The Divine Flow

Three days in a month my mother would hang around looking cool in her bedroom. She would read magazines and novels in a supine position, her head resting on a block of wood fashioned like a pillow. She would sometimes practice drawing kolams -- patterns that are made with rice flour at the entrance -- in an unruled notebook, and would ask me which ones I liked. Amma (as I called my Mother) looked so relaxed, unhurried and undisturbed. She wouldn't take part in household activities nor go out shopping or attending functions. On 'those' days Amma wouldn't wear the usual crimson, tear-shaped kumkum on her forehead. Instead, she sported a black, round bindi, what we called chaandu pottu, made of dried, burnt rice that was left to coagulate and dry in the cradle of the empty half of a coconut shell. You made your thumb moist with a little water and gently rubbed it on the stuff and the paste would be transferred to the index finger with which one drew the round mark a little above but between the two eyebrows. When pestered with questions, Amma would say: "I'm on my monthly three-day vacation!" The family -- like many others in the community -- has long since discontinued with the seclusion tradition as archaic and regressive. Yet, ancient tradition revered the Sacred Feminine, and regarded the menstrual flow as affirmation of life. At Assam's Kamakhya Temple -- one of the nine Shakti Peeths -- the annual Ambubachi Mela celebrates the Sacred Feminine in the Devi's annual menstrual flow. The spring water from the Yoni -- symbolizing the power of procreation -- and pieces of red cloth are distributed as prasad.