Skip to main content

Devi Aagomoni


Baajlo Tomar Aalor Benu! 


Today is Mahalaya, the official opening of the Devi Pakkha or the Fortnight of the Goddess Durga. The Goddess has been ushered in,....She is about to grace the earth with Her divine footsteps. 

Let us all clear the dust and cobwebs of our minds and homes, and spruce these to host the Divine Mother. She Who is the Destroyer of Evil and Sloth, She who brings with Her, bounties of Peace and Wellness. 

These are trying times on this planet, and we desperately need divine aid and assistance in restoring the balance and sanity of things. The Devi, who is blessed with the Third Eye, and who is Omnipresent and Ever Alert, needs to tackle several asuras in Her short stint. Her home state lies in shambles, and Her people could never be more devoid of optimism and cheer. 

May She bless us mortals with Her Infinite Grace and Dignity, and lead us to awaken the Mahishasur Mardinis within our souls.   May this Durgotsab bring Joy and Hope to all humans. 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Does Mother Mary Really Come? You bet!

Prolific writer-activist-thinker Arundhati Roy's memoir, an ode to her mother's formidable personality, is cleverly titled, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Below the title is a picture of young Roy nonchalantly smoking a bidi. Irreverence, thy name is Arundhati Roy! At 372 pages, it is a tome, a sweeping saga that recollects both her mother's remarkable life, as well as her own. Is it a Memoir? Yes and no. Though the book title refers to their mother-daughter relationship, the book - at several junctures treats each one of them as independent and exclusive from one another. In fact, for a good part, her mother finds no mention at all, and the reader is engrossed reading about Roy's exploits and struggles through Architecture College, early attempts to find her vocation and calling, her dabbling with cinema, acting, scriptwriting; her romantic liaisons with the luscious JC, Sanjay, Pradeep et al. A life as extraordinary and unapologetic as Arundhati's mesmerizes in itself. ...

The Sadness Within Us

A curious phenomenon has taken place over the years. Technology has advanced in leaps, modern medicine has become far more effective, we can control pain and disease far better, mental health is getting due attention, there are more avenues for creativity and entertainment.  Yet.... We are no longer able to be really happy. We are a chronically unhappy people. Forever dissatisfied, never content. Always thinking about the past or the future, never enjoying the moment. Think about it. When was the last time you were really, truly, wholly happy? Blissful, joyful? You slog hard at office, get that deserved raise/promotion, party hard to celebrate, and yet at the end of the day, a hollowness creeps in. An emptiness, a feeling of futility. You have a grand wedding - its the stuff Instagram dreams are made of. Your sweetheart looks like a million bucks with the latest designer lehenga, you yourself are spruced up, your family and friends are beaming, the event is going on swimmingly. Yet...

Emotional toil of festival times

Festivals are happy times, right? Time for merriment, revelry, celebration, enjoying yourself... Wrong! Studies show festivals call for a steady spike in stress levels. Cortisol shoots up, starting with preparation for festivals, and remains high throughout, in the quest to do everything perfectly, "at least during the festival". Guess who bears the brunt of this? Yes, its the one who takes emotional labour for everyone she cares for - the woman of the house. She wants everything to be perfect, so works her ass off tidying and cleaning things. Then she wants her family to be fed well, so spends hours toiling away making delicacies in the kitchen. Rangoli to be painted - there she is with the brush. Festoons to be hung up - she's balancing herself on a stool. Furniture rearranged, flowers put up, puja room decorated? Yes, only one person who signs up for all this. Then there's the stress of the whole family at home, stepping on each other's toes. She has to appease...