From Autumn to Aswin

(originally published in the New Indian Express "Devi" magazine, Bhubaneswar, October, 2011)

From Autumn to Aswin
By Amanda Geroy

Each October in my home town, the groves of slender aspens in the Rocky Mountains would be turning a bright yellow and raining down golden showers of coin-like leaves blown about by autumn’s brisk breeze. We would wait for the first snow on the mountain peaks, eagerly conjecturing about the conditions of the coming winter skiing season. The first white flutters in town always seemed to come around Halloween, the holiday when all the kids wear costumes and visit the neighboring houses at night collecting chocolates. How many tussles erupted between concerned moms and excited children who didn’t want a heavy coat and muffler to obscure the well-planned effect of their Spiderman or Snow White outfit.

For the last five years, this season has taken on an utterly new significance for me. The month is marked as Asvin, not October, and the season is known as “rainy” and not autumn. Still, in an entirely different way, it remains one of my favorite times of the year.

During Durga Puja, I love to feel the charged atmosphere. The rhythmic gong of cymbals, the melodic tinkling of bells and the low drone of prayers create a powerful vibration which elevates my mind to a state of peace. Smoke scented with the sweet aroma of ghee and agarbati cleanses the air of impurities. Sense-impressions acquire an other-worldly clarity as the atoms of nature hum with a divine energy. The soft, warm brightness of the sun’s rays is accentuated as it shines in the drops of new rain. Bright green sprouts, bursting with life-force, grow as the days and nights pass, the moon changing its shape, the sun changing its place. I tune to the cycles of the planet as we invoke the powerful goddess through the elements of nature.

Worship of Devi is absolutely universal, as her energy and presence pervade every molecule of the universe and are felt in the hearts of every human being. Personally, I relate to Her in many ways. As a woman, I relate to Her as a symbol of empowerment and strength. As a spiritual aspirant, I relate to Her as the destroyer of ego and bringer of ultimate liberation. As a student of Odissi dance, I relate to the godess Durga through her mythology, as a protector, the slayer of inner and outer demons and the ultimate manifestation of bliss-giving beauty. I recently had the opportunity to learn the choreography “Durga” by the late Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. In this choreography both her softness and grace and her intense power are portrayed.

As a human being, I relate to the goddess Durga as a manifestation of the force of nature or prakriti. She is the universal mother, who, like this earth who births and sustains all creatures, both gives and takes life. I feel that she is very intimate, our very own near and dear and also an awesome and awe-inspiring force before which we are reduced to mere ants.

Wherever we are on the planet, whether in the Rocky Mountains of the United States or in the red-earth Malis of Orissa, the Goddess is manifested in the pure and unpolluted beauty of nature. I pray to the Goddess that on this Durga Puja, all of us, her children, are reminded of how perfect and beautiful she is in her form as Mother Earth. I pray that all of us should make a commitment to protecting the very special earth that is Orissa. I pray that we can work to protect and empower the women in the communities across Orissa. Ultimately I pray that her great peace will prevail in all of our hearts-that we will feel perfectly at peace within, that there will be peace between us and that peace will pervade the earth.