A letter to God...My favourite piece

Dear Ma Durga,

When I was very young, I once asked my mother why we pray to you every year. She answered – ‘Ma Durga is the symbol of strength, of the victory of good over evil. She is Ma Shakti – the source and the receptacle of all power. She is the ultimate woman – and when we worship Ma Durga, we worship and glorify womanhood.’ I looked at her in amazement as she spoke, because as she spoke, there was a glow in her face that I saw for the first time. For the very first time, my mother looked to me, like the manifestation of Ma Shakti.

I believed every word she said. I believed in them wholeheartedly till I saw my mother being ruthlessly beaten up by my father one night. Till I saw those helpless tears streaking her lovely face. If a woman is the symbol of strength, why was my mother so helpless? If my father prays to Ma Durga every year, why was he beating up my mother? These questions haunted me… I looked for the answers in my small world. But there was only silence all around… and there was darkness. Darkness that hid my mother’s pain… darkness that hid my father’s cruelty.

I still believed in what my mother said… a little less than before… but I still did, till one day when my father said that my sister should stop going to school. ‘The girl is old enough to learn to look after the home properly. She needs to be married off soon – I cannot keep this burden on my shoulders for long,’ he said. I remembered how he used to weep every year on Dashami. I remembered how he used to plead Ma Durga to come back ‘home’ the next year. I remembered how he called Ma Durga his daughter. One more question was added to my list… why this difference of behavior between two daughters? Why did my father love one of his daughters so much and why did he consider the other his burden? Again there was a chilling silence… again darkness descended all around my small world.

By now I had started doubting what my mother had said. But could she be entirely wrong? I did not really know till sometime later. My sister had been married off by now. She left our home to beautify someone else’s world. A year later she came back home… tears streaking her lovely face.

No one told me why she was crying, but I saw the bruises on her body. They were the same kind my mother used to have all over her’s after my father would beat her up. No one told me a word… but I could see the bruises on her heart.

So whatever my mother had said to me was not true. She had lied to me. My world started crumbling down. I could not believe that my own mother could tell me such a horrible lie. The darkness started to engulf me and the silence drove me crazy. I was frantically searching for answers. Suddenly there was a faint ray of hope that lighted up our lives. My sister was expecting her first child… and her in laws had come to take her home… they had come to take home the mother of the child who would light up their lives. They showered blessings on my sister. They dressed her up like a queen… my sister looked like an angel. She beamed in a new found happiness… the bruises on her heart had been healed.

I began to trust those words again… I had seen motherhood being celebrated with my own eyes. A few months later my sister came home again. Oh... everyone was overjoyed.
But I saw sadness in my sister’s eyes… I saw an emptiness that I could not fathom. A little later I overheard her conversation with mother. Her husband and in laws had found out that she was expecting a girl child. Her child had been denied the right to live because it was ‘guilty’ of being a girl. A girl, who after some years would become a woman and would bring forth a new life into this world, a girl, who is a form of Ma Shakti, a girl, who is the source and receptacle of all power.

By now I had realized that my mother had only told me half the truth. We glorify womanhood by celebrating Ma Durga and all the grandeur and all the rituals and all the brightness of this festival act as a curtain. A curtain to shield everyone from the darkness, the pain, the agony, the helplessness that women suffer from in silence. We celebrate the victory of good over evil to hide from everyone’s view the devil in us. We find our strength in women…and we steal that strength so that we can exploit their weakness. We bask in the glory of the source and receptacle of all power only to snatch away every bit of that power and use it to dominate them.

Now I knew all the answers to all my questions. All but one. Can you answer me? Tell me why you still bear the pain to sustain life inside you for nine long months. Tell me why you still love those who put you through hell. Why don’t you show them just once that you really are Shakti?

Yours lovingly,
One of your confused and baffled sons…