The paradoxes we live in

I just finished a bunch of grapes (which was served to me on a piece of paper) and then a plate of watermelon. After completing my work on the computer, I collected the leftover of the grapes (the skeleton) and the piece of paper to throw in the dustbin. As I opened the bin and threw them in, my mother shouted from inside: “is there a plastic bag in the dust bin? Can you never decrease my work…”
I wondered if dustbins (collectors of dust) were meant to be clean themselves!

We generally keep a plastic bag in the bin so that it can be given to the sweeper who comes in the morning to collect the garbage from each of the houses. Culturally, we have remained very strict, where sweepers (bhangis) are still considered untouchables. So we do not even allow them to touch our garbage cans. In such a situation, we take the plastic bags ourselves from the dust bin and put it in the sweeper’s can - from a distance.

It is amusing then to think of the door bell, which he/she rings every morning (she touches the bell to ring it!). When I discussed it with my grand aunt, she had a larger argument. She said: “In Bikaner, during summers, sometimes, sweepers would be so thirsty that they would ask for some water. My mother in law would then get a lota of water to pour it to her (or him). I would ask her, in that case, is the stream of water that you pour to the person not physically touch each of you?”

I was bowled over!

But untouchability remains a paradoxical question. I sometimes think that while travelling in the city, in public modes, can we afford to think of jumping out of the train if we realize that the person standing/sitting next to us is the son of a sweeper or cleaner? (Kiran Nagarkar brings this out beautifully in his novel ‘Ravan and Eddie’)

Gods almost take the place of humans in our daily lives. Every morning, my mother worships Krishna (popularly known as the laddugopal). She almost treats the idol as a third child in the house. (The ironical thing is this child does not grow ever!). Today morning, again, my mother got up late. So as soon as she saw me bathed, ready before her, she told me to quickly take a small bowl of milk and put it in front of the idol. As if the idol had started crying, howling! What difference would it have made if one presented the milk half an hour later? Now, I don’t object to the fact that you feel devoted towards an objectified deity, but don’t we at the same time realize that if we give the deity a status of ‘living’ let it live to its fullest. In this case, the deity almost lives the life of the worshipper. The worshipper makes the deity eat, live and breathe as per his/her choice and then assumes that the object has a life of its own.

She offers the maximum amount of prasad to that small child, as compared to other deities like the Shiv, Laxmi or the Ganpati. Now that I have started to talk about the other deities in my house, let me also say that their life is perhaps not considered to be as important as others! The Shiv and Ganpati idol were recently replaced with new silver ones. So that the idols must not turn black due to outside dust, their faces have been covered in thin transparent plastic. I pity them - if they were alive, they would suffocate to death! Though the Ganesha could manage breathing from his long nose, Laxmi would certainly die!

We wash our hands before touching anything in the kitchen. Literally anything. If we have to take a glass of water, we wash our hands, then we fill the glass, and we drink water, and the glass is considered to be ‘used’ and not mixed up with the rest…if you touch this glass, then you cannot take the second glass without washing your hands first. There is a more complex logic when it comes to cooked food or food prepared for fasting. There are some kinds of food preparations which after ready, are considered separate. There is a separate section in the kitchen platform for the preparation of such food items. I myself don’t understand how and where this concept came from (neither does my mother know), but we follow it, because it’s now a tradition.

In this whole process of washing and cleaning, we end up wasting a lot of water. And ironically, she keeps yelling at the house maid when she uses or wastes excess water.

Ideas like these are complex. How do people live between tradition and rationality? How we develop our own hybrid culture. How we don’t question the way we mould it, and the way it moulds us? What are the reasons for the non inquiry? Is it that we are too educated to question? Or is it that we just live with the environment we are brought up in. The question is critical, because growing up with different contexts, when one sees there is another way of doing a thing, process come under a lens. These processes also drive opinions. Opinions become ideas, ideas become material.

How does one exist simultaneously between these oscillating thoughts? I wonder.