Mahaparv Chhath महापर्व "छठ"

What comes to your mind when you hear the word "Chhath"? 

Let me tell you what this one word means to millions of us.

The early winter, when fog just starts to settle in the silent night and cold morning, the aroma of the air mixed with smoke from wood coal, desi ghee, and winter flowers make it so addictive that from the far away one can feel it. The preparation for Chhath starts from Diwali or one can say Diwali never gets over till it reaches to the banks (Ghats) of Ganges (Ganga)1. However, our counting of days starts from Vijyadasmhi (विजयादशमी)2, the day we see off mother to her home in Ganga and come back with the thought that we will see her again at these Ghats. 

After six days from Diwali, the mother of all festivals starts for us. It's very natural for all of us to stockpile Diwali firecrackers for Chhath, and show off our ammunition in those nights and days. The flickering lights and decoration on walls stay for days till we consume all Thakua/Thekua (the iconic sweets made with wheat flour, sugar, ghee, dry fruits and lots of love)3. 

Apart from other festivals, Chhath is really special for children, where they have to wait patiently for four days watching all the preparation but can't touch anything till it is offered to Sun (Bhagwan Surya) and Mother nature (Chhathi Maiya). Our mothers and anyone willing to be part of the preparation have to observe fast and maintain Shatvik practices, however, we as kids have to test our patience. Something like waiting in front of a sweet shop, doing all necessary chores to be there and watch with hope that these days may pass faster as we look at them. Whatever the age of persons at homes, during these days mothers are the supreme leader, nothing can be moved and touched without their permission, if one dares to do that, then a person has to go through all the importance of purity (Shativikta) and guilt of spoiling the festival. 

The first day as we call it Nahay Khay and as the name suggests everyone has to Eat only after taking a Bath. The speciality of the day is the food, bottle gourd (Lauki) without much of spices, boiled rice, and, gram (Chana) daal cooked over woods in an earthen pot or bronze vessel. I can bet on this recipe, it can't be replicated in any restaurant, the simplicity of the food makes it so delicious that one can't hold self for overeating. Anyway, this is just the beginning of truckload of work ahead. In the coming four days, none can be jobless, the entire environment, almost every household is somehow involved in this festival.

The preparation involves buying fruits for three days offering, preparing thakuas for all the dalas/saup (bamboo baskets) 4  5 from freshly washed, sun-dried and grounded wheat, laddoos from rice flour (same way), and materials for puja (worship of Chhathi Maiya). As a kid, the most important work we get is observing everything without touching, we have to be ready early (the bath is compulsory, if lucky then you will get hot water otherwise, it will turn hot after touching your body). We used to be a silent task-force who help in everything without disturbing the decorum with the hope that the first and largest share of thakua will be given afterwards.

The second day called as Kharna and Lohanda, from this day fasting starts. The devotees keep Nirjala vrat (without food and water) till evening when the first Pooja starts. They eat prasad in the night which is being offered to the deities (usually non-salt items, like Kheer, Puri, sweets, and, fruits). This meal will give them the divine energy for the upcoming days of Nirjala vrat. 

The third day, Sajhka Arak (Sandhya Arghya: the evening prayer) from Kharna, days of preparation starts and goes till the evening of next day for some family it goes whole night (no. of thakuas (X 5 or 10) = no. of dala = no. of family members). In these days every street is filled with the aroma of ghee, wheat flour and fried dry fruits. It does not matter how affluent a family is, every home prepare them with the same enthusiasm. As the evening progress, the Chhath songs (it plays continuously from Nahay Khay) and sound of crackers turn louder. 

People from all walk of life start taking dalas on their heads (only job men are entitled to do) and walk towards Ghats with beelines of females and kids dressed up in new clothes. However, for the sake of convenience and avoiding the crowd of thousands, most of us prefer to do pooja in the home. Either a permanent or makeshift Ghat (a small pit) is usually made in open and decorated with banana trees and sugarcane branches. Those who are observing fast can offer to Sandhya Surya (setting Sun) while standing in waist-deep water and rest can finish the offering with Gangajal and milk. Then done for the day, hordes all the stuff back home and keep in the cleanest place (Pooja ghar) for the next morning. This night seems the longest night for the one observing fast and likes of us who are waiting for thakuas. 

Finally, fourth Day Bhorka Arak (Pratha Arghya: the morning prayer), the most significant day, when no one puts alarm for the morning as the sound of crackers and Chhath songs will definitely tell "it is time to wake up". We used to get up as early as 4:00 AM, however, waking is not the bravest thing it is to take bath when hot water is the most prized procession. However, as people say and feel groundwater is hot early in the morning, so water from hand pumps, wells and river is the best solution in villages rather heating water. So trying to be bravest, we turn quickest and in seconds finish the morning routine and become ready for the pooja. 

