendas behind my identity demands me to do so! At
the same time, how many of us can truly deny the hegemonic hara-kiri and the
misogynic decadence that our mother nation has to perpetually withstand? How do
we really feel about a nation that believes in imposing dictatorial ship on
someone's choice of lifestyle, dietary preferences and forms of prayer, yet rants
the slogan of secularism? A state that slams and abhors a woman for her past so
much so that she is vilified only as a transmittable disease to be deported
back to another nation on the charges of encouraging sexual crimes against
women as well as for besmirching the cultural sacredness of the society? Nevertheless,
life has to move on and we can't start a weekend all over again. So, while
everyone else is busy making it hay while the sun shines, I too choose to put
my personal time with the husband for some better use, other than the endless
wrangle over rescuing and protecting our Gomata.
It is a perfectly
lovely and non-productive Sunday. After a leisurely breakfast the husband
quickly pops up the plan for the beach. At times all that you want from life is
a good dosage of vitamin sea. And we just set off for a tan on the tip of our
nose and some sand in between our feet.
My friend from Bangalore, who has been down the weather for
a while, gives a sudden tinkle and by the time I can even sort out why she has
been trying my ISD number and that she might have possibly, deliberately and
arbitrarily shunned all sources of social networking for herself and thus cut her
connections off from Whatsapp, we are there. I am so carried away by the waves
and the tides, that it takes me a while to realize - she wouldn't obviously
know how convenient it has become now to call someone via Whatsapp. But wait!
There is a voice mail from her. Her tone unstable, consumed by fear, a hapless
melancholia to surrender and surpass my understanding of what might have gone
wrong this time.
Natalia's conjugal life has been juggling between a doting
husband, a healthy baby, happily playing one minute, critically ill in the
hospital the next. All she knows is, the Holy Christ will take care of her dilemma
between what if little Rachel is taken away from her by the ruthless verdict of
fate and how she can gather the strength to cope up with this crisis. She often
finds herself to be literally on the edge. Through the grey nights and lonely
days she is stalked by the terror of losing her child.
Rachel has this rare syndrome of bleeding without wounds. Sometimes
it's size of a pinpoint, sometimes profusely, until Natalia wraps a bandage
around those spots oozing red blood cells with no apparent injury on Rachel's
tiny body.
'She wakes up with stains of coagulated blood on her night
suit, looking like they have been there for long. And sometimes there are even
cuts all over her arms. Goodness Gracious!' Blurts out Natalia.
The first and foremost thing that comes to my mind is the
little one may have most probably hurt herself unknowingly in bed and I
wouldn't even be surprised if it is the corner of a hard bound fairy tale book.
What it can do on her tender skin if not closed properly and kept aside on the
bedside table once all the reading is done, has done multiple times to me with
a fat Paulo Coelho tome. But I decide to go a little further and make it sound
slightly more comprehensive as well as domestically convincing - 'Have you
checked your bed? I trust you do not have a mattress with springs. I know
someone who had a similar experience with a broken spring sticking up out of
the mattress. The other thing you must check is how sharp are her fingernails.
Is she clipping them regularly? She must! Faster than they grow at her age.' I
insist.
The problem with most of us is, our conscious mind loves to
twist and turn facts and events from our lives to suit our sporadic superstitions
fluttering through and through our nomad-like mind capable of etching out and
holding on to those illusory images, that otherwise have absolutely no
correspondence with our sub conscious self. But then I topple on Natalia's motherly
concerns those are emerging from certain first hand observations. It goes
without saying, in order to trace and reflect the innermost emotions of a woman
when she sees a pound of her flesh bleed in pain, one doesn't necessarily need
to become a biological mother. So, I can totally align myself with the hurdles
that obscure the path of Natalia's journey as a caring mother with a meticulous
eye for her toddler's well being.
'Ushasi! What I see looks and feels more like a satanic attack
to me! One night as Rachel peacefully slept, she woke up bargaining in the air
as though someone was tugging on her blankets - I heard her telling someone she
was sleepy and the play could wait.' Natalia claims.
'Holy Hell! And what does that mean?' Once back from the
beach, I turn on my Skype so that I can throw this very query of mine flat on
her face instead of typing all over again.
Natalia looks baffled, a feeling of blue looming up and
everywhere. 'Rachel refuses to leave her room upstairs in the attic and says
she wants to take more time out of her workbook. Her friends aren't too happy
when she can't join them in the games played in front of the mirror and in the
rocking chair.' She mutters.
What can be more perplexing for this poor soul than putting
up with such a muddled psychological state of her three year old? She can't really
help but at least lend a patient hearing to what her child has to say about her
friends who are taller than her, and routinely help her arrange tea parties and
stuff animals. All that Natalia can afford is to trust Rachel's words and
visualize everything through her eyes. Hence to develop faith in the existence
of a couple of veiled figures floating and eluding in between the realms of
physical and metaphysical becomes easier for her than me at any given point in
time.
The waving disturbances around the house multiplies with
Rachel beginning to bleed for no reason. Sometimes bleeding to an extent that
she gets into a critical medical mode causing Exsanguinations (the process of blood loss that can prove fatal for
anyone, depending upon age, health and overall strength aspect; loss of even half
or two-thirds of their body blood volume is sufficient for death to
occur.)
