The Pooja

I was almost finishing the dinner. Mom was sitting beside me. She started to tell “Da, You should have been there for the pooja”. She was very excited telling this. The pooja happened at my mom’s ancestral home at Trivandrum. Its a small village and the house is a very old one near our family temple. The place is serene and beautiful like in an Incredible India ad. (Its changing slowly rapidly though as in every other place in Kerala). I couldn’t attend it.

“This guy, the poojari is a huge black intense looking guy” she was acting it out, how he looked. “He drew a big kalam(huge drawing on floor with black ash) of a god. Uncle says its kaalan’s (yaman). He drew it really fast and was amazing. You should’ve seen it.” oh i love that expression of hers as if i lost something. “Then he placed coconut shells on that figure’s knees, elbows, arms etc. Then he asked all of us to walk in line over that figure and carefully without stepping on coconut shells. We did exactly what he said, then he told us not to turn and look whatever sound comes from your back, no matter how terrible it is. The kids were all panicky. Then he started chanting mantras so loud, it was loud and fast, as if he was talking angrily at someone.” She was trying to mimic him.

“ There was this lime+turmeric solution which looked like thick blood before him. We could here he doing something with that. bloom bloom sound. It seemed he was hitting with his hands on it. He was clanging the bells louder and faster, so was the chanting. The fire at homakunda was blazing high. I wanted to turn around and look but afraid to do so.  He was yelling and shouting. It was all weird. Then we heard he pouring that blood like solution over that god-figure drawn on the floor, chanting mantras loudly. Then he asked us to turn around.”

I finished eating but was very interestingly listening to her story “He started to tremble as in a trance. He was running here and there and came to our uncle. Asked him YOU KNOW ME????. uncle didn’t reply. He was just standing there, hands folded. HAVEN’T WE MET??? he asked again. YOU DIDN’T RECOGONIZE ME??? hmmmmmmm……???? he was dancing in frenzy” i was laughing at her expressions, with her eyes popped out and all. “I’M KODUNGALLOOR AMMA, HAVEN’T YOU COME TO ME??? uncle replied yes. He have once been to Kodungalloor temple.” Now i lost my control and started to laugh and asked her ”Then?”. “How could he know uncle have been to that temple. he’s so great”, “Oh, mom come on that’s just guess work. you people believe in anything?” i said. “No da, he know everybody’s name without we telling him. He even asked who is chethan?” well, now i’m a bit puzzled. “He even said you are a reincarnation of an ancestor in our family. And there are 2 more” Whaaat? Me? a reincarnation??? “Did you asked him whose? Who were i in the past life?” i asked. “I asked him after the pooja. but he said he can’t recall it. he get revelations only then”. hey dats tricky, i thought. It would’ve been cool to know who i was in past life na?. “Then what else he said?”

“There are 17 souls in your family who haven’t attained moksha. they are roaming around and causing problems. But the that could be done with this pooja. And he asked who is ‘Meenakshi’? Nobody in our family goes by that name. Then he said our family have a curse by a Brahmin family” aaah.. the usual trick i thought. “Anybody of us didn’t know anything about it. We thought he was just bluffing until the next day of pooja, when our oldest uncle came", “He said may be that’s true. as a kid he knew a story about his grandfather” My great-grandfather, “oh he was a charming fellow at his age. Krishna Pillai. He had many affairs here and there. he was some government official then. There was this brahmin family at our village came from somewhere in northern Kerala. A girl and her mother. It said that our grandfather fathered a child on that brahmin girl and have a daughter on her. and guess what’s her name? Meenakshi”   ME –> :|  “Not only meenakshi, he supposed to have other children too, only he knows. There’s one other guy, a wealthy man in the village. It was said at that time that he was using our grandfather through her wife, and have you seen that man’s daughter? Just like our mothers”. “ha ha ha, i like this Krishnapilla guy” i said. “Oh, he was a handsome guy in his time. haven’t you seen that old photo on the wall, he wearing a diwan like coat and hat” i don’t remember, but this guy was so much in my mind? “Hey may be i’m his incarnation. May be i am Mr.Krishnapilla, hi hi” i said.

She continued her stories for one more hour. It was a ‘happening’ pooja. She vividly drawn all the characters and stories. The foolish aunty who backs this poojari with whatever he asks with her stories, without letting others to test his genuintiy, a non believer uncle who nags and pokes poojari, youngsters trying to figure out how he may have pulled these tricks,  the panicky kids hugging tight their mothers at night, other old stories, murders happened in family, a great fire at home, oh it was a wildride through our family history….

Indeed, i missed this event. There was so much potential for a film script. But don’t worry i’ll manage to make things up and add. Just like this blog… ;)