I have always felt absorbed by the traditions of Hinduism.
The option of picking and choosing from thousands of Gods (each one with
his/her own quirks and characterizations), rituals and occasions (pick a day of
the week and there will be some God you can please), idols etc. as per one’s
comfort and convenience. It is such a far cry from the rigidity and lack of
humor in Abrahamic religions.
Every ritual, every occasion has a story behind it. A story,
not just a brief paragraph but entire storylines with plots, subplots, suspense
and climax. The sheer volume of entwined story lines and characters can overwhelm
the mind if collated together. But the importance of these occasions is above
the storylines. Each occasion has a functional reason for existence, a moral or
lesson that may be losing relevance in the modern world but is still a nice bit
of info to have.
Let us take the occasion of Karvachauth for example. The origin is said to
be a bonding session between the wife and her in-laws a few days before the
harvest celebrations while the corresponding stories include queens turned
maids and dead kings coming back to life. But let us try to find the underlying
reason for ladies fasting all day for the well-being of their husbands.
Let us consider the habits and lifestyle of the well to do upper
class ladies of the olden days. With servants to do the hard labor and luxuries
aplenty to indulge in, these ladies would have had a life lacking in exercise or
exertion. Customs those days would not have been too conducive to married
ladies hiking across the country or hiring personal trainers for aerobic
sessions. Thus they would have consistently increased in weight and
correspondingly decreased in health after marriage. If with all equipment,
medicines and infinite dieting plans, the wives in modern India barely manage
to maintain weight, we should not be expecting too much from ancient ladies.
We can safely suppose that whatever be the era or the
environment, the basic tenets of a woman’s thinking have not undergone any
change. Thus reactions, especially illogical and emotion driven ones can be
expected to be the same. So coming back to the ladies of ancient India, they
cannot be realistically expected to be too happy with their husbands telling
them to eat less, or exercise more or that they have become fat. The relation
between a woman’s mood and what she sees in the mirror must have been just as
complex then as it is today. Imagine the powerful landlord coming home after a
long day and having to listen to the whole “aap mujhse ab pyaar nahi karte” symphony.
Men being men would have given up pretty quickly and started
searching for alternate solutions to this problem. The way to get a woman to do
something without taking offence can be broken down into a few key points –
Display of love, integration into their beliefs and loads of attention. Thus
some brilliant person (helped that most brilliant people of that era were
priests or saints) designed the perfect ritual (dieting plan) for the homely
wife – fasting for the well-being of the husband (display of love), done to
please the Gods (integration into beliefs) and garner attention (the husband
has to be back home in time with the moon).
Now this is something a lady can happily execute, integrate it
with their festivals and occasions, convert it to group bonding (or bitching)
sessions, go shopping and get all decked up, and all for the betterment of
their husband.
The men are just as happy. Their wives have had a day of
fasting, of a little less calories and a little more exercise and they are
happy about it also.
Thus the story of Karvachauth. Happy Karwachauth. It remains
just as relevant even today!