A distant friend, for whom what minimally I can manage to do
is to engage myself in some research work and bring some solace to her
insomniac nights that have been gripping her hard into these drudgeries which more
often than not fail to reach a logical conclusion. But thanks to my Science
savvy consort, who helps me figure out and crack every mystery around the world
with simple reasoning and illustration. Voila!
Bleeding out without a visible bruise is a scientifically
proven fact and termed as Hematidrosis (Blood sweat) which is a rare medical
condition in humans. This indicates nothing grossly abnormal with one's
platelet counts, coagulation profile or the sebaceous glands. But it certainly
has a strong connection with induced anxiety and prevalent stress soaring up to
some serious long-term depression which is often unfathomable by the victims
themselves. As a co-relative chain of cues, Rachel's case might very well be
suffering from tinted sweat blood which invariably aggravates by increasing
stress level tolling on her mind and body. She often refers to glimpses of
strange human-beasts that are winged, horned, hoofed, and possess overpowering
physicality of irrefutable beings - rather are a plain amalgamation of features
varying from one individual to another. She remembers one of them draped in a
long flowing White robe and a crown of thorns perorating on the forehead,
another with a beard and an axe in his hand. Co-incidentally, Natalia comes from a devout Catholic family and there
is also a term as 'Stigmata' used by the believers of staunch Christian
ideologies who describe this phenomena as an association with an unexplained bleeding
from wounds in the pattern of the crucifixion wounds that Jesus Christ had to
go through when he was nailed on the cross. Many a times there are no marks
visible but when there are, they mostly resemble holes and punctures on the
wrists, palms and feet. What makes Rachel's insight even more justifiable is
that the majority of the victims reporting such occurrences all across the
globe are females. Some of them even claim to feel a severe pain in all the
five places of crucifixion - wrists and feet, from nails and in the side, from
a lance. Signs of blood tears have also
been witnessed by many as an outcome of scourging, tolerance and the heaviness
on their back from bearing a concealed cross.
Likewise, Rachel may considerably bear and share the
unspoken pain of the Holy Christ and is possibly meant to stand out from rest
of the crowd. The syndromes she shows up on and off dwell on an ecclesiastical
plain and are symbolic of her being the chosen messenger of the Heavenly
Father. Convincingly, her visions may also resonate with the implications of an
imaginary Christ who is bearded, garbed in a flowing White robe, and carries an
axe (as he was a laborious carpenter by trade), and last but not the least, the
flashes of a crown of thorns suggests little Rachel's realizations of the
shock, trauma and cruelty engulfing the planet then, and now. Her blood, alike
Jesus', Natalia adds, gives out a floral scent and her wounds are never
infected but always stay fresh, capable of discharging the plasma whenever she
is subjugated by a turmoil of any kind.
As a matter of fact, the very first instance of Stigmata was
brought forth in the year 1224. Leaving aside the medical explanation, there is
this spiritual school of thoughts based on the church's conviction - that one may
subscribe to or downrightly disbelieve. Side by side, there are innumerable
speculations spurring up every day, see-sawing from one interpretation to
another.
The thing with the mystic is, since ages, there have been
similar sightings, incidents, and circumstances, which Science and Technology
have not been able to analyze, reveal and resolve once and for all.
Sometime back, a three year old boy residing in Israel
claimed to recall being murdered in his past life. His additional inputs called
attention to the tool that was used to put him to a brutal and gory death. The
creepiest detailing that has put flesh on these findings, is about his skeleton
from the past. He has successfully ushered the elders to discover his
reminiscences where his corpse was buried. The truth is, until now, no official
research has been able to decipher the mysteries behind the eerie record of
this reincarnated kid.
Another striking account of a twenty year old boy from
Edmonton, Canada, has left the doctors bewildered and in a flabbergasted state in
the recent times. They left no stones unturned to find an answer to this weird happening.
The victim woke up to find himself on fire with blazes spontaneously spreading
on his body, owing to which, he was treated for second-degree burns at the
nearest hospital.
And it has so happened in the former times, that many such
paranormal, inexplicable appearances have had a very close connection with the
society undergoing some sort of upheaval. We talk about the fabric of the
society, it's moral and ethical orientation, which pretty much satisfactorily
juxtaposes our own preaching and practices. Destruction, atrocity, religious
fanaticism often take on the shape and form of a Frankenstein's monster and
things just turn from ugly to uglier. When America was reeling from the 9/11
attacks and a new sense of insecurity, a hybrid with huge leathery wings and a
horse-like head and hoofs was spotted in Jersey. This creature was soon
compared to a 'Devil' and has been popular earlier centuries ago amongst Native
Americans, and also shocked European settlers
in the eighteenth century.
We plead, we protest, we pray, we pretend, but are we truly
able to demolish these so called devils from our lives? Or are these the
manifestations of our inner demons inflicting a perennial malignancy on a degenerative
civilization caged within the clutches of a self-damned mankind? Does anyone have a pat answer?
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