Whatever we do, we can't beat mothers in this, they are the earliest birds and night owls. Before we start anything, the dalas are rearranged, thakuas with rest of others are replaced and everything is renewed. As the procession of dalas move to Ghats, everyone takes their job seriously so do we? The Ghari Ghant (the temple bell made up of bronze) and Shankh (the conch shell) are our departments and we keep them as a prize possession. As the mother starts morning pooja towards the rising sun while standing in waist-deep water, we line up to finish this with arka (arghya) of Gangajal and milk. After all the dalas, final offering happens and then devotees come out of the water while thanking Bhagwan Surya and Chhati Maiya for the success of the festival and well-being of all the family members. We start playing ghari ghants and Shankh more like being break free from untouchability restriction rather a celebration of the festival.

Now, after a day-long and more than 36 hours continuous fast (Nirjala Vrat) devotees are allowed to break the fast with prasad. In our homes, the first thing we do search for prasad from Ghats and get our Baddhi (the sacred thread to wear in the neck) from mother then go for Thakuas. This is a kind of feast where everyone and every house is celebrating. 

Chhath is not like any other festivals which one can celebrate individually, it is like an emotion of togetherness, a feeling of being with nature, a culture of bringing everyone in the family, friends, and society together. Whenever one gets a chance to visit or observe Chhath then must go there, and those who know this shouldn't be missing this. 

Chhath Parv ki Hardik Shubhkamanaye.

Wish you all a prosperous and memorable Chhath Festival.

-rituraj

Road to recovery.... the second chance.

How often have you given second chance to someone and waited for his/her recovery? 

Might be always or often, but you have definitely taken the chance with someone whom you trusted, will bounce back. 
What, if I say, give yourself a second chance and recover from your past. Yes, these are difficult times, believe me, it'll be always difficult till you accept that there is nothing like such a thing.

So, you waited frantically for days to hear the word "negative", the first time in your life you wanted to fail in the test with a minus (-) in your report card. But what about the others who appeared to the test with you, with whom you were sharing all the questions of life and leaking the answers before the test as a philosopher. Didn't they betray you with a plus (+)? Those "positive" people are still your friends, but a distinction in life exam and now they will be called as survivors of the pandemic and you will be seen as a fortunate one. We all hold life so tight that never wanted any tiny particles to breath inside us and made us breathless.

With every moment, life brings something new, something fresh, there is no space for dead flowers in a flowerpot, they should be buried to give nutrition back to the soil. So do your sour memories, painful encounters, fearful nightmares, frightful screams, and, unimaginable sorrows. 

One piece of paper has potential to change your life permanently, what if the results are different than what they are? What you will be doing if life has given you a second chance? 

As the news flashes on your TV set, in a distant country, people are getting infected with an unknown disease. You took a second to think about all those people and thought you are safe as you are far away from them. Months later, your safety net collapsed and you see them everywhere, in news, social media, gossips, chats, notifications, official mails, government advisories, society warning, apartment notice board, and, the list is non-ending. 

Still, you think you will be safe, as an emergency window seat's passenger of an aeroplane, who thinks "will be the first one to survive the crash". Yes, we want to live with a positive attitude but not with a positive test result, nothing wrong in that. However, never willing to fly due to fear of a crash or frightening during the flight is definitely not going to help in your journey. 

Why not, give yourself a second chance and recover from all the sorrow of past and worries of tomorrow? Shouldn't we live in the moment as such this is going to be first and last for us? 

Maybe that test was the alarm that you were snoozing from years, that finally went off and you woke from your comfortable lifestyle. This was the kick that you needed for so long that finally, you started looking at your goals. Yes, we can't escape the destiny but there is no harm to make our own that we want to live in. 

If the hangover of life and death is over then come back to the cliff that you were hanging before. How many chances, you have missed amending your relations with your loved ones, how many goalposts you shifted to live in the comfort zone, how many times you lied to self saying that was beyond your reach? 

A minuscule protein shield with the scrambled head can bring a halt to your life than why not your billions cell's strong body can bring a change to your own life.

Come back to yourself, you lived enough of others expectation, come back to your realization. This is the road to recovery, give yourself a second chance, be the one you always wanted to be. Happy or sad, life will be rolling, find the balance that you seek, be the one you always missed to be. 

- rituraj

The wait.......

It has been always easy if you know the things before they happen or know the outcome after they happened. However, the uneasiness of unpredictable and unwanted unknown is always self-consuming. 

