The Prayer © adwiti They had told me that those little gold hoop earrings were given to me by my mother and out of all things in the world I had lost my left earring. Losing perhaps was what I did best, I thought. I lost my mother when I was five, she is high up in the skies, a star or an angel, and waiting to be reborn they said. I could only envision her as my mother, rebirth was too demanding for me. I wanted to remember her just as she was with long black silky hair and a smile that embraced all of me, all at once. Another elder in my home said that she was taken away by God. In my five year old head I thought hard and bewildered myself. Wasn’t God the one who took care of us? Wasn’t God the one to create us or so they said? Then why would he take my mother away so suddenly? He didn’t give us a warning, he didn’t explain, he just took her away. They also said that God might be a “he”, but then we worshipped a lot of “she” Goddesses, Saraswati, Laxmi, Durga…the God of death was Yama. Aha...that explained it! One God takes care of us and the other God ruthlessly takes us away. This too did not make sense. But my cousins and neighborhood kids were calling me to play hide-and-seek so that quickly distracted me into simpler things, like laughing and rolling down hillocks and collecting fireflies and releasing them in the night to watch the patterns they created. Nobody talked really about my mother anymore but the sadness prowled in the home that we lived in. I found it in the plates we ate our food in- she bought them, hand picking each one, color coordinating it with the dining room and the chairs, in the main stairway where she had seen a certain bay window style in a magazine and had taken it upon herself to hire an architect to make the façade of the house charming, in the vinyl records of her choice and even in the songs in the radio, her presence permeated my fragile porous existence. Every evening we prayed and women from the neighborhood came to our house where we had an altar and a prayer room and we did devotional chanting (kirtans). Of course, every day I prayed for my mother to be brought back to me. But now I had a predicament. I had lost the very first and the only thing that my mother had presented to just me as an exclusive present. Tiny hoop pure gold earrings that baby girls are presented with three days after they are born. The priest prays over the child and the mid wife sterilizes a needle by heating the tip over a fire and then while the prayers are going on and while the baby is engrossed in nursing, the needle with a white thread is gently pushed through, piercing the tender skin of the ear lobes. The white thread is kept in the ear lobe for a week and then it is replaced by a pair of 24 carat gold hoop earrings. The left one, I lost! My cousin, Nicky who was slightly older than I, suggested praying for it. “Pray to Goddess Laxmi, she is the Goddess of wealth. I heard she can help you. ” “ Humm…I have to do something about it. Can you please help me look for it?” I pleaded. “Let’s retrace your steps, where do you remember last having it?” She asked me helpfully. “The temple steps, let’s start from there.” So we ran up to the Temple steps and scoured the area. No earrings. We then returned home and looked for it under my bed, dusted my white with rose petals designed pillow cases, inside my drawers, under all my clothes, inside my red and white striped school backpack, in between all my books, shelves, but these earring had vanished. I could not bear the thought of telling my father about it. You see, I had a very profound connection with my father, that I felt losing something that my mother had given me was in itself betraying him and my mother. My last resort was prayer. I prayed. I wore my hair in such a way that my ear lobes were concealed. More prayers. I wore my hat even on hot days. More prayers. A week went by and this is when I gave up hope. It was after a month when I sat down for the daily kirtan and communion I realized I had stopped praying for my mother and my earrings, in no particular order. After a dynamic chanting session one day, the whole group meditated, even the children were forced to sit in Padmasana and still our minds, with our eyes closed. Something offered me, urged me to look, to open my eyes. Gingerly, I half opened my left eye and a glint caught my eye. The light of the Diya (A small cup-shaped oil lamp with a slight lip on the corner made of baked clay) emitted a soft, supple glow to the room, and lodged underneath the curtain of the altar something flashed like a shooting star and I wondered could it be my long lost earring? I opened both my eyes….. Hooked delicately to the end of the pale golden curtain was my other earring. I disrupted the current of meditation and swooped towards the curtain, grabbed the one tiny trinket and hooked it into my left ear, gleaming with light and laughter. @Adwiti Subba Haffner
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 17:49:00 +0000
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