Holy terrors

The feisty womenfolk of Kutch Mandvi proceed to tick off deities who’re seen to be not doing their job 

It was a scene of excessive drama. In a forest, a lady desperately calling out for assist was being kidnapped. 

While the spectators, which included me, might hear her cries of misery, her husband appeared oblivious.

A witness to the affray might include herself not and referred to as out in a loud and piercing voice, Arre, what’s the matter with you? Can’t you hear your spouse? Go without delay to save lots of her!

The pressing injunction was taken on by others: What are you doing, you foolish fellow! Hurry and go! Other ladies joined the refrain of alarm till, as if listening to these irate exhortations if not his spouse’s cries for succour, the husband rushed to the rescue, solely to seek out the kidnapping already completed.

Amidst muttered disapproval of a husband who couldn’t save his spouse, the viewers would cool down to observe the agelessly retold story of Ram, Sita, and Ravana enacted on the tiny display screen of the one cinema corridor in Kutch Mandvi. 

In these far-off days of my childhood, Mandvi was an overgrown village the place my grandmother lived, and to which the remainder of the household would make an annual go to.

There wasn’t an extra of leisure in Mandvi. There was the temple, a gathering level as a lot for the change of group intelligence – who was marrying whom, which venerable patriarch had handed on – as for devotion. 

The cinema corridor, the place the projectionist routinely received the reels blended up, confirmed primarily mythological films. The viewers was composed principally of ladies and youngsters, the lads disfavouring such frivolous diversions. 

The scoldings that the on-screen divinities typically obtained have been occasioned not by irreverence or disrespect, however by the deep and intimate love one has for a detailed member of the family who can provoke admonition in equal measure to adoration. 

I recall these high-spirited ladies of Mandvi and marvel if their successors, equally feisty, bestowed electoral strictures on once-venerated icons who’d been seen to be lower than on the ball in tackling the duty at hand.

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