Mohini

 

20.5x28.5 inches; Watercolour, pen and ink over graphite pencil on handmade paper (Click on image to enlarge)

I dress up for the night. I have washed myself in a bucket of water. A necessity that feels more like a luxury as water is precious. The municipal tap flows for two hours every day. We are a home of eight. That bucket of water was the ocean to me. I rose from it to become Mohini from Mohan.

I put on my makeup. The face powder, I bought with my money. A gift to myself for my last birthday. The kajal pencil, now a 2 inch stub, was generously donated by Padma. The red lipstick I stole from a shop that has pretty ladies working as sales girls. I wish I could get a job like that. Yes, I do earn a living, being a bride for one night to strange lovers, but the money is barely enough for rent, clothes and food.

I look at myself in the mirror. I admire the illusion of beauty I see there. The light from one naked bulb bathes my form in bright light and deep shadows. Like a solar eclipse when Raahu tries to devour the sun. I pluck a stray hair on my upper lip and a wayward eyelash with a pair of tweezers. I place a black dot on the left, over my upper lip, mid-way between the corner of my lip and nostril. Perfect.

I take a band of long soft cloth, cut from an old cotton saree and wrap it around the lower part of my chest. A little tightly, not tight enough to cause trouble breathing. Then I push the soft fleshy upper part of my chest from both sides near the armpits, upwards and inwards towards the centre of my chest. I feel a shiver as I see my cleavage take shape where my chest hair used to be. I adjust the tightness of the band of cloth to keep the cleavage in position.

I wear a sleeveless white blouse with a deep neckline. Deep enough to reveal the cleavage I created but not the means holding it in place. I have a pair of balloons filled with water, something Bobby had taught me. I insert them each in the two empty tents in my blouse which were meant to house soft breasts. The water filled balloons create a bounce that mimics real breasts better than sponge pads. It has its risk too if the balloons burst, but I still prefer it. I roll my shoulder and adjust the strap of the blouse checking the bounce.  

I drape a pearly white chiffon saree with conch shell design embroidered with sequins, the latest fashion popularized by the actress Bhanumati, over my bleached white petticoat. Bleach to keep the spots and germs away. I wish I could bleach away the germs inside me too but that is another story. I look at my reflection in the mirror again. I put on my beaded dangler earrings and a matching bead necklace, stolen from my elder sister, many years ago. The only heirloom I possess to remind me of the family I was born to. I begin to recognize myself now. “Me Mohini!” I whisper.

Now, to complete the transformation I pick up the wig Lakshmi lent me yesterday. She is not going out to meet clients for the next few days. She is not well. High fever with a nasty cough. So, I borrowed her wig; silky and shiny black hair styled in waves like the dark ocean raging inside me. I put it on and flip my head back to feel the hair cascade around my neck. I tilt my head, my eyes half closed as if I am drunk on the nectar of life and I blow a kiss at my reflection.

I pick up my handbag and check if I have the condoms and sachets of lube. A social worker keeps giving us these things for free. Keeps us safe from diseases, she says. There are many dangers other than diseases that come with the territory in the line of my work. I feel far from safe but at least she is trying to keep me safe from one villain. I throw in my comb, lipstick and an antiseptic ointment. I wear my flat slip-on sandals. No heels for me. You never know when you need to run. I switch off the light and I shout “I am going out!” and I step out into the night humming a song to myself.

“I am a bride for a night, every night!

A flickering flame for willing lovers

Who drink from my pot of eternal life,

Turning to dust on the bed covers

At the end of every night, every night!”

Propaganda

 

28.5x20.5 inches; Pen and ink over graphite pencil on coloured drawing paper (Click on image to enlarge)

I look perfectly charismatic
While my innards are swarming with worms
Festering from corruption and bile,
An immaculate Dorian Gray in the vilest norms!

I can conjure up godly avatars
While orchestrating the most demonic of deeds
Knowing, you shall find me innocent
Disregarding what your faculty of reason heeds!

I will stalk you like a predator
While promising you the world of your dream,
Bending the rules to trap the prey
Leaving you crumbs and stealing all the cream!

I can gradually poison your being
While you thank me for being the saintly messiah!
You will imagine you have free will
As I turn you into slavish mobs taming the pariah!

I will rape and plunder with my power
While you stay drugged with hatred and deceit,
No victim shall receive justice or closure
But in turn will be deemed guilty by moral conceit!

I am quite a scoundrel, I know
While you remain confident of my holy character!
Why else try to control public opinion
If not to lead, unchecked, my fattened lambs to slaughter?

