Five Texts
During the past week, five texts have given me enjoyable study
- A text by Mme Gracia Dunel
- The Erotic Mind by Doctor J Morin
- Professor C Ram-Prasad's review of an Indologist and Sanskrit Scholar's book
- The US Military Health Notice Mercury on the welfare of women staff
- Mme Julie Clarini's review in Le Monde des Livres 8 mai
Mme Gracia Dunel
This is an enchanting récit. The original French is rendered by the author herself in English, and for all that, she has afforded readers of English the intimate observations of a French Woman in ways that are positively enriching (WHO Declaration 1974).
Doctor J Morin
On the resources of The Erotic Mind Doctor Morin suggests practical approaches to engaging, more purposefully, the rich osmosis with which individual personal scripts endow life.
Professor C Ram-Das
In the past week's Times Literary Supplement the Professor crafted a measured review of an Indologist and Sanskrit Scholar's opus.
Where does the iconography of Lord Siva settle in the WHO 1974 Declaration?
What is the cultural heritage of an integrated Hindu eroticism à la UNESCO?
Enrich. Enhance. Communicate.
The icon of Lord Shiva in my boyhood was communicated by osmosis.
On the border town, Tibetan, Lepcha, Nepali, Hindu were the principal religious customs. A mélange of smell, sound, taste, colour, squalor, dereliction, neglect, admixed with boyhood sexuality cf Doctor Morin ut supra.
The icon was diffuse, and composed, as the fascia of the over sixty-year old classic Omega Seamaster of my late Mother. As a child, I have gazed on the comforting watchface of this elegant timepiece, that eleoquence cf Mme Dunel ut supra.
The icon was raging in ferocity.
There was a Lord Shiva devotee marked with deep-cadmiun and vermilion symbols, who wandered the main street of the town. He wore a voluminous turmeric raw cotton turban. His stocky neck was begarlanded with enormous tulsi beads.
Pinned to his tunic were framed images of Lord Siva and his cohort of lesser, but equally terrifying deities, and rupee notes of various denominations.
He was well-nourished. His skin was riven from exposure to ultraviolet radiation at high altitudes. His physiognomy was Lepcha, but his demeanour was quite Hindu, presenting an animistic shaman sadhu patina.
This devotee was in a perpetual state of devotional hysteria, as he brandished a trident tipped with scarlet pigment and fabric ribbon fluttering hypnotically. He spat continously, as he rang a bell of Benares brass in counterpoint with the frenetic throb of the damaru, and, to passers-by, especially those in Western dress, he would mutter his expectations: four annas, one rupee, five rupees, hundred rupees, repeating this chant in ever-increasing tempo till it became an undifferentiated purr. The sheer amounts paralaysed a schoolboy's thoughts. The coda of his mutterings, and spitting was the refrain Ootimaha, Ootimaha, as he stamped the menacing trident into the ground clashing its bells and religious tassels, and, to schoolboys, this was his name, which instantly conjured up the terror of his visage.
As we approached the town, once spotted, the schoolboy would alert us all with the cry Ootimaha, la! and, like a pack of jackals, the alarm would be broadcast in full chorus, muddling apprehension even more.
This terrifying personality positioned himself where three main roads converged and led, passing mountains of sale-roti, singhara, peeyajoo, and sweeatmeat in a shop, where a man in a dhoti ladelled the contents of a six-foot diameter cauldron of boiling cooking oil, and on into the lower town and car-stand, and the mela-ground. You could not avoid him.
Heaven help us. Some schoolboys, intoxicated by the lure of terror, would call out a taunt and speed away, leaving others, some blissfully unaware, to face the aroused Lord Shiva devotee, who would fly demented, pirouetting, trident flailing all and sundry, vehemently protesting his Lord Shiva incantations, and spitting in volcanic jets, unchallenged even by the ferocious Tibetan mastifs lurking about the bazar, who skulked away to refuge beneath the tarpaulins of muleteer traders, displacing enormous black pigs who protested with grunts and snorts, adding to the chaos.
For all this, the devotee possessed elegant conviction, however madly expressed. For all his terror and noise, he never uttered an obscenity, at least not an audible one. His sexual probity was unimpeachable, certainly in public.
Like the Indologist and Sanskrit Scholar of Professor Ram-Prasad's review, the Lord Shiva devotee was a trained dancer, and he drew upon his kinæsthetic registers to intensify hysteria and communicate shivaism in its brand, particular, to the trading-route town.
Lord Siva phallo-lingam, and theologico-lingam in psychosexual cultural paradox sat innocuously in my schoolboy mind as I relished a repast of curry, rice, dhal, bhaji, garnishes of pickle and salad, lassi, mango, and vibrant polychrome sweetmeats. A digestif paan was out of the question because the boarding school staff would spot the evidence, with disciplinary consequences.
No tensions here. Just appetite and icon.
Mercury
It is not irreverent to mention my last but one text, the US Military Health Notice Mercury, which devotes its current issue to the Reproductive, Psychological, and Physical Welfare of Women staff, with special concern for women deployed in unfavourable environments.
The whole report gives me a great appreciation for the philosophy, public health, and operational health to promote the welfare of women, and families in their total life of deployment and civilian setting.
I recalled Mme Dunel's récit ut supra.
Mme Julie Clarini
Mme Clarini concluded her Le Monde des Livres review with this citation
..comme une signature érotique sur son propre corps..
The icon of Lord Siva has its poly-registers in bustling India, and certainly, colourfully, in my schoolboyhood.
What then is the cultural heritage of an integrated Hindu eroticism for my persona?
