I am in graduate school, and I'm feelin very pensive about culture.
Where did my cultural practices come from and how do I sustain them? Which parts of the culture I inherited do I allow to live and breath within me and which parts do I shove down, suppress? And how can my hybrid cultural experience, as a Desi [local, indigenous] woman who was bornraised in the Midwest and educated in California, be validated by my cultural inheritance?
When I started working on Janaki, I started dreaming of Sita. No joke. Her image would come to me in so many forms-- women walking, women dancing, women with long hair and women who had none because they offered it in pooja. Sita had a face that I couldn't quite see and hair that I couldn't quite smell. But I felt her with me. I was sure that she was holding my head, a soft cradle. That she was sitting next to me as I journeyed into and imagined the unknown. She was my mother and grandmother and father telling me stories of her as I fell asleep, each providing more color and contradictions to her existence. She is my sister, holding the memories of our loved ones and stories of our elders, offering me her stories when my memory is not big enough. She is my grandmother finding ways of preserving Telegu cooking traditions with Midwestern grocery store resources in the 60s. She is my mother supporting me encouraging me to explore the land I live though she wasn't allowed.
Sita is the breath of our community that allows us to care for each other, and nourish ourselves with love in the form of loud voices, heartfelt song, big dancing and small motions. She was a bridge-builder truth seeker, honoring the relationship of each person that entered her life, regardless of what they might or might not reciprocate. Sita is love.
I began drawing her. Dancing her. Shaping parts of myself into her. Weaving my tales into her spirit. And her spirit into my choices.
Sita became part of my movement. The way I walk intentionally from heel to toe, conscious that each muscle plays its role in preventing me from falling. The way I write, at once giddy and solemn, between always between two worlds. The way I am present for my family.
Because Sita had a family too, a family that also was full of life and sharing. We gain from sharing our lives with her, as much if not more than we gain from her story, their story. There are as many versions of Ramayanas as there are people who know the name. Ram as king, Ram as warrior. Ram as the great president leading the nation to war, a decision made from respected knowledge passed down from forefathers. Ram as the software CEO needing to make tough decisions in unfamiliar international contexts. My father and my grandfather, pioneers to a new land empowered by a new and old knowledge. Immigrants to America. My father's father and greatuncles, migrants, nomads, traveling from Bangladesh to India. Each family member came one at a time across a contentious border, to a home waiting in the distance. Searching for home. Hindus searching for new existences retaining values and knowledge from before. But also carrying loads. Holding space so that we might be allowed to live, allowed to be comforted, allowed to move on.
Brothers, sisters, friends. Mothers, many many mothers. Sharing stake in the future our future.
What keeps cultural narratives alive is ourselves and our lives. Hinduism has continued to exist in so many contexts, languages, cultural frameworks, rounds of colonization. The paths to salvation are multiple, as are the visions of God. Hinduism honors God in our day-to-day life practice, in our grand enlightenments, in our deep meditations, and in our loving devotion. It is this multiplicity that allows Hindus to practice the religion deeply. We can bring ourselves, as we are, and allow ourselves to sit with God in our lives.
A paradox has emerged to me recently-- We are constantly negotiating between reaching
for something comfortable so we may survive and identifying the real experience
of our existence so we may grow. Janaki embodies that process that we all experience, and there is God found in staying true to that process. There is Goddess found. And this is Sita's Movement.
Love.
