Akka Mahadevi Take these husbands who die and decay, feed them to your kitchen fires. The one with no name, no form, no death, no origins, Lord Chennamalikarjuna is my husband. What can one say of Akka Mahadevi? It is only Akka who made me wish that I had been born a woman. Perhaps with the exception of Lalleshwari of Kashmir, it is hard to find another bhakta like her in spiritual literature. In twelfth century Karnataka, this supposedly little chit of a girl—the old texts only say that she was quite young, perhaps in her teens—walked naked in the full glare of the world in search of her Lord Chennamalikarjuna. The following scene from the novel In Search of Shiva dramatizes the likely moment when Mahadevi snapped her ties with samsara: Freshly bathed, clad in her sari, her long and thick hair still wet, her forehead smeared with holy ash, eyes shut and the sacred linga cupped in her raised left palm, Mahadevi sat in meditation. King Kaushika had promised not to disturb her while she was into her sacred hour. He had kept his word all these days. But today, with his patience at an end and his desire unleashed, he could not resist breaking his resolution and breaking his word. The sight of Mahadevi’s body, accentuated by the wet sari sticking to her skin, inflamed his mind and body. Breathing heavily, like an animal in heat, in three quick strides he crossed the room and tried to take her by force. Mahadevi’s eyes flew open and her whole body burned in sudden rage. Pushing him away, she leapt to her feet, with fire in her eyes. Kaushika fell back, the hem of her sari twisted between his trembling fingers. With one firm tug, Mahadevi loosened the sari at her waist and naked she stood, like a furious sun in a cloudless sky. ‘This is what you want, what you lust for, this body, this bag of flesh and bones,’ she cried. ‘Look, King Kaushika, open your eyes wide and look, and take this body if you can.’ Kaushika could not look at her, for it was like looking at the sudden dawn of a million suns. His body turned stiff, and his mind blank. He lay sprawled on the floor with the bare sari lying by his side in a heap. He had broken his promise, broken the last condition that had been laid upon him if he wanted her to live with him. Now, with the bond between them broken, like a bird at last freed from her cage, Mahadevi turned and walked away and out of Kaushika’s life, from her incarcerated life as the would-be-queen in the palace, from her past that now seemed a heap of mere ashes. She walked through the corridors of the palace, hearing and not hearing the cries and pleas of her maids, past the guards who stood aghast as she strode past them, her breasts bouncing with pride, her eyes aglow with a new-found joy and wonder as she left the palace behind her. Like a snake that sheds off its old skin, Mahadevi shed her needless modesty and cumbersome sari. Like Shiva, who walked naked through the pine forest, his skin burning and shining like burnished gold, sky-clad Mahadevi, giving a strange twist to the tale, walked past the civilized world in search of Shiva, whom she called Lord Chennamalikarjuna, her Lord White as Jasmine. For more on Akka please see the book
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:53:52 +0000
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