Bonfire (Holika Dahan)

Holika :-

Holika  was a demoness in Hindu Vedic scriptures, who was burnt to death with help of God Vishnu. She was the sister of King Hiranyakashipu and aunt of Prahlad.The story of Holika dahan  signifies the triumph of good over evil. Holika is associated with the annual bonfire on the night before Holi, the Hindu festival of colors.

According to Bhagavat purana, there was a king named Hiranyakashipu who, like a lot of demons and Asuras, had the intense desire to be immortal. To fulfill this desire he performed the required Tapas (penance) until he was granted a boon by Brahma. Since the God’s do not usually grant the boon of immortality, he used his guile and cunning to get a boon which he thought made him immortal. The boon gave Hiranyakashyapu five special powers: he could be killed by neither a human being nor an animal, neither indoors nor outdoors, neither at day nor at night, neither by astra nor by any shastra, and neither on land nor in water or air. As this wish was granted, Hiranyakashyapu felt he was invincible, which made him arrogant. Hiranyakashyapu decreed that only he be worshiped as a God, punished and killed anyone who did not accept his orders. His son Prahlad disagreed with his father, and refused to worship his father as a god. He continued believing and worshipping Lord Vishnu.

This made Hiranyakashipu very angry and he made various attempts to kill Prahlad. During a particular attempt on Prahlad’s life, King Hiranyakashyapu called upon his sister Holika for help. Holika had a special cloak garment that prevented her from being harmed by fire. Hiranyakashyapu asked her to sit on a bonfire with Prahlad, by tricking the boy to sit on her lap. However, as the fire roared, the garment flew from Holika and covered Prahlad. Holika burnt to death, Prahlad came out unharmed.Hiranyakashipu is said to be the brother of Hiranyaksha.  Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha are Vishnu’s gatekeepers Jaya and Vijaya, born on earth as the result of a curse from the Four Kumaras.Hiranyaksha was killed by Lord Vishnu’s 3rd Incarnation which was Varaha. and Hiranyakashipu was later killed by Lord Vishnu’s 4th Incarnation which was Narasimha.

Tradition:-

The night before Holi pyres are burnt in North India, Nepal and parts of South India in keeping with this tradition. The youth playfully steal all sorts of things and put them in Holika pyre.
The festival has many purposes; most prominently, it celebrates the beginning of Spring. In 17th century literature, it was identified as a festival that celebrated agriculture, commemorated good spring harvests and the fertile land. Hindus believe it is a time of enjoying spring’s abundant colours and saying farewell to winter. Holi festivities mark the beginning of new year to many Hindus, as well as a justification to reset and renew ruptured relationships, end conflicts and accumulated emotional impurities from past.

Prepare Holika pyre for bonfire :-

Days before the festival people start gathering wood and combustible materials for the bonfire in parks, community centers, near temples and other open spaces. On top of the pyre is an effigy to signify Holika who tricked Prahalad into the fire. Inside homes, people stock up on color pigments, food, party drinks and festive seasonal foods such as gujiya, mathri, malpuas and other regional delicacies.

Holika dahan :-

On the eve of Holi, typically at or after sunset, the pyre is lit, signifying Holika Dahan. The ritual symbolises the victory of good over evil. People sing and dance around the fire.
The next day people play Holi, the popular festival of colors.

Reason for Holika burning :-

The burning of Holika is the most common mythological explanation for the celebration of Holi. In different parts of India varying reasons are given for Holika’s death. Among those are:
Vishnu stepped in and hence Holika burnt.Holika was given the power by the Brahma on the understanding that it can never be used to bring harm to anyone.Holika was a good person and it was the clothes that she wore that gave her the power and knowing that what was happening was wrong, she gave them to Prahlad and hence died herself.

