Karvachauth – The traditions of India

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!