It is easier to you say "go with the flow" but what if you don't want to swim or if you get drowned? We all have the sense of security with known things and people, however, insecurity peeps in with strangers and unknowns. But how you deal with known strangers when you wish to trust the unknown.

Recently, we have come to know that one of our friends have been found positive with dreaded word Covid-19. The very first reaction was the shiver down the spine to accept the fact that we could also be next in the line. The uneasy moments after the news, when you start recalling the every second of your of encounter with people. 

The time you start from your home, security guy nods at you, thankfully you are covered from head to toe and moving away from him. Next, you stop at different traffic signals where you stare at uncovered faces but thankfully it takes a few seconds and your cross them. What about the parking, when you stop and come out of your comfort, you check everything and everyone around, thankfully people are at distance. Now you adjust your mask, put a face shield and feel protected when you walk through the strangers without looking at them. During your walk, you keep avoiding any closeness with strangers and enter in the building where you work. What about the lift? the most uncomfortable moments when you wait till no one use it, but you can't be fortunate and late always. So you share that steel box with others. You start juggling with your phone to hide the anxious moments while avoiding any physical contact with people and the steel frames. Finally, you reach your floor, get your temperature checked, marked your presence and reach to your spot.

Then you greet your colleagues with a nod and smile while showering everything that you think might have touched somewhere in 70% ethanol solution. Now you lower your guard, drop your shield and lift the mask to breathe fresh air. Others follow you because we are known to each other, what harm a known entity can bring when we have been sharing since years? 

With all those uneasy moments, that you have started in the morning, you wish to forget and live normally, chat with colleagues, share your lunch, enjoy a cup of coffee and lose the uneasiness. However, the air you breathe, the touch you seek, the bread you share, the coffee you spill have something unseen. You might be able to wash your 70% guilt of unknown touch but 30% of known hands give you unwanted that you never seek.

The everyday business goes, as usual, you cover yourself with mask whenever see someone and rinse your hands with alcohol when touching something. At the end of the day, you pack your stuff hurriedly, change your mask, put the face shield, and, move like you were never there. You nod towards your colleagues with the thought tomorrow will be better with fewer people around and leave for the day. Somehow avoiding all known and unknown touches and rub, you reach home, discard the mask, lift the shield and rinse your self with ethanol and soap water. Clothes are never reused for the next day without wash so does go for yourself. You don't wish to come close to people you love without being safe in mind. You wash your skin till it starts peeling, and clean everything that you might have touched to get rid of the thought of anything harmful. 

Finally, you feel safe to breathe again and live again in your house till the next day come. Then suddenly expected but unwanted happens, then you come to know that after all the untouchability you practice you weren't invincible? A shared bread or piece of cake might have broken through the fort of your defence. Someone known turned positive last night and you lost sleep for days to come thinking you will be next until you get your tests done.

And the wait continues...

-rituraj

  

What is in the name?

The feeling that we know everything, has a catch that we don’t know what is the meaning of everything?

A little shake up in the pyramid of food chain, rattled the world order of the powerful. The tiniest of all, a biomolecule, a connecting link between the living and non-living is now decoding depth of relation between dead and living. Name it, after whatever suitable we feel, a city, a river, a place, a season or just the way it looks, doesn’t matter because origin may be distant to us but now it lives among us or in us. Yes, it is true we can’t predict things and be prepared all the time because we have already messed up our priorities. When the survival is the utmost priority then being the fittest should be the goal. But being so advanced species, which have ever walked on this planet we hardly come under the criteria of the fittest. Our priority was food before, but now it is to how to outlive our own species who we marked as different than us.

Still we as human ask

What is a virus?

Ask a naturalist- One of the random creations of nature, essential to maintain balance between living and non-living.

An Environmentalist- A connecting link between dead and living.

An Evolutionist -An early engineer of nature, which helped in central dogma of life.

A physicist- A system of differentially charged molecules where surface charge and mass of molecule decide fate of the system.

A molecular biologist- A protein shell around a nucleic acid core, which may be DNA or RNA.

A chemist- A natural assembly of biomolecules, creating a stable functional structure.

A virologist- A deadly disease which can be fatal if your immune system is weak.

A common human-?

A disease which locks me alive in a coffin before I die,

A guilt - keeps my loved ones away till I sleep in white bed,

A social stigma- leads people to change their path where I walk,

An emotion- better unseen and untouched when I die wrapped in plastic which can make other sick.  

- rituraj

You are not alone who have not understood me, I feel same for myself.

You are not alone who have not understood me, I feel the same for myself.