Holika wore a shawl that would protect her from fire. So when she was asked to sit in the fire with Prahlad she put on the shawl and sat Prahlad down in her lap. When the fire was lit Prahlad began praying to Lord Vishnu. So Lord Vishnu summoned a gust of wind to blow the shawl off of Holika and on to Prahlad, saving him from the flames of the bonfire and burning Holika to her death
The next day is known as Color holi or Dhulheti where people play with colors and water spraying pichkaris.
The most colourful festival of the country ‘Holi’:-
Holi is the liveliest festival of India. The very origin of the festival describes and emphasises the triumph of ‘good’ over ‘evil’. Though the festival is generally identified as a celebration of colours, however the eve of Holi popularly known as ‘Holika Dahan’ is celebrated in a completely  different way. It is as important as the main festival itself that takes place the very next day of Holika Dahan.

On the eve of Holi, a bonfire is lit, prayers are offered and the triumph of good over evil is celebrated. There is a famous story behind following this ritual. According to mythology, Hiranyakashyap, the king of demons, demanded that everyone in his kingdom respect and fear him, all of whom did, except one, the demon’s own son Prahalad. The young boy was an ardent worshipper of Lord Vishnu, the Supreme Being. In spite of several warnings and threats from Hiranyakashyap, Prahalad continued to worship Lord Vishnu. After several failed attempts of trying to kill his own son, Hiranyakashyap ordered his sister ‘Holika’, to take prahalad in her lap and sit on a burning pyre. Holika had a boon that made her immune to fire. So she was sure that prahalad would burn to death while she would remain cool. As per Hiranyakashyap’s order, Prahalad sat in his aunt’s lap on a burning pyre and started reciting the name of Lord Vishnu. To everybody’s astonishment, Prahalad survived the fire and Holika burned to death. The devotion and firm belief of the young boy for Lord Vishnu and his good deeds protected him from harm while the evil deeds of demon king led to the death of his own sister. Holika was using her boon to do something evil, so her power vanished and she was burned to ashes. Shortly afterwards, Vishnu killed King Hiranyakashyap and Prahalad ruled as a wise king in his father’s place. To remember the death of the evil, Holika dahan is practiced in many parts of the country on the eve of Holi. A sacred huge bonfire is created and worshipped with full religious fervour. People gather around the bonfire and take pheras barefooted chanting hymns and making sacred offerings. In some parts of the country, a dummy of Holika is also burned on the fire.
Holika Dahan also gives the message that it’s never wise to take God’s gifts for granted. The heat from the fire also depicts that winter is behind and the hot summer days are ahead. The day is also called as ‘Choti Holi’. Next day known as ‘Badi Holi’ or ‘Dulhendi’ is of course the main day of Holi festivities. This day is meant for pure fun, playing with colours, drenching in water, singing and dancing and enjoying colossally.

Myths :-

The myths around Holi have a lot more to do with hubris than with evil women, and yet the festival is named after a wicked aunt whose only crime was to help her brother get what he wanted.
The biggest crime these myths whether we're talking Greek or Roman or Christian  could offer was women who wanted to kill children. What could be more absurd to the ancients? After all, women bore the babies, they were supposed to feed and nurture them, all the most ancient gods were, in fact, mother goddesses. Before we could name the sun and the wind and later, before we could count on gods to rescue us from situations, all ancient people turned to mothers, not named, just mother goddesses to protect them from the nameless things that went bump in the night.
Holika, as you may know, was sister to a king called Hiranyakashipu, a sort of asura, about whom there is a lot more information available than his sister. His brother was killed by Vishnu's boar avatar, and seeking revenge, Hiranyakashipu goes off to pray to Brahma to be completely invincible, i.e, not killed by a human or an animal, not killed in the daytime or night, not killed on land or in space, not with an animate or inanimate object and not killed inside a house or outside. But, as I've mentioned before, those godly loopholes are tricky little things, which meant (spoiler alert) Vishnu did kill him eventually, as his Narsimha avatar: half man half lion, in a doorway (not inside a house or outside!) at dusk and puts the king on his lap (not land or space) where he tears him open with his fingernails. It sounds like the answer to a riddle.
Anyhow, Holika comes into this because while Hiranyakashipu is off worshipping, the gods attack his kingdom and abduct his pregnant wife, and she's given a lot of Vishnu propaganda which eventually trickles down to her fetus, a sort of ancient version of Baby Einstein, and when the baby is born (a boy called Prahlada), he is a full on Vishnu worshipper. Hugely hurt by this betrayal, his dad tries to kill him off many times, including asking his sister Holika to jump into a bonfire with him. Holika apparently was protected by this boon that made her fireproof, but when she got into the fire with Prahlada on her lap, she burnt to death and he survived.

