Raksha Bandhan, the phrase explains itself—bandhan: bond; raksha: protection. A few evenings ago I was besieged by unknown guests popping up unannounced and post both early sundowners and supper, returning to the airport leaving behind a royal mess. (Cautionary advice: never think of building a house next to the airport else one would be saddled with acquaintances of acquaintances treating your place like an in-transit lounge.) Best residing at an obscure riverside outpost. Anyhow, I awash with indignation while toying dead seriously of posting a Rottweiler at the gate, needed some way to calm the storm.
So I dug into a drawer which was bursting with letters and cards that I, each year, think I shall, one fine morning, scoop out and go down memory lane. I did precisely so without waiting for the sun to go mellow and let back-to-back deadlines thin down like hair growing sparse! The first gushing letter plucked out, dated three decades ago, and in it one can hear, in all its mountain-air crispness, the love of a sister for her brother. My father’s sister sending her brother rakhi; the frayed thread still tenderly enclosed in the folds of the yellowing paper with a few grains of rice snugly stuck, with a mind of its own, on to the sheet.
The address on the envelope smudged—those the days of fountain pens—but clear enough to tell one it had headed from Simla to California and back. Its current residence being Delhi. In today’s hard-wired, online days the rakhi, no exaggeration, could be delivered via any portal, the ritual visibly exchanged in cyberspace to be then “posted” on Instagram for family and friends to encompass. The rakhi, of course, heads for the scrapheap or is worn for a few days, as a fashion statement, especially if the highlight of the bracelet is a Turkish eye, a sign of warding off evil elements. So, it takes no guessing, after drinking in the drifting fragrance of the archival letter, I thought the befitting topic of the day, was Raksha Bandhan, and for the occasion felt that the imperative need was to pen this piece with my long neglected fountain pen, with its refillable reservoir, for ink to flow timelessly over paper after paper.
And maybe it had something to do with the five-year-old ink getting to the head or curiously how when one sits down to see some high-colour footage, wrote in days of yore, plays by—practically live-blogged—that Rabindranath Tagore came to mind. He, I think, in 1905, when Bengal was sliced into half or whatever dimensions, gave a call for Hindus and Muslims to tie this sacred thread over each other’s wrists—a sacrament to unity… Speaking of which, when Queen Karnawati of Chittor beseeched Emperor Humayun to protect her kingdom, her honour from being brought to ruin by Bahadur Shah, had not he hurried to her rescue, abandoning the battle in Bengal to save her? The Hindu Queen, the Rakhi Sister to the Mughal Emperor…and above all, it was his loyal duty to come to her aid. It is an another story, that Humayun could not make it to the desert of Rajasthan on time, and Queen Karnawati, along with all other women had to perform jauhar, self-immolation to save their honour. (Sanjay Leela Bhansali, methinks you have just been provided a dream theme for your next film!) But to at least, temporarily put away, my still youthfully idealistic mood that notoriously has a way of showing up not by a long road but a shortcut, time to halt over how perchance, centuries back, did this custom of twining a thread around one’s brother’s wrist originate?
Of course, later on it did become a festival with a celebratory jubilance attached to it but…but how did Rakhi come to be? Till not too long ago, when young women were married off, they might be given an adequate dowry, but that was that. They were not supposed to be inheriting any property from the home they were born and brought up in; they were, financially dependent on their husbands. And if widowed, their sons. And, if either of the two (in-laws, as well) “decided” she was not worthy of their household, then without a moment’s notice, could be thrown out even if it was in the small hours of the morning. The sacred, consecrated thread perhaps, gave them the entitlement to go back to their maika, to their brother’s home, who had vowed to protect and care for his sister till his last breath. Perhaps, even take up cudgels with her husband to honour and respect her as his wife?! The Rakhi tie, so sacrosanct, provided the birthright to return to the parental hearth, now however, in the male sibling’s custody. A license granting the right to a roof, which no longer otherwise, the woman could live under…
However, to end on a festive note: as a little girl, growing up in America, the rakhi thread was not available. My mother would dotingly bring out silk threads and with precision-tailored dexterity weave them into beautiful braids of rainbow shades for her to send to her brothers “back home”, and for me to crisscross over my own Duo. She never did, much to my chagrin, plait my hair so perfectly! And now, as I put this pen down, I wholeheartedly understand, mundane matters, workaday chores, bring not the ebullience that comes with knotting a kindred kinship. Happy Rakhi!
Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues,
quasi-political matters and concerns that touch us all