Hayrath Mubarak --- II

It was the evening of ceremonial good-bye today for the Watak-Raze seated in our houses gloriously in the corner of a room for the last three days. All these days mornings and evenings were busy in the Puja and today’s evening was actually the occasion for a brief ceremony on a river bank (Watuk Parmuzun) but in the absence of any such flowing water there is a changeover in the custom and the ceremony is completed inside the house or in the open compound if situation allows. The specialty for today is eating of soaked walnuts given by Watak-Raze with hot roties made out of rice floor after the ceremony. From tomorrow the hectic job of sending the soaked walnuts, the auspicious Prasad of Hayrath, to all friends and relatives will commence and continue up to Taila Ashtami, the eighth Tithi of Phalgun Shukla Pakhsha. Thus the festivities of this festival end for this year.
Such celebrations no doubt lead to spiritual upliftment, purification of soul and self discipline. All festivals add zeal and zest to our lives and help in keeping certain time tested customs alive. Kashmir has been a seat of spiritual and cultural strength since time immemorial. Kashmiri Pandits are Shaivite Pandits and deeply rooted in their purest cultural traditions. The worship of Lord Shiva and Parvati is deep rooted in her tradition. The sanctity of this festival finds place in almost all authentic ancient Sanskrit texts of the valley. In Shivastotravalli of Utpal Dev written in Eight century, and Kalhana’s Rajtarangini there is a special mention of Shivratri. The great Kashmir Shaivite scholar Abinav Gupt has paid special salutations to Lord Shiva and Shivratri. We worship Lord Shiva in His both forms of Shiva and Shakti. Shakti for us is the Goddess Raginya, Sharika, Kali or Durga, who are the energy aspects of Lord Shiva. Worshipping Lord Shiva leads to the cosmic mother, who offers solace, protection and divine grace to one and all..... (to be continued)

Hayrath Mubarak --- I

The atmosphere seems to be filled with the auspicious fragrance of the Holy festival. Tomorrow is the thirteenth day of the dark fortnight of Phalgun and the peculiar Hayrath Puja as per Kashmir Hindu tradition will be offered in the evening in all KP homes wherever they are. The festival is so much in their blood that all of them from those living in pitiable conditions in camps and makeshift tenements in various cities of India to those living in posh colonies and apartments of the capital cities of India and abroad celebrate with great fanfare and exchange greetings and wish prosperity for one another. It’s on this day especially that we miss Kashmir and the festivities we enjoyed with nears and dears including Muslim friends. Lots of people in cities and villages where the concentration of KPs was much were emotionally and financially attached with the festival. The vegetable sellers in Srinagar collected and hoarded Lotus Stems called Nadru in Kashmiri for more than a fortnight and sold on premium rates to KPs before the festival and the interesting thing to mention here is that lots of them cross over to Jammu even today with their stocks to sell to their customers. Same is the case with KPs preferred cuisine, the cooked fish, though many KPs have now changed their culinary tastes from non-vegetarian to exclusively veggies, the sellers come to their door steps in Jammu to sell the Kashmir fish…… (to be continued)

