By Sohini
Home feels musty, layered with memories weighing down loss and struggle for what seems like ages now. It reminds me of a sense of nothingness, the moment in between death and rebirth when you can experience all at once – the past melting into the present and calling in an infinite combination of possibilities from the future yet unborn, collapsing back immediately into the nothingness of the present again to usher in light and shadow – an elusive but enchanting play. The “Kali” ness of a home is my Chanditala. Ironically, the name itself makes this locality a marker for the Kali force. We have all been at Kali’s mercy for years here, and you bet She has been putting us through Hell and Heaven in moments of infinite wisdom! The fiercest force and the toughest face of all-encompassing possibilities, my “Kali-esque” home has been my love and nemesis, all at once!
31 years around the sun have not been easy. Home has brought me almost cyclically to many a point of self-annihilation and rebirth, plunging me into an abyss of excruciating mental, emotional and physical pain to chisel out of me a continuously tempered and yet finer form of spiritual ammunition. How am I supposed to use it? I don’t know yet. I just know that I am Kali’s favorite! I am her poster child for being a seasoned weapon of change.
As a child, I was always told that I have a sharp and blunt tongue. I was told that I argue too much, and I feel too much. I am “too” emotional. The world needs stability to progress and sustain itself. I needed to “calm the f ***” down! In our very own Chanditala, “Chandi” was told to tip-toe around and not wake everyone up. She grinned in mischief and excitement when I would grab my little sister’s hands and run to the neighbour’s garden barefoot to pick Shiuli flowers even when it was muddy and rainy. Amma ( our grandmother) would try to stop us in vain. “Ei Ritu ta ekdom kotha shone na! Dujoneri Thanda lege jabe ebar. Brishti ta thamteo dilo na meye gulo!” [ This Ritu will never listen! Both of them (myself and Rinku) will fall sick now. They didn’t even allow the rain to stop before running to the garden.!”] Breaking rules and having my own little kingdom of anarchy was exciting. Having Rinku as my companion gave me a wildish thrill that I can still recall in my bones. Kali pulled us into the little adventure! If only the elders knew!
School gave me a sense of power. I loved the limelight – the attention. Orator, debater, writer, star student, performer (music and dance): I did it all. Now that I look back – I loved the spontaneity of moments that had the potential to inspire art, elevate action, and stir up a storm of emotions inside. I would shine, as Kali hovered through the waves that I unassumingly created through these little staged victories. The world would melt away around me and I would find myself in a million shades amidst the theatrical darkness! Funnily though, my journey to school used to be in what we called a “school van”, a little prison leading me into the school-world. It resembled a tin chicken coop for young kids, drawn by a van puller through manual paddling. We would be bundled into these little caged boxes and sent to school to be demure, coy little goddesses. No wonder Rinku would shrink away and not want to go to school. She was more aware and instinctive as a child to even symbolic ideas of being pushed into boxes. She threw a fit at home when she had her first interview with the School Principal. She would not go to a place where everything was so orderly and perfect. She probably noted how I was already being socialized to slowly and steadily abandon my wildish instincts in a bid to conform and play by the rules. Rinku was not interested. Kali was speaking to me through her. I didn’t listen. We, like a reasonable family supported by me as the “responsible” elder sister and pupil of the school, coaxed her into leaving behind her sacred grove to move into the territory for lesser beings. We coaxed her like I was coaxed once, only to learn how to tip-toe around again.
School brought out the different relationships that we developed with the Kali-ness of our shared beings as sisters. I gravitated towards the light, the storm, the thrill of energy on the move through activities – powerful and imploding to burst forth into new creative spurts through many a pursuit. I was the Kalbaisakhi, almost cyclonic in my expression of my Kali-ness. For Rinku, her Kali-ness was probably about the quiet spinning of images, ideas, and concepts that present the different stories and possibilities holding up the potential of human civilization. She was the storyteller, the one who snatched images and the word to weave poems that she sang quietly into the universe. Literally the darker and gorgeous one, she held the essence of moonlit romance in her veins, unassuming but powerful in an ethereal way.
Life tempered us both. We channeled our rage, power, our gifts, and grief to eventually become women who are ruled by the force of our Chanditala Spirit. Weathered down, beaten, and haggard at times, we have both experienced our intimate relationship with Kali in our contexts so many times at home and in all the new homes away from home that we have encountered.
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