Thank you ,

Dilip Barad sir

words :-1682

Where God is a Traveller

 ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM :-

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the award-winning author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including the recent poetry volume, Love Without a Story, the acclaimed sacred poetry anthology, Eating God and the bestselling biography of a mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life. A well-known prose writer on Indian spirituality, she has been a long-standing arts critic, anthologist, performing arts curator and poetry editor. She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the Sahitya Akademi Award, the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others. She has written extensively on culture and spirituality, and has worked over the years as poetry editor, cultural curator and critic.Arundhathi is the author of six books of poetry,most recently Love Without a Storyand, andWhen God is a Traveller.As prose writer, her books include The Book of Buddha, the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga . As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God.

Subramaniam won the award for her poetry collection ‘When God is a Traveller’ in English.Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam is among the 20 writers to receive the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2020, reported PTI. The National Academy of Letters announced the names on Friday at its annual ‘’Festival of Letters’’ event.Subramaniam won the award for her poetry collection When God is a Traveller in English.The 2020 winners’ list includes seven books of poetry, four novels, five short stories, two plays, and one each of memoirs and epic poetry in 20 Indian languages. The awards for Malayalam, Nepali, Odia and Rajasthani will be announced later, said the Akademi.Apart from Subramaniam, the others who received the award in poetry include Harish Meenakshi (Gujarati), Anamika (Hindi), RS Bhaskar (Konkani), Irungbam Deven (Manipuri), Rupchand Hansda (Santali), and Nikhileswar (Telugu).

Congress leader M Veerappa Moily also received the award for his epic poem Sri Bahubali Ahimsadigvijayam in Kannada.Other winners included novelists Nanda Khare (Marathi), Maheshchandra Sharma Gautam (Sanskrit), Imaiyam (Tamil) and Sri Hussain-ul-Haque (Urdu).The Akademi named Apurba Kumar Saikia (Assamese), Dharanidhar Owari (Bodo), Hiday Koul Bharti (Kashmiri), Kamalkant Jha (Maithili) and Gurdev Singh Rupana (Punjab) winners in the short stories section. Gian Singh (Dogri) and Jetho Lalwani (Sindhi) received the award for their plays, while Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay (Bengali) got it for his memoir.

Videos :-

When God Is a Traveller :-

'When God is a Traveller', Subramaniam weaves metaphors, metaphors that are distinctly hers, into language that is simultaneously fluid and simple. Everydayness is woven as a metaphor rife with allusions to the deeper meanings of life. At first glance, the poems from this collection come across as beautiful but not oh-my-god-this-blew-my-mind-away. Not yet. But there is a vulnerability, an intimacy in this text which so exquisitely and slyly draws you in like a comfortable Ikat kurta until you are “drowning in verse” .

Many readings of this award-winning text exist but they highlight the religious aspect of the text. While it undoubtedly adheres to a certain religious context, it differs widely in terms of the figures of the Hindu pantheon represented, that is, the ones within the text are not really the most popular of the Hindu gods. Moreover, what Subramaniam does is that she uses these figures but challenges the canonical religious stories through her representations, as can be observed in the poem ‘Benaras’, an underappreciated piece in my opinion. She tries to highlight the personal side of one’s religious beliefs, for instance in the poem ‘How Some Hindus Find Their Personal Gods’.

Finally, what especially stands out in Subramaniam’s poetry collection is the imagery. Even when the meaning of the poems eludes the reader, the meaning-making processes remain accessible through the vivid images constructed, which interact with each other to produce meaning. In this text, the meaning is created through the words as well as through the imagery. This gives it a subliminal quality of sorts.

