jasmine memories
fiction by uma girish
The smells of camphor and incense.
Of oil-drenched wicks burning slowly, steadily into the thick, dark night.
It is these smells that take me back to the beginnings of religious awareness in childhood, spirituality, a consciousness of God, call it what you will.
In my childhood home, Sanskrit chants filled the air with their reverent, sacred tone. The chants were a signal to us, the children, that our voices must immediately be hushed. The air that drifted about us carried with it the fragrance of holy ash as Grandma emerged from her morning bath, ready for prayer. Spirituality meant rules. Rules that could not be questioned but had to be implicitly obeyed because an elder told you so. One of the rules was washing my feet as I hurtled through the front door, muddy and sweaty after an evening game of cricket or ball, and prostrating in front of the photo frames that lined the puja room. I remember an array of photo frames in bright blues, yellows and reds with generous inlays of gold: Saraswathi wearing a benign expression and playing the veena; Lakshmi, golden coins spilling from her palm; Muruga on his peacock; and pot-bellied Ganesha, always present with a silver dish overflowing with his favourite food, modaks, round balls of rice flour stuffed with jaggery and coconut paste, and his chosen vahana, the rodent beside him. Mother used a wet cloth to clean the photo frames, then meticulously dotted them with sandal paste and kumkum, vermilion powder. She placed a dish of milk and two bananas, the Gods' Meal, as we thought of it, then lit two squares of camphor and circled the air with the camphor holder, her eyes suitably half-lidded with devotion.
“The gods of my childhood lived in the puja room.”
The gods of my childhood lived in the puja room. Every time we moved house and my room changed, so did theirs. They would then have the honour of occupying the new puja room, always the east-facing room, the most auspicious direction. I always thought of the puja room as a dark and somewhat scary place. The gods who lived there kept stock of my wrongdoings. They lay in wait, ready to mete out the punishment I deserved for all my transgressions, and there were several of them. So I gave the puja room a wide berth, briefly flitting in and out before a math exam when I always depended on divine intervention to help me scrape through.
Festivals came and went, as did birthdays. I was a child who asked many questions but the adults in my life were too busy to answer. As I grew older I absorbed the many contradictions I noticed around me. The adults who supposedly knew it all, said one thing and did another. The temple visits and festive ceremonies were rigidly observed because the gods had to be pleased. But real, living breathing people with feelings were often trampled over. You could be as bad or as evil or as wicked as you liked with those who had no power over you. That was the overriding message I received during those years. And it didn't sit well with me.
Today, well into adulthood and with my personal sense of right and wrong, my religion is my own. It lives in my heart. I believe in the sanctity of the mind, the heart, the courage to stand up for what is right, the willingness to work hard, to help those who don't have as much as I do, to find my purpose and let my life be driven by it.
The temple visits had dried up. I must have retained my fear of The Avenging God.
Then one day in October last year, I visited the temple. A friend from the North was visiting and she had the Kapaleeshwarar temple on her itinerary. It had been years since I' been inside a temple and I felt a twinge of trepidation. The narrow lane that led to the temple brought an array of familiar whiffs. It was the smell of Mylapore, the smell of Madras, the smell of my childhood. Men and women squatted on the roadside, selling a variety of temple items: betel leaves, camphor, jasmine, pods of turmeric, coconuts and tiny wicker baskets with a combination of all of the above, in readiness for a puja. The shaded stone steps with their indentations that led to the temple felt cool on my soles under the archway but we had to quicken our pace in the areas where the morning sun had baked it. I stared up at the gopuram, the painted sculptures of deities, demons who bared fangs, birds, animals, and mascots. Temple smells swallowed my senses whole. I could feel a sense of piety, a special reverence, as men and women hurried past, their lips moving in silent prayer, palms joined together. The priest in pale white dhotis, his tuft of hair knotted behind his head, held out the plate with holy ash and flowers to devotees who cupped their palms over the flame and touched their eyes.
The sanctum sanctorum was wrapped in a sacred hush. Oil lamps flickered, casting shadows. Dark stone statues draped in vermilion or turquoise silk listened in mute silence to the many prayers of thanksgiving, pleas for better health, a wedding proposal, a house loan, the favourable settlement of a court case, all silently whispered by devotees. Whether they would be answered or not no one knew, but devotees came in droves, faithfully carrying their bags of hopes and dreams. Burnt oil, sticky black grease, crimson kumkum, holy ash, fragrant flowers, incense…the smells that surrounded me were so familiar, so much a part of my other life, but every bit a part of me, woven into every strand of my being.
That temple visit brought home a certain truth. That what we experience in childhood stays with us, in our blood, in our bones. They speak to us from the deepest, most inner recesses of our being. They wake up and respond when stimulated by a smell, a colour, a voice, a feeling. Ash and incense, betel and jasmine, burnt wick and hot oil, camphor and rose—it is these smells that travel through my veins, and remind me of who I am in the moments when I least expect it. Like, when I visit a temple.
about the author
Uma Girish is an award-winning freelance writer based in Chennai, India. Her work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, Christian Science Monitor, Emirates Woman, Women's eNews, Imagine Magazine and Massage Magazine, among others. Her short story “Rainbow Room” placed second in a Spring Romance Fiction contest. Her short stories have been published in India and overseas. She is currently one among three finalists in an e-Author Short Fiction Contest organized by Oxford Bookstore, Penguin Books, India and Reader's Digest. Her personal essays have won Honorable Mention on Mommy Tales, and Letters From The Heart project. Her personal essay “Wallflower Mom” was published in a 2005 Seasoned Sistahs anthology and a second is due in an anthology being published by The Healing Project.
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