Lilith

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

The name of Lilith conjures up diverse associations in the mind of those who are familiar with her myth. She is an enigmatic character from the Judeo-Christian stories of Genesis, shrouded in darkness and superstition, almost silenced and meticulously avoided. She earned a notorious reputation in the Jewish tradition as a demon of the night, harbouring a vicious grudge against all the children of Adam and Eve, a constant threat to the well-being of newborn babies and their mothers. She is believed to be the eternally lusty, unsatiated, voluptuous spirit who leads hapless young men astray with erotic dreams when they sleep alone in a house and plagues them with nocturnal emissions! She is the much debated first female companion of Adam, much before Eve was created. She is also the rebellious, free willed, untamed feminine force who will not submit to the domination of man made rules. No wonder she has been reinvented and reimagined as a torchbearer of feminism.

But long before she found her way into Jewish folklore, she is believed to have wandered around in the lores of Sumeria.  Some scholars believe that her origins can be traced back to the ancient Babylonian demonology, which makes her a staggering 4000 years old. Some believe that Lilith is another name of the Sumerian goddess known as ‘Ninlil’ (Meaning ‘Lady Air’. The Sumerian word of air is ‘Lil’.), ‘Ishtar’ or ‘Innana’. This Sumerian goddess is portrayed as a voluptuous woman with wings on her back and claws of an owl in place of her feet. She is always seen standing on two lions and flanked by a pair of owls. The best known example of this iconography is the famous ‘Burney Relief’, currently found on display in the British Museum.

Lilith has been explicitly mentioned in the ‘Alphabet of Ben Sira’, one of the earliest literary parodies in Hebrew literature. The story recorded in it goes like this:

“After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top, for you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name (Name of god which is too holy to be pronounced) and flew away into the air.

Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, to bring her back. "Said the Holy One to Adam, 'If she agrees to come back, what is made is good. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.' The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall drown you in the sea.'

'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.' When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.”

This Story serves a dual purpose. On one hand it has surely been the source of defining and designating Lilith as the hateful demon in Jewish tradition and on the other she has been portrayed as the ‘equal’ of Adam, the woman who will not submit to the rules set down by man, an untamed entity and hence a dangerous challenge to the domination of patriarchy. A force that can’t be controlled is immediately maligned and marginalized as the unworthy or unwanted!

   

The idea that Adam had a companion prior to Eve has developed from an interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

Genesis 1: 27 reads- “And Elohim created Adam in His Image, in the Image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Genesis 2:18 and 22 read- “And Yahweh said, ‘It is not good for Adam to be alone. I will make a fitting helper for him.’ … And Yahweh fashioned the rib that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man.”

These two different creation stories leave a gap where Lilith fits in seamlessly.

But whatever the myth (You can read more in the reference sources I have provided below, if your inquisitiveness has been aroused!) this painting has grown from the soil of my imagination and exploration of the feminine energy/force within me and how Lilith is an embodiment of the same. For me Lilith is the eternal feminine, the unbridled force of nature, the scorching glow of sexuality, the darkness within us, the terror of the unknown, the limitless freedom we seek, the wilderness of lust and temptation, the tenderness of love and compassion, the languor of intoxication, and the power of knowledge and spiritual awakening (Kundalini).

Lilith for me is a metaphor for duality in nature. She is strength and vulnerability fused into one. She is the symbol for all that guides our natural (animal) instincts and rebels against artificiality and control and yet she is bound by her own limitations. She can be either liberating or self destructive. She may also lead us to liberation through destruction of the ‘Self’! She can guide us through self discovery or drown us in self doubt. All in all, she is a raw force we are scared to acknowledge but when embraced with humility she strengthens us with her nurturing. 

References:

Links:

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/lilith-lady-flying-in-darkness/

http://gnosis.org/lilith.htm

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lilith-Jewish-folklore

http://goddessschool.com/projects/willowrayne/l1fplilith.html

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/lilith/

https://occult-study.org/lilith-from-demoness-to-dark-goddess/

Books:

Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai ( New York: Doubleday, 1964)

The Hebrew Goddess, by Raphael Patai (Wayne State University Press, 3rd edition, 1978)

Lajja Gauri

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

SOLD. In private collection

Lajja Gauri / Aditi Uttanpad

Aditi is the Primal Creatrix. The name Aditi means ‘boundlessness’ and ‘freedom’ and conveys the concept of liberty from suffering and bondage. In the Rig Veda, the name is mentioned Eighty times, denoting the importance given to this goddess in the early Vedic times. She is the divine mother of all the Vedic gods and thus the source of the entire evident reality: past, present and future, ‘all that has been and will be born’. She is born from what she gives birth to and is self procreative. Aditi’s womb is unambiguously identified with the centre of the earth and hence mother earth is another aspect of her cosmic presence.

She is considered to be a very ancient deity whose importance faded in the late Vedic period. As celestial mother of every existing form and being, she is associated with space (Vyom) and with mystic speech (Vāc). There is no hymn addressed exclusively to her, unlike other Vedic gods. She is perhaps not related to a particular natural phenomenon like other gods and hence unbound, unlimited and unfettered! Aditi challenges the modern idea that the early Vedic people were patriarchal. Aditi was regarded as both the sky goddess, and earth goddess, which is very rare for a prehistoric civilization. Most ancient civilizations regarded the sky as a male and the earth as female, which is not the case here.