Of Indian Faith and Godliness

(The off-line article is already posted on my personal web page and published in some online magazines. The purpose to post it here is to invite more readership and comments------ Author)
For ages religion and spirituality has been a number one priority for a common Indian and it continues to be so. There is nothing that can distract the masses of this land from this influence. India continues to be a staunch believer of Hindu faith in spite of lots of negative inputs provided by modern westernized life standards and culture. The Indian religious and spiritual culture continues to be a strong force though for the last many centuries very strong foreign influences that entered this land in various forms tried their best to alter her cultural base but she was able to retain her cogent basic elements of culture which continues to be her most coveted treasure for all times to come. Lots of Indians changed their faith from time to time but continued to preserve in them certain basic elements of local Indian culture thus rejecting the most powerful influences that wished to change the whole fabric of Indian culture according to their own vested interest. India has not allowed herself succumb totally even to the most vigorous foreign influences repeatedly for hundreds of years, though the face of India changed a lot but she retained the essential traits of her culture. Thus India continues to be a strong advocate and preserver of certain strong religious and spiritual values along with substantial development of science and technology and high economic growth. A rich treasury of authentic religious and philosophical scriptures preserved through thousands of years along with numerous religious institutions and places of spiritual importance is spread widely over this land and a galaxy of learned scholars, saints and seers with high spiritual awakening and knowledge are working overtime teaching people of this country and abroad the tenets of Hindu religion and spirituality. There is a substantial development of Indian thought and spirituality supported by deep faith of the masses of this great country despite many provocative elements working against it.
Indian faith and godliness, an established religious and philosophical movement with a glorious history of thousands of years, is gaining more and more attention for the last more than fifty years among the people of the west. More and more people in the western world are getting influenced by Indian religious and spiritual thought, and the Indian saints and pundits (religious teachers) are greatly honoured and welcomed for discourses than they used to be a century before. The practice of Yoga as a science and art is welcomed by all and sundry not only as a body healer but also for spiritual awakening. Numerous Yoga teaching centers in the US and other countries are catering to the aspirations of the people of all ages and the response is tremendous. Besides Yoga, Indian meditation centers help thousands of youth throughout the globe ease themselves of the stress and strain that they suffer from due to present day high heeled life.
Unfortunately along with this rich religious and spiritual environment an another trend of godlessness and atheistic attitude is cropping up in this society with a good number of individuals trying to refute the existence of gods and propagating the futility of religious beliefs obviously the result of some foreign influence or better financial independence or wrongly implicated higher educational inputs in them. The impact is not alarming but invites a good deal of awakening among the masses especially the highly educated high-heeled youth before any damage is done to our well established culture. Their argument is strong against religion and spirituality for lack of sufficient scientific proof to any divine existence, soul or the so called spiritual emancipation or awakening as propagated by numerous holy men and the religious literature circulated throughout the world. The Indian faith and godliness is thousands of years old with a solid background supported by authentic scriptures including Vedas and Upanishads, Mahabharata and Ramayana, and above all the world renowned Bhagwadgita, besides the open book lives of numerous holy men and women that have come down on this land as the messengers of God to propagate and recall the God’s message among the misleading men and women from time to time. Millions and millions of people around the globe continue to be the staunch believers of various faiths and believe God as the almighty power guiding solely the whole universal activities.
The advancement in modern science and technology has given an impression to certain people that life processes cannot exist beyond the assumptions of the scientific studies of living creatures including man. These studies that prompt certain people especially youth change the time tested beliefs of this land are just recent developments based on knowledge recently acquired by man cannot be an alternative to the world of knowledge and experience established by numerous scholars of yore and practically experienced by unlimited number of sages and seers not only on this land but also at various other locations. These people unfortunately do not like to go beyond whatever is scientifically proved recently by the men of science and are naturally averse to the belief of the presence of any supernatural existence on which the whole edifice of religion and spirituality stands. They limit their knowledge and understanding of life to its existence only from birth to death which is in fact only a small portion of the real life that exists far beyond. The life that is assumed to be the absolute reality is not the whole process but only a small portion of our existence, part of which has been lived in the gone by stages and the rest is yet to be experienced. The human life on this planet that we consider the absolute truth is actually an occasion provided to the mortal man especially to work for his personal enlightenment that has the capacity to take him nearer to the absolute reality and ultimately release him from the cycle of life and death, the ultimate object of this whole life process. The glamour of life that is witnessed here is simply to distract man from the real task that he or she is entrusted with so that he fails to perform the real function of life and passes away and just according to ones deeds gets some other life.
All development and technological advancement along with the glare of modern life is a part of the process that eludes man from seeking the real purpose of life. In fact the life process is a major test that a man is put into as two distinct options are clear before him, either to live for the sake of life and enjoy the transitory pleasures of the worldly existence and face death leaving everything behind or otherwise fulfill the task of seeking emancipation of self and try to approach the absolute reality, i.e. God. The task which seems stupendous may or may not be fulfilled in a single life so a human being may get one or more lives further to strive for achieving the ultimate reality. Since the period of stay on this planet as a human being is a transitory phase but with a very essential purpose and the ultimate aim of religion and spirituality is to bring home to the erring man that human life is the rarest of the rare opportunity that one gets after going through various stray lives and the purpose is to strive for personal enlightenment along with the routine duties as a householder with normal function as a bread earner or whatever function he or she is put to perform. One, who understands the real purpose of life and dedicates himself wholly for the purification of his real self besides performing his or her legitimate duty as a human being, consequently displays the choicest traits of human character--­­­­­ truth, justice, spirit of sacrifice, honesty, and respect for all. For him the pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat are alike as he is dedicated to the path of salvation where only the deeds of goodness and godliness help. Such people distance themselves from the false pleasures of life while keeping busy in the honest dealings as the scriptures command to renounce all selfish desire and work making all life a sacrifice offered with true devotion. Here one is also able to discriminate between the real self and the material self, as it the material one that has to perish and the real self does not die, it repeats its existence on this earth time and again in one form or the other as a consequence of its deeds till it ultimately gets a human form and an occasion to work for enlightenment. How unfortunate that we lose this rarest of rare occasion in the quest of worldly pleasures and forget the essential purpose of life by following the dictates of the objects of desire and sense enjoyments till the end comes and one passes away just to enter into one more link of the chain of our life cycle.
There was never a time when the reality of life and godliness was not experienced by lots of people in this land and numerous other places and most of them left an indelible impression on the psyche of people of their time and for the future generations to follow suit. Most of these awakened souls lived a normal life but definitely displayed an aura of spiritual excellence which naturally attracted people towards them. Many among them were people with high academic qualifications and held high elevated positions besides working overtime for the betterment of the social and spiritual fabric of their society. They made their life an example for others to follow and continue supporting and showing the path to awakening to lots of their devotees even today after they have passed into eternity. Such people actually do not die; their presence is felt eternally among their people for the influence created by them. The people of India have never been fanatic in their religious beliefs. This country has a long history of adopting various outside beliefs and faiths by people who liked to make a ground for themselves here in this country. Our people at every juncture displayed a great openness of heart and soul to accommodate everyone whoever came at her doors and shared her culture with them thus changing herself every time but essentially retaining certain basic elements of her glorious past which is her strength even today and will continue till eternity.
Our youth and those who are following a rebellious attitude towards our time-tested faith and beliefs should try to delve deep into the Indian religious philosophy and spiritual experience instead of nourishing a superficial knowledge of the real facts of life. The glorious past of this great country is not based on superficial beliefs or baseless blind faith but very solid foundations of time tested spiritual experience, philosophy and religion. This deep rooted religious, spiritual and cultural panorama with an uninterrupted history of thousands of years is the sacred legacy received by us from our forefathers. It has long helped India keep her head high and withstand the vagaries of time and nature quite contrary to many advanced nations of pre-historic period who had touched the zenith of prosperity and development in the days of yore but perished totally leaving no traces of their existence. There should be no reason to believe, act or propagate ideas contrary to the spirit of our motherland as an attitude and belief which does not correspond to her spirit is a crime against the land of our birth. We’re never bound by any blind faith to believing or acting simply as the tradition goes but we’re proud to belong to a country where you always look before you leap and scrutinize before you act. Our faith is based upon the divine experience of numerous unknown sages and seers who worked for their spiritual advancement for long periods of unknown history and the scriptures developed in centuries not by individuals but by successive generations of highly awakened sages and strangely enough without any clue of the original creator. India is a country with traces of advanced civilized culture from deep pre-historic periods when the present advanced countries of the west who boast of their advancement did not even exist in their most crude primitive forms not to speak of any of their organized system. The unfortunate that has happened with India is her slavery and subjugation to various foreign powers for long periods which deprived her of her independent spirit for a long time, thus giving an occasion to her rivals in the international forums raise fingers on her cultural integrity. Here we are indebted to some of our social and literary stalwarts like DR. R. N. TAGORE and DR. S. RADHAKRISHNAN and others who tried and succeeded in exploring the real image of India before the English speaking west who presented a very dismal picture of India lived by uncivilized people with no worthwhile cultural history.
We are proud that India is displaying remarkable development in all fields of modern technology, education, secular democratic pattern of governance, social and economic development, so much so that the image of India has got a tremendous uplift in the post independence period. India is proceeding fast on the path of economic and technological development but it is encouraging that it does not anyway overshadow our religious and spiritual development and the faith of people in the institution of religion and spirituality is increasing day by day.

Hayrath, the most revered festival of KPs--- III

Hayrath, the most fabulously celebrated festival of Pandits in Kashmir has been so since pre-historic days probably because of the age old tradition of worshipping Lord Shiva in various forms along with consort, Maa Durga, the essential accompaniment of the Lord as per Kashmir Shaivism. The traditions attached with the festival are very elaborate and thought provoking. The celebrations used to be much more detailed and extensive during olden days but have now been limited to very brief festivity and Puja. The Watak-Puja actually started on the very first day of the dark fortnight of Phalgun and continued till the eighth day of bright fortnight of Phalgun (Taila Ashtami). It’ll not be out of place to mention here that KPs follow the lunar Calendar instead of the solar one and all festivals and occasions are calculated according to consecutive days of dark and bright fortnights called Tithi and surprisingly the Kashmiri Calendar has always proved the most dependable and exact in its calculation without any flaw whatsoever for the last thousands of years of calculation.
Being the number one festival of KPs lots of social attributes have been gradually connected to it. All the members of the family are to be invariably present and participate in the Puja and seek blessings. All married women visit their parents house to have a formal washing before the festival preferably on tenth day of the dark fortnight of Phalgun called Dyar-e-Dahem as she along with her husband and children are given cash gifts and new clothes. As already stated in an earlier post the children get special cash gifts from their elders called Heyrath Kharech on Salam the following day of the festival. Hayrath is fairly significant for the newly weds in the family as they are given special gifts from the parents of both husband and wife on the occasion and the new arrivals in the house are especially greeted in the puja and honoured along with their parents.
Walnuts called Doon in Kashmiri are fairly important in the Puja as well as the object for Prasaad. The walnuts kept soaked in water in the Puja for three days are considered as the most auspicious Prasaad and are taken at home and distributed among friends and relatives after the festival. This exchange of walnuts adds to its sanctity as there is enough activity in the following week in the form of visiting neighbours, friends and relatives. The Prasaad has an important share for the married sisters and daughters of the house who get it along with some cash and the Teeka from the Puja essentially with all sanctity and devotion…… (to be continued)

Hayrath, the most revered festival of KPs ---- II

In yesterday’s post I gave a brief account of the importance of the festival. Let me now concentrate on some of its traditional background. KPs worship Bhairwa Vatakanatha on this eve and so the pooja is called Vataka-Poozah in Kashmiri. The preparation for Vatka-Poozah is started with the collection of a good number of earthen or metallic utensils and materials. A large round vessel with a narrow opening at the top called Noet (Gadda) and another smaller one of the same shape called Tsoed is filled with water and walnuts, decorated with flowers and sindoor and placed on grass mats to be worshipped as Lord Shiva and Parvati. Some other utensils used are also filled with water and walnuts and placed on grass mats with specific purposes as one is worshipped as Kalash in the beginning of the pooja. Some details in the pooja settings vary from family to family according to their particular traditions. The importance of walnuts in the pooja is substantial. Walnuts of good quality are abundantly grown in Kashmir and its four part kernel is symbolic of some indications in Hindu mythology as the four Vedas. The pooja, usually headed by a priest (Pandit) or the head of family facing East is an extensive traditional process which starts well before evening and takes a long time till late into the night with all members joining with all sanctity till the offering of all food preparations is made and the final Aarti offered and blessings for the welfare and prosperity of the household and the world at large is wished.

