#studiosmu

Sara – knowledge, sva – self. Thus knowledge of the self. With an insouciant smile, head provocatively tilted, this Saraswati emerges from a sea of lotuses and flirtatiously invites us to drop the gravitas we attach to knowledge and consider it at its most elemental form. Thus unburdened of the serious business of living we can take on the exciting avatars of adventurers, exploring that most exciting of terrains: the self. Freed of preconceived notions. This is a liberating and joyful Saraswati who celebrates life through knowledge. Her engaging youth mirrors that of the person who continues to be entranced by truths that continuously reveal themselves as life unfolds.

Ganga always longed to be here, where she is powerful, life giving, loved and worshiped. We visit her, step into her and feel her force go through us as she tells us her story. A story of her descent into our world.Before Ganga came to us, she was a celestial river – The Milkyway – Akashganga - running her course from one end of the sky to the other. And then? Her voyage downwards to us. She was to descend where the land meets the sky – the highest peaks of the Himalayas where Shiva receded.It’s not clear if she knew her strength, if she knew that the famine plagued world that desperately needed her, would not have survived the force of her arrival. An unimaginable flood falling from the heavens, as she who runs wild across the skies, would now devastate the only home we knew. The gods were moved into a state of panic when they were aware of Ganga’s journey. And so, they decided to once again bother Shiva, the ascetic God and the only one living in the high peaks of the Himalayas.Just before she could touch dry land to fulfil her destiny to save us from a relentless famine, her fall was broken. It was Shiva – and thus, the meeting of an irresistible force and an immovable object. Suddenly she was trapped, in a forest of his hair, that he caught her in, and tied up quickly, pinning tightly over his head, with the crescent moon. In his maze of hair, she broke into smaller and smaller tributaries. Realizing very quickly that she might lose herself completely to him. She would have to persevere and push on insistently.  And so she did, until finally and suddenly she could smell the fragrance of wet soil, a taste like the first rain. A few drops at first and then a gushing glorious river of turquoise and emerald green we know and love. She was home. 

Matangi’s so called filth represents freedom - from the sanitized gated community of Brahminical patriarchy. Its walls of orthodoxy built with caste prejudices and notions of clean and unclean. But life cannot thrive in a sterile environment. And Matangi ushers us out. Offering us instead the throb of life. In her open landscape there is darkness – and it provides the contrast we need to fully appreciate and celebrate radiance.

In their minds was born, that singular nucleus of heat, that they kindled and expanded. A force, a white light so powerful, it could absorb all of reality into itself. This was tapas, and the gods paid nervous attention to all who practiced it. A deep meditation, exercised in a man’s world. A culture that held nature as nothing more than a backdrop, an optional element that one could ignore and deem irrelevant. The gods were apprehensive of all the destruction a powerful mind in tapas could cause, but mainly they were worried about the accumulation of power greater than theirs. So, they sent women as sexual distractions. Beautiful creatures, to tease these diligent rishis, away from their meditations, and into pleasure. This was the reality that Aparna (still Parvati at the time) had entered into. Not as a puppet played by the gods, but as a young girl who had her own vision of her future. Through tapas she was to disrupt the world of the gods, because she was in love with one of them - Shiva, the greatest of all ascetics. The adventure was to happen within her mind. A journey that would take her into the unknown, where definitions do not hold, and everything recedes into the irrelevant, except for that single nucleus of heat.It was the other rishis in the forest, who renamed her as Aparna – not even a leaf. For she had lived on nothing. No food, no water, nothing - not even a leaf. Disturbed out of their own tapas, by the growing force of her's, they had to recognise the power of this young girl, soon to be their goddess. She had sent an energy of ripples through all of reality. And as always the gods paid attention, and so did Shiva. Breaking his tapas and opening his eyes to acknowledge her. But, for an entirely different reason from the other gods. It was not to protect his power, but to give it to her. Restoring the place of nature above all culture.

We begin to comprehend Sita at the end. Throughout the Ramayana Sita is the epitome of the devoted wife - Rama’s faithful, unquestioning consort. Without reference to Rama who Sita is in her own right is not immediately apparent. She is, of course, the daughter of King Janaka. But then we also learn she is adopted. Even her endless virtues refer to her relationship with Rama – her devotion to and patience with him. But in a thrilling denouement who and what she is becomes terrifyingly clear to all, especially to Rama, when after he demands a second trial by fire to prove her chastity, the obedient, silently suffering wife vanishes. Sita, the goddess, takes her place, was always there, but never comprehended. She is the daughter of the pagan earth goddess, Bhumi. She is the daughter of this land. And here she is depicted in her moment of truth, calling upon her mother to open her arms and swallow her, taking her back into her womb to return to her essence. What becomes clearer still is that Sita’s devotion, faith, loyalty, undying patience, strength of will were not mere abstractions, practiced by a woman exemplifying the dictates of tradition, but the gifts she gave.