Cloaks

The girls’ laughter could be heard on the street outside. Young girls dressed in pretty clothes were participating in a feast. It was the ninth day of Navratri, and they were in high demand. This was the third house they were visiting that day. Nine pre-pubescence girls are fed and worshipped at the end of the nine-day fast as they are believed to be avatars of the Goddess Durga. The delicious smells and tinkling sounds brought another girl to the door. But she was so filthy and grimy; it was hard to guess her age. She came with the hope that she would get some leftovers. Maybe they would give the food to her before it went out as garbage; and she would not have to rummage for her meal in a bin again. She stood near the door and waited silently to be noticed. It was not long before a stern woman came to shoo her away from the doorstep. In desperation, the girl clutched at the woman’s sari. The woman screamed, “Satyaanaash, now I’ll have to bathe again”. The sari was quickly extracted from those tiny hands and the girl was chased out of the gate. The sanctity of the woman was soiled by the touch of the low-born urchin. You must indeed be born in the right house to have Devi Durga reside in you. 

I live in a society which places emphasis on how people dress. Especially in times of festivals, there is multi-hued, sparkling splendour in shops and homes, as if stars have descended on the earth. But closets don’t just hold shimmering saris and glittering jewellery, some store cloaks too.
These are dark, opaque cloaks used to hide a person’s inner self. Each person has a closetful of cloaks with different tags: philanthropist, pious, kind, truthful, egalitarian and so on. Sometimes, a seam comes apart and something shabby and ragged can be seen underneath. Or it could be a swish of the cloak that gives away their true values: greed, vengeance, condescension... The list is large. Why do people live like this? How do they face the mirror in the morning? After a while, they don’t know their own selves anymore because they are used to wearing cloaks to fool the world. I wish for a society where I can take people’s words at face value and not have to wonder about their real motives. But I know that is Utopia. 

Cloaks persist against time. The woman’s actions in this era were nothing but a manifestation of the glaring disparity between the values people proclaim and their real thoughts. This double-standard especially applies to religious beliefs and practices. The queues outside the Shirdi temple are arranged according to how much money one is willing to spend. The more expensive the ticket, shorter is the line. If there is a big donation involved, the priests will personally give an escort till the statue, provide prasaad and the family can be in and out in all comfort. However, if devotees come only with faith, then they can remain standing in the queue from morning to evening. And then look at the deity for the blink of an eye and be shooed out. Is this stratification in society or blatant hypocrisy? A donation is given in the name of God for charity yet, it is like giving pap with a hatchet. Philanthropy’s ultimate aim is to promote equality in society. But even in the house of God, some are more equal than the others. Nevertheless, when I condemn such discrimination, I ask myself yet again: If I was in a position to get the five-star treatment, would I refuse it? 

The fashion of doing something for the sake of it without caring about the reason has become endemic to India. I hail from the state of Madhya Pradesh where there is a tradition among Hindus of worshipping the girl child as the Goddess. It feels slightly odd when not just somebody who is a brother by relation, but also my maternal uncles and aunts touch my feet. By the same rule, because the Goddess lives in the unmarried girl, she cannot touch anybody’s feet because she is above them. However, the story doesn’t stop here. In this same state, the infant mortality rate for girls is the highest in the country for rural areas. Despite all the family bonhomie, the rate of crime against women is one of the highest in the country. It tells me that the city where I grew up, the state I hail from, suffers from an epidemic of rife social and cultural hypocrisy. What is the point where you respect girls of your family and kill and rape the others? Wolves in sheep’s clothing abound here. 

Our society is so double-standard that it is fine to dump the garbage anywhere as long as your own doorstep is clean. It is acceptable to offer sweets to the Brahmin priest with one hand and drive out the starving waifs with the other. Giving a coin to a child is encouraging beggary while donating to a temple with an opaque trust is a holy act. By the same twisted logic, people refuse to donate to NGOs because there are chances of financial misappropriation. Giving the same money to a temple or religious guru is correct knowing well that it does not benefit the needy. Do we imbibe hypocrisy with the air? 

I talked of the opaque cloaks that people wear earlier. I wonder where do they get the cloaks from? Do they stitch them at home, perhaps from material left by their grandparents? Or is there a community retailer with a ‘one size fits all’ sale? I have some cloaks too. Did my mother make them for me or my teachers? Or did my college friends gift them to me? Maybe I’ll go back and check in the cupboard. And I wish someday, I’ll be able to burn mine in the Lohri bonfire.

The theme of this post originated in the previous one, Open Letter to a Friend