This primal deity has been represented mostly in the form of the more popular ‘Lajja Gauri’ (also known as Aditi Uttanpad) in Indian goddess iconography. The image of a headless naked woman with her legs bent and opened wide to expose the female genitalia, is older than the Indus Valley Civilization. But in India the first example of such an image comes from an Indus Valley Seal. She is popularly associated with fertility rituals but such association must be a narrow interpretation of the original scope of this deity. The association might be directly related to the figurative representation of the deity. This enigmatic form of a woman with a blooming lotus for her head is usually portrayed with legs opened and raised in a manner ambiguously suggesting either childbirth or sexual receptivity. Hence, hinting at the creative and regenerative powers of a fertile womb.

Goddesses such as Durga hold symbolic objects to express their power in their multiple arms but Lajja Gauri’s elemental power of sexuality, fertility and creation is solely expressed through her body, the locus of her power. This body is devoid of any ornamentation except armlets and anklets formed of serpents which again are a symbol of regeneration, the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth. The lotus flower (in her hands and in place of her head) has been used through centuries, as symbolism of life, spiritual awakening, sexuality, mystic knowledge and enlightenment. Such a bold iconography of shakti (pure energy) which was not bound to any tradition or subservient to a male power was very threatening to the Hindu patriarchs of later ages because the popularity of this deity had not shrunk into oblivion and hence was ‘harnessed’ and appropriated to suit the changing moral codes of those ages.

Several myths exist concerning Lajja Gauri, but scholars consider them to be inauthentic, late attempts to replace the Goddess's original lore which was eclipsed by the rise of the power of male gods. Many of these tales involve a dominant Lord Shiva testing his wife's modesty by publicly disrobing her, whereupon her head either falls off or sinks into her body from shame, thereby proving her ‘purity’ and providing a Shiva-centric explanation of how such a boldly self-displaying Goddess got a name like "Lajja Gauri" (Gauri of modesty) which seems very far-fetched and forced. A typical tale concocted from the perspective of male domination, to bind this unruly feminine into the garb of a tamed wife acceptable by patriarchy.

If we want to search for her actual essence and get an inkling of her forgotten lore it might be useful to listen to folktales from the oral tradition of India that still circulate about her in rural India. Lajja Gauri /Aditi is often referred to as Maatangi in certain parts of Central and south India, who is the "Outcaste Goddess" form of shakti, known for ignoring and rejecting society's rules, hierarchies and conventions. She is also called Renuka, a low-caste woman beheaded by a high-caste man. Rather than dying, she grew a lotus in place of her head and became a Goddess, Gram Devi. These stories involving the deification of an outcaste/caste-less/low-caste woman seem to suggest the uncontainable Feminine Principle, its disregard of and ultimate superiority over any man-made social system that would attempt to contain or control its pure force.

Reference: 

http://shaktisadhana.50megs.com/Newhomepage/shakti/lajjahGauri.html

Book - Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models by Madhu Bazaz Wangu

Pancha Mahabhoota 3 - Kshiti (earth)

12x16 inches; Pen drawing on acid free textured paper (Click on image to enlarge)

The End Of The World

Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like India Ink,
& poets dip their pens in
& they write.

"Here, at the end of the world,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestack feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
& people come to resemble them. . . . "

Here, at the end of the world,
the poets are bleeding.
Writing & bleeding
are thought to be the same;
singing & bleeding
are thought to be the same.

Write us a letter!
Send us a parcel of food!
Comfort us with proverbs or candied fruit,
with talk of one God.
Distract us with theories of art
no one can prove.

Here at the end of the world
our heads are empty,
& the wind walks through them
like ghosts
through a haunted house. 

- Erica Jong

Tiny Deceptions 2 - Two Faced Snake (Double Speak)

3.5x5.5 inches; Watercolor and Pen drawing on executive bond paper (Click on image to enlarge)

Tell me this and tell me that,

Don’t reveal the fault

But riddle it with fat.

Serve it hot with a pinch of salt.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

My Heart Has A Mind Of Its Own

20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

SOLD. In private collection

If opposites attract,

Virtue will find vice

While truth lies.

Love will court hate,

As good opens the gate

For evil to slyly embrace

And Kiss the face.

The strong will seek

Power over the weak,

But weakness will turn

To strength and burn

The effigy of power,

Like a ghost in the tower.

Fear will flirt

Under the skirt

With the noble and the brave,

As beauty will crave

The caresses of an ugly mind,

So utterly unkind!

Grief will explode in bliss

As control will fearfully kiss

The lips of careless choice,

And the civilized voice

Will call out to the wild

Like a disobedient nagging child.

Morality will creep

In bed to sleep

With the wicked and wanton

In complete abandon,

While pity will swell

And with cruelty dwell.

If opposites attract,

Believe, for a fact

Familiarity will breed contempt!

And you will forever attempt

To preach and to disown

 My heart which has a mind of its own.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal