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RTA-RITU - An Exhibition on Cosmic Order and Cycle of Seasons

RITU CHAKRA...

Autumn skies are enchanting, star-sprinkled, lit by a clear-rayed moon; serenely beautiful are the directions of space, free of thronging rain clouds; the earth is dry; waters sparking clear, breezes consorting with lotuses blow cool.

Ritusamhara 8.22

The poignancy of autumn as the threshold of winter is more apparent in cultures where the green of a short-lived summer inevitably turns to duller brown hues when temperatures suddenly drop to their habitual low and chilly winds resume their journey across the face of the land. In our warm climate, by contrast, autumn is the season of a long-overdue relief from the humidity of the preceding months, and a welcome sign of the forthcoming mild winter. The autumnal mood in India is a happy one, as festivals follow each other in quick succession, and people gladly celebrate the passing of the burning summer and inundating monsoon.

A positive note is struck so vigorously in this season on our subcontinent, that echoes sound even in the far cold Himalayan north, where Ladakhi Buddhists annually splash colour across the subdued snow and rock of their native landscape. They celebrate the ‘Hemis’ festival (dedicated to the Bodhisattva Padmasambhava), with a spurt of song, before retreating into the long silence of the freezing winter.

For most Hindus, the key event around the time of the autumnal equinox is the Navratri Parva, celebrated with nine days of ceremonies, special prayers, fasts, all-night gatherings for the dramatic performance of scenes from the Ramayana (or story of Lord Rama’s sacred life), musical recitations of Tulsidas’s rendering of the same theme in every neighbourhood across the country, and an annual assessment of the developments in every facet of one’s worldly and spiritual existence.

This extended interval of personal soul-searching and intense social interaction, culminates in the Durga Puja, when offerings are made to the goddess who embodies the powerful integrating feminine principle that holds together a complex societal fabric. The ‘devi’ is worshipped in order that the entire community accord due. place to their feminine principle, who is after all the principal protector and preceptor of the next generation, and therefore the centre of the familial order.

The evening after the frenzied country-wide invocation of Ma Durga, comes the explosive festivity of Dussehra. Through the symbolic re-enactment of a god-king’s heroic war victory, there is a reaffirmation of the moral order in which good (Rama) eventually vanquishes evil (Ravana) and restores a morally endangered world to its pristine beauty and nurturing aspects (Sita).

TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him to load and bless

with fruit and vines that round the thatch-eves run:

To bend with apples and moss'd cottage-trees,

And to fill all fruit with ripeness to the core:

To sweeten the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel: to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er brimmed their clammy cells.

John Keats

Goddess Durga, the primordial cosmic energy, transcendent and immanant, demon-slayer, vanquisher of evil, restorer of order, peace-maker, mother of the universe, healer and protecteress of humankind.

Durga puja

In fact, Durga Puja is said to have originated as a harvest festival in praise of the Earth Mother: Durga and Lakshmi being, respectively, the vital, powerful and gentle, benign faces of the same goddess figure in Hindu metaphysics. It is in the early part of this very segment of the season-cycle (end of August/early September) that the Malayali New Year Chingam is celebrated with the harvest festival Onam, famous for its snake-boat races in Kerala’s verdant waterways.

I shall support the entire world with sustaining vegetables, produced from my own body until the rain comes, o gods.

Devimahatmaya 11.44

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