goddesses

today i found an old journal entry. written about two years ago. parts still feel relevant today and i think its from these musings my current need to re-write hindu myths has sprung. i feel both the same and different today but yes, the dream of wanting  a different india to emerge is stronger than ever...

Just how many parts of myself have I left out there?

Demeter, the mother.  Hera, the wife. Persephone the maiden.

Yes, the vulnerable goddesses. I didn’t bother with them. They hold within them the qualities of women that the patriarchy favors.

Me, a young strong independent woman growing up in independent India!!

Why would I need these traditional qualities?

At least Hera, Demeter, Persephone are still easily found on the internet and my word processor recognizes the names. Laxmi and Saraswati on the other hand are harder to find and the word processor does not know them either, it tells me I am using a word not in its dictionary. So, will Indian women eventually have only have the Greek goddesses to find mirrors of themselves in?

Saraswati when I finally found her on the Internet surprised me. She is independent, willful, has a temper and is not interested in either parental authority or pleasing any male gods. Not qualities that men want in their wives or daughters. Is this the reason the poor goddess has no official days of worship? She eventually displeases her husband Brahma so much that he disowns her and gets another more compliant wife. Is it a subtle warning to girls to not be like Saraswati? Or does it give men the mandate to throw out wives they don’t like and marry again?

Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity is depicted as fickle and attracted by power and victory. Even though she is Vishnu’s wife she follows her fickle attractions and goes off with any of gods or heroes that she finds attractive. I am amused by this and like her a bit more. But Lamxi eventually becomes an obedient and good wife.  Her husband Vishnu on the other hand particularly in his avatar of Krishna is loved as a charming philanderer who has no qualms about carrying off maidens he finds attractive. 

The strength of independent women is needed in independent India is it not? So why are these goddesses reduced to a caricature of themselves? or idealized to a form that is so unattractive to any strong woman? Saraswati is not seen in temples but is relegated to traditional gurukuls and places where music and arts are taught. Laxmi only appears with her husband in temples. She has one day of worship dedicated just to her and then she is wooed most carefully seduced so she will stay all year round. Laxmi mind, chasing after wealth and prosperity forgetting Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music and arts. No balance in the collective psyche of India. Will it shift if I find the balance within myself or do I have to rewrite the myths as Joseph Campbell suggests?

Growing up it was impossible to embrace the traditional values of femininity carried in these watered down copies of the original. So I rejected them too. But Identifying with the traditional values of femininity or rejecting them are both the same process. In both I lose out of knowing how to know myself. In the process of trying to decolonize myself I reject more parts that could be me because they are parts I identify with the colonizer.  So really how many parts of me are floating around out there? How do I find them? I reach out, I grasp. Then I retreat, I don’t know which ones to collect. I am confused.

It’s hard for any person to know who they are and I wonder is ‘is it harder for a person from a once colonized culture?’ is it harder for a woman? Gandhi would disagree. He said that both the colonized and the colonizer are stuck in the relationship and both need to be freed to be themselves fully. I see the truth in that. How does a white man, my oppressor know who he really is free of the all the stereotypes that frame him?

Patriarchy, colonization, I needed to understand these terms on this journey towards freedom, towards peeling away the layers but now I need to also peel away these terms and just stand naked, vulnerable w/o any familiar language and just find who I am. Often I used to find who I might be by first knowing who I was not but now I seek a different process of discovery.

In writing I still hope to discover my wholeness and maybe a way in which I can help the dream of my India to emerge.