When I say I don’t find cows interesting, I don’t mean to offend cow-lovers or animal enthusiasts on any level. What I mean is that, cows never induce in us, sudden shocks or surprises. Like, ‘oh my god, look, there’s a cow!’ You might do it with a peacock, more so with a white one, stretch it as far as a fox or probably, a chameleon or a snake. But cows? These passive beings are just there, showing up miles before they get near you, huge boring reminders to a monotonous life. Hence, when I say that cows have never posed as mysterious pathways to exciting adventures before I looked out to them through the wooden barred windows onto their shed on those Sundays, you’ll probably get a minute indication on the events happening inside the room with the windows.
All my childhood Sundays were devoted to diligent ingestion
and continuous assimilation of what is called ‘the spiritual route to fulfilment
through The Cultural Heritage Classes’. I cannot wipe out your confusion on the
term ‘cultural-heritage’ as till date, I have no idea what historical facts or
cultural enlightening were we expected to imbibe from there. Let’s not dwell upon that for now.
The place that I have ‘not-so-fond-memories’ with, is an
orange hued ashram situated in an inner village of my hometown. Now, when I stress
upon orange-hued, it doesn’t simply mean the walls of the ashram were painted
orange. So were the highest order people who walked inside, not so much as
glided, due to their spiritually awakened physical selves, did so in orange kurtas
and orange sarees furthermore, orange dhotis and sat only on orange-cushioned chairs (insisting
on the colour specification in every situation, irrespective of the emergency)
and used orange handkerchiefs to wad off their orange phlegm, probably. As a
stupid kid I used to wonder if they had only the fruit orange, for their meals? Plausible,
right? Or maybe they’d use a masala that’d give the same colour to their food.
The heritage classes gave me ample opportunity to let my imagination run wild
and nonsensical. Those boring and inane hours of a weekend taught me nothing
but how to visualise oneself sitting in the clouds as they whisked past and how
cows and their chewing could be entertaining for an eternity.
Speaking of the inhabitants in the ashram, the first and
highest order was the orange-fevered ‘Round-Bald-White-haired-Heads’ who spoke in their deep voice, as they emitted an air of base quality humming to their
speaking styles to grant a saint-like quality. The second
lot, under them were the ‘Less-Round-Still Bald-Almost White-haired-Heads’ who
wore the pristine white to indicate that they were following the orange musketeers.
Their voices lacked the deep quality and was not very good with the ‘humming
effect’ either, but practice could go a long way, as we all know. And below
these two, were the Reds, ‘Deep-Young-Reds’ who had nothing to do with spiritual
awakening or orange-peeled pathways of self-actualization. Their wine-coloured skin
and tanned arms placed them further away from the austerity of the Orange-White
Clad folks, somewhere along the noisy din of the working class. They cleaned
the orange chairs and washed the white clothes, brushed the brown floors and
swept the mud-smeared verandahs for the O-W Clan to walk barefooted, as they
delivered talks on spiritual re-awakening of a man to the dawn of independence.
Reverting to the divine purpose of my weekly visits to the
ashram, me with a group equally confused and clueless kids sat on the sparkling
clean floors, like that of the closets in the Harpic Toilet Clean ads, of
brilliantly lit rooms with fresh air choking our nostrils as agarbathi-infused
positive fumes made its speedy route to our sluggish hearts. As our brains
slipped into slumber punctuated by the valiant stories of Harishchandhra and
Prahlada, our stomachs eagerly waited for the ghee-coated mysurpa that made its
regular guest appearance at the climax. I must admit that one can make their
peace with the clean-fresh domestic air and the artificial sweetness-loaded
mysurpas of the mid-morning. The tiny frown in my face peeped out of its hiding
place for the first time when I saw the white saree clad long haired woman, or fashionably
referred to by themselves as, Our Guru, had an unwavering and never-faltering smiles
constantly stuck on her face to such an extent that sometimes there was no
difference between the real person and an oil painting of the same person showcasing
their best fake smiles. Even more bizarre thoughts crossed my mind as their
optimism-plastered faces started speaking the strangest and most confusing of
ideas and called it ‘food for thought’.
Nothing resembled food nor even mediocre food in anyone’s
thought in any of their lessons. While I noticed that these ‘qualified-but-retired-teachers-turned-gurus’
never seemed to dwell upon significant historical dates and data when it came to
classes, they exhibited a remarkable capability in measuring the size of your
breasts each month after puberty hits you so that you could be prepared for the
‘beginning-of-the-shawl-wearing-phase’. Cultural Heritage, as these classes slowly
progressed, started to mean things like being aware of your own gender to such
an extent that being a girl included the constant fear of your virginity dropping
dead as soon as a guy looks at you, concealing your body at its ‘extras’, probably
a bigger hip or a full-round breast fits into the condition, being aware that crimes
of the highest order included sex as the first one, which would land you in a
place more heinous than hell. The unmarried one though; the one that happens
after marriage would make you pregnant and give you the Mother-God privilege as
it included God’s or society’s blessings. No. I am not done yet. Also, to include some
very tricky stuff aimed at confusing us is, “Don’t eat the food, let the food
eat you.”
Now let me revisit our old friends, the cows. The shed was located outside the well-lit halls in the backyard of the ashram with around four to five fully grown cows and two calves. I used to wander around there as I tried not to curse dad for appearing late to pick me up, thereby leading to a full loss of a Sunday. Almost a quarter of my beautiful and most-awaited childhood Sundays lay famished and dried up under the large hovering foot of heritage. Cows were my escape into a dreamy-imaginative torpor amongst the piles of garbage on culture learning. After the episode on the comparison of premarital sex to the projectile vomiting of a two-month-old baby and being chided for not waiting to be eaten by a banana I was given for lunch, rather sinking my hungry teeth into it., I succeeded in finding reasons to skip my avenue to ‘heritage awareness’.
I still cannot say that I am against learning the nuances of
one’s own culture or brandishing pride in one’s own heritage. But to be honest,
I found very little culture in the compulsive conditioning of gender roles and a
distorted heritage in the subtly transferred caste prejudices in the functioning
of the ashram. None of their thoughts, actions and beliefs set them apart from
common people as their clothes did, with its sun-emanating hue and texture. Only
one person won my sympathy though. My forever worried little mother waited for
her divinely gifted and spiritually awakened daughter to appear at the gate
every Sunday afternoon while all she saw, after twelve long years of weekly training
is, a fully grown defiant rebel yelling at the neighbour as she kicked her
shoes to the stand.
