A Special Night…A Special ‘Purnima’

Yet another full-moon night and these nights are absolute pleasure to look at, yet another tradition and story woven around the celestial beauty Moon. On 30th October this year it was ‘Sharad Purnima’ and yet again I am transported back to the time when such days used to hold so much of awe and wonderment for me.

I remember those were the days when as a girl I used to lie down on a cot under the open night sky and gaze continually at the stars and the moon and marvel at the infinite and unreachable sky and all that it had to offer. I found my mother worshipping the moon and the sun for something or the other. And Sharad Purnima holds a special place in my heart because obviously, ‘kheer’ that my mother used to prepare on this day used to be the best version of all the ‘kheer’ she ever made. A large earthen pot covered with ‘mulmul’ cloth used to be kept under the moonlight to gather all the elixir that moon was supposed to radiate that night. To eat this ‘kheer’ next morning used to be a ritual and we were told that this ‘prasad’ would keep us disease free and healthy all our lives. At that time, I wished and prayed that my mother eats the ‘kheer’ adequately because she was the one who was falling ill very often or did my ‘Nani’ (grandma) not give enough ‘kheer’ to my mother when she was a little girl!

Later when I grew up, I came to know about so many versions of ‘Sharad Purnima’. That on this day Goddess Lakshmi takes the round of the planet earth and takes a note of all the people who are not remembering her and make them poor, that on this day Lord Krishna played “Maha Ras’ the dance of spiritual romance with all the gopikas, that on this day girls worship sun and moon both for want of a worthy husband etc. And when all these traditional myths were making impression on me, I was also aware of and reading about the efforts of the modern man to conquer space. In 1969 the moon, the object of worship, was already landed upon and a gentleman named Neil Armstrong had already left his footprints on the surface of the moon. I distinctly remember reading somewhere that shortly before Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969, mission control on Earth jokingly asked the spaceship’s crew, “Watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit.” As was another popular myth that on Moon lived a girl with a rabbit, to this request, the command module pilot replied, “Okay. We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.” Often times my own grandma told me that there is an old woman living on the moon spinning ‘Charkha’ and she would ask me to look closely at the figure of the old woman. I used to be conflicted between the old woman and the bunny girl and the Maha Ras and the Lakshmi watch etc.

Now , when I have lived most part of my life, I have realised that this planet Earth is a natural phenomenon and as part of the cosmic play, all the humans and other forms of life that inhabit this earth are surviving and spawning as many stories as they can, because even  after thousands and thousands of years human beings  of this planet are trying to guesstimate the magic of this cosmos.  Scientists with all the advancements in technology and knowledge base are still figuring out the universe and story tellers and story weavers are doing their part of exploration by spinning tales! It is this beautiful amalgamation of fantastical and real that makes the existence of life magical.  So as long as the ‘Sharad Purnima’  continues to exude the positivity in  vichar (thought), saundarya (beauty) , swasthata (health), ichchapurti (fulfilment of wish), vidya (education), tej (inner shine), shanti (peace), keerti (glory), prakash (light), dhan (wealth), prem (love), sthayitwa (stability), karmasheelta (ability to work), prasannta (happiness) , I will continue to believe in the potential of the ‘Kheer’  made on ‘Sharad Purnima’ and  continue to pray for the well- being of all the human kind with all its scientists, explorers, scholars and storytellers, that mean well for the people of this planet!