All in all, a delightful read. The allusions of Hinduism do leave scope for criticism. However, I think the Hinduism in the text alludes to the Bhakti tradition, a countercultural movement to the canonical tradition. But oh, the words, the language, the imagery- they entrapped me, an unsuspecting reader and I have zero regrets.

This book actually contains 22 poems from the “Deeper in Transit” section of Where I Live, thus there is substantial overlap in poems between books. Still, there are 29 new poems in this book, and it is a beautiful hardcover with very attractive cover art, making it a nice little book of poetry to carry around. The 22 duplicate poems are worth reading again, anyway. “Leapfrog” and “Catnap” were quoted in my review of Where I Live. Writing about gods, goddesses, and heroines as well as daily life, and a favourite topic of writing on writing, this little book is well worth reading and travelling along the various textual references which lead to empty space, which is the terrain of gods, goddesses, and heroines.

The book cover features a rich, blue, green, and gold peacock, feathers spread across about one-third of the cover, flowers blooming on a shrub in another corner, above darkness with the silhouette of a hunter shooting an arrow into a stag leaping in death throes. In “Eight Poems for Shakuntala,” Arundhathi Subramaniam pens some modern lines on Shakuntala whose story is told in the Mahabharata. One day King Dushyanta shot a stag with an arrow and pursued the wounded animal through the forest, when instead of his prey, he stumbled across Shakuntala and fell in love with her and married. Dushyanta gave her a ring, but left back to the palace, saying he would return later to fetch her. In the meantime, Shakuntala, pining for her absent love, accidently insulted a holy man who cursed her, that the man who gave her the ring would not remember her, unless she were to show him the ring he gave her. Time passed and Shakuntala lost the ring while crossing a river and when she arrived to court, Dushyanta did not recognize her. Heart-broken, she returned to the forest and gave birth the child she had conceived on Dushyanta’s first visit. A fisherman found the ring in the belly of a fish, presented it to the king, who then remembered his lost bride and searched for her, finding her again and meeting his son, and thus the family was reunited. Poems 3 and 5 in the series capture the longing of Shakuntala whilst waiting in the forest for Dushyanta’s return.

Subramaniam often writes about the mundane as well as the sublime in her poems, and often there ends up being a poem or two about a cat. In “I Knew a Cat” she writes of the pain of losing a beloved furry friend

In the poem which gives the book its title, “When God is a Traveller,” Subramaniam muses about “Kartikeya Subramania, my namesake.” Kartikeya Subramania is known by all those names, as well as Skanda, and is the son of Śiva, in some legends of him alone, as is born of  parvati alone, but also often considered the son of both Śiva and parvati . Subramania is the god of war who is also known as he renounces war in some legends and retreats to the mountains.

This is a theme not unrelated to Meera's: how to lose Earthly kingdoms, but gain the  self. As Subramaniam puts it, "Bhakti  is very much the spirit of these poems  a passionate, far from anti-carnal or anti-intellectual bhakti. I think we've often turned devotion into an anaemic animal."

This bhakti in her poems also reflects a transition in her life since I was last in touch with her, in the 1990s. "Earlier I thought that my public persona would be about 'the Arts', and my private self would be about 'spirituality'. A near-death experience in 1997 and an encounter with a spiritual guide in 2004 have shaped my life on a very fundamental level."

Many of the old divides blasted away, and the poems in this volume reflect that. But what about the other divide: that between the poet and the reader? "Some would view you as a high-intellectual. How accessible do you think your poems are?"

Subramaniam recalls that when she was 13, she stumbled across a volume of TS Eliot's poems. She did not understand all of it, but "I knew I was in the presence of beauty, and mystery." She didn't know who Eliot was. For the 13-year-old, he was her discovery.

"We all want mystery as much as we want clarity. There is beauty and truth in the patterning of the two. Hundred-watt radiance is fine for shopping malls, not for poems!"

Subramaniam adds that she loves Randall Jarrell's comment, that people haven't stopped reading modern poetry because it's difficult: they find it difficult because they've stopped reading it.

Thank you ,

Dilip Barad sir

                                                words :- 1525