Subsequently a brief pooja of the Vatkanatha is formally conducted every morning and evening and Prasad distributed for two or three days before a formal ceremony preferably on a river bank in the evening as a ceremonial adieu to all the deities with a lighted Diya left floating on the water with loud recitations of sacred hymns. It is just like the immersions of the Durga statues into sacred rivers after Durga pooja in the rest of India especially south. All pooja vessels are thus emptied of the walnuts and the water dropped into the river. The walnuts thus soaked in water for a couple of days are preserved for prasad and sent to all friends and relatives especially to the married daughters and sisters families with some gifts. This exchange of Heyrath prasad with high fervor continues for almost a week and the soaked walnuts are greatly relished for their fresh taste.
There is a tradition of cooking some particular dishes on the occasion in the family for making offerings and taking later as a Prasad. Non-vegetarian dishes were abundantly prepared, offered in the pooja and eaten as Prasad till recently but have now been discontinued as an honour to the sentiment of Hindus of the plains for the festival. Among the vegetarian dishes cooking of Lotus stem (Nadru) is a must besides other preferred preparations. The cooking of fish has been a specialty with KPs on this day and continues as such even now in most KP homes on the following day of Hayrath (Salam) if not on the Hayrath eve.
The following day is called Salam in Kashmiri. It’s the day of celebration, joy, visiting friends and relatives, sharing joys and sorrows and above all extensive eating of all preferred vegetarian and non-veg dishes. The main event in the morning is giving away cash gifts from elders to youngsters called Hayrath-Kharech. The children have a long wait for the day as they receive enough free to spend money from their elders on this day. In Kashmir the Muslim neighbours and friends also joined our celebrations with due fervor by meeting, extending Heyrath greetings and partaking choicest food preparations especially fish, the famous recipe of KPs.... (to be continued)

Hayrath, the most revered festival of KPs

Kashmiri Pandits are celebrating their most revered festival “Hayrath” popularly known as Shivratri in the plains on 22nd of this month this year. Hayrath enjoys the highest social, cultural and religious importance with the community. The festival is celebrated on 12th or 13th day of the dark fortnight of the lunar month of Phalguna with high excitement and fervor but in fact the celebrations commence on the very first day of Phalguna Krishna Paksha called Huer-Ukdoh when extensive cleansing of the houses including all interiors and exteriors start. The married ladies visit their parents’ house invariably before the festival to have a ceremonial bath and collect some cash gifts for herself, children and husband. The main event is the auspicious ceremonial Hayrath Puja in the evening in which all the members of the family participate. Extensive arrangements are made for the pooja by collecting lots of materials, mainly walnuts, flowers, Kusha grass, sugar candy cones and some utensils of different size and shape especially meant for the purpose. Walnuts are especially significant in the Pooja. Various food preperations, as per the custom in the family are prepared for the offerings in the pooja and then taken as Prasad. A small room or part of a room is selected and cleaned for the purpose and a Pandit is called to perform the pooja which takes a couple of hours or even more. No food is tasted until the pooja is over. Since the Pandits have become very scarce now so the pooja is commonly performed by the eldest family member with the help of some books, Cassettes, CDs etc for the purpose.
Strangely the 21-day celebrations are marked by the same excitement, exultation and euphoria as in the days of yore in Kashmir. The way our displaced and uprooted brethren have been observing Hayrath in tents and makeshift tenements for the last 20 years shows how close this festival is to our hearts.

Hindus all over India and elsewhere observe Maha-Shivratri on the 14th day of the dark fortnight of the lunar month of Phalgun, a day after it is celebrated by Pandits in Kashmir, also known as Shiv-Chaturdashi. It is believed that Lord Shiva, the 'King of Yogis' and the 'Destroyer-Renovator of the Holy Trinity', manifested on earth on this day to redeem his devotees. The Hindus of all castes and creeds observe fast, offer prayers and spend the whole night in worship of Lord Shiva in homes and temples.
In fact Hayrath is different from Maha-Shivratri celebrated by Hindus in the plains. All the Chuturdashis of the dark fortnights of the year are auspicious to Lord Shiva and are called Shivratris except this one that falls in Phalguna being the most auspicious is called Maha-Shivratri. It’s a mere coincidence that Hayrath celebrated by Pandits in Kashmir falls only one day before Maha-Shivratri and is confused generally with Maha-Shivratri also called Shiva-Chaturdashi........ (to be continued)