CARMINE

Image courtesy: www.maakamakhya.org

The Kamakhya temple – a Shakti peeth – located on the Nilachal hills in Guwahati, Assam. Legend has it that when Shiva’s wife Sati sacrificed herself for the sake of her husband’s reputation and sentiments, Shiva started the Tandava dance with Sati’s dead body over his shoulders. Vishnu, in order to calm him down, cut Sati’s body into several parts. Places where these parts fell later came to be known as Shakti peeths. The ‘Garvagriha’ or the sanctum sanctorum of the Kamakhya temple houses the mythical womb and the vagina of Sati, hence the significance.

Around the month of June, the Kamakhya temple is flocked with devotees from different parts of the country who come to celebrate the fertility festival – Ambubashi Mela. This festival marks the annual menstrual cycle of the Goddess. The temple remains closed for devotees for three days and opens on the fourth day. Every other temple in Assam remains closed during this time and farm works are put to a halt too. Ambubashi seems to be a fine example of celebrating womanhood.

Assam, the state which houses the Kamakhya temple, also has a tradition of celebrating menarche where the girl dresses up as a bride in a ritualistic symbolic wedding locally known as Tuloni biya (or, “small wedding”). During the time of her first menstrual cycle, the girl has strict restrictions on her diet, whom she can meet, where she can sleep etc. She is mostly restricted to her bedroom. On her fourth day of menstruation, she is bathed using turmeric with proper wedding rituals. Everybody (comprising the womenfolk in particular) comes together to celebrate and rejoice the commencement of her puberty.

In a country where openly talking about menstruation or puberty is considered unfit, there are instances where this biological cycle is deemed auspicious – or is it just an example of hypocrisy? Women, specifically in Assam, undergoing their periods, are not allowed to enter temples (including the Kamakhya temple) and other places of worship whatsoever, because they are considered impure during the days of menstruation. In orthodox societies, women are not allowed even to enter into the kitchen and are treated as untouchables during their periods. These ideas remain unchallenged till date.

Irrespective of its significance or origin, Tuloni biya is quite elaborate and tedious for a little girl of twelve to fourteen years old. It can be portrayed as an announcement to the society disclosing the newly developed sexual identity of the girl, which is a sheer disrespect of her privacy.

Similar ceremonies to mark menarche of girls are performed in South India and several other parts of the world as well where coming of age is celebrated in different forms and given different names. Sweet Sixteen celebration is one to name of. However, with the advent of modernization and women’s rights, these celebrations have lost their ethnicity and now Sweet Sixteens are celebrated for girls as well as boys on their 16^th birthday. A ceremony like the tuloni biya is, thus, totally in league with the debates of the day, those of feminism and equality.