This has been a while since I spoke to myself. After rushing through life goals and achievements, I hardly had time to talk to myself. Isn't it quite strange that we meet and greet so many throughout a day but hardly see ourselves as a person, an individual and a separate entity who needs the same from us?  

Most of the time we complain that people don't understand and have a prejudicial view of us.  But we do have the same for us. 

Let's start from the beginning.

Yes, I treat myself as someone should achieve more than what he has. He should look different than what he finds in the mirror, his handwriting should be more perfect, his accent should be firmer and more neutral, he should be speaking more accurate and with a larger vocabulary and the list goes on.

Like how he should walk, talk, write, speak, greet, work, and behave.

So, whenever I start something new, I have a precondition for myself how I would be doing it. I have already imagined about process and outcome both before even starting it. 

In similar terms, we can say, these are some expectations we all have form ourselves irrespective our situation in life. We never wish to see ourselves falling from our own set standards. Expectations of others we can ignore but we live every day with our prejudgement about ourselves.

Now the question arises, from where we get these expectations and why we keep fighting them but never let go.

Since childhood, we used to hear about ourselves as some kind of superheroes, who will walk like that, look like that, speak like that, sing-dance like that, and comparison goes on till we become grown-up and resemble none like that. However, these conditions did not become our beloved one’s expectations to us, but we also believe we would be better if we were like them not what we are.

We start the race even before we learn how to walk. In deep down we find alienated to self when expectations meet reality, and nothing feels real.

Does it mean that we should not have an expectation? How does it work, where we have a reality check and motivation both to meet our expectations?

Isn't it simple that question gives answer too?

Yes, the reality check and motivation both should go together.

If I want to be a writer then I should read first,

If I hope to be an astronaut then I should feel weightlessness first,

If I wish to be a scientist then I should taste the failed experiments first,

If I desire to be a boxer then I should feel the pain first,

So, the rule is simple, first,

Weigh yourself then put your weight on something, and once you commit then give everything to it.

There is no shame to accept what we can't do but no fame we should seek in what we can do.

-rituraj

We won’t be here if she wouldn’t have fought for us.

#She_inspires #Wonderwoman #Mom

We owe our lives to her, yes four of us (nothing less or more), because she sacrificed everything to give us what she could have for her easily.

Still, I could remember, she was in her Master’s in Botany when I was in my class II, younger to me learning to speak alphabets and elders were going high school. After sending four of us to school, she used to leave for her classes at GD college, Begusarai, Bihar. Being a semiconservative, middle-class family, every day was harsh on her (mind that it was Bihar of the ’90s and Begusarai was one of the most kick-ass districts among all).

During summers of the ’90s, at one lunch-break in school, I was playing with classmates and had a sudden fall and landed on my arms. When I got up with a broken wrist (displaced bones), in the middle of pain someone called my Dad (principle of our school) and other teachers. I was scared to death to tell Dad that I broke my arm. Anyhow, we all rushed to Begusarai, to get orthopaedic to fix that asap.

Being just 6-7-year-old, I was wishing to have mom beside me because, in the presence of dad, I could hardly say where it hurts, forget about crying loud. From the moment we left school and went to the bus stand, I was looking for mom everywhere (usually she returned from her classes by then).

Somehow, she felt it and we all met at bus stand by the fraction of seconds (she was deboarding her bus and we were boarding ours). The moment I saw her, I forgot about my arm and narrated everything and said exactly that it was hurting a lot. Then all others realized how bad my wrist was. After my narration, we rushed to the doctor and got my left hand plastered. Mom never had time to take rest after the day-long exhaustion now she had blame to bear that she was not taking care of her kids.

We would never know how much she gave up just to keep us going. During her Master’s whole family, relatives and neighbours were waiting for her to fall and my broken wrist gave them perfect timing. But she fought all odds and completed her degree she could have done more if given more time, but we were the culprits (growing so fast, all, four of us).

She could be a Doctor or an Indian railway officer or a Professor, but she chose to be our teacher for life long. She never complained about what she couldn’t achieve but always shown us to what we can achieve even growing up in a modest family and tough times of 90’s Bihar.

When one by one we started leaving home for higher studies she was very much satisfied that we were not having the same fate as others in our neighbourhood. But just to keep all of us moving she devoted everything she could. Dad might have a moment of doubt over our capabilities but she never. We might be fighting our own battles, but she fought a war for all of us. After every setback of us, she collects our dreams and glues with her love and makes them unbreakable.

She was always looking for happiness in our eyes and her happiness came after a long wait, maybe first recruitment or first bike or first PhD or first foreign trip or first car or first marriage.

After coming so far, whenever I remind her what she can have now, she still thinks for us only.

Thanks, Maa,

You’re the wonder woman who inspires all of us.