Bonaal

In the muddy bylanes of a 600-year-old city,
thousands of bodies shake maniacally
to the thunderous beats.
It’s the season of incessant rains
and a night sky enveloped in brilliant fireworks. 
The air is thick
with the smell of sweat & marigold.
Drunken stupor
leads to bloody brawls and sucker punches.
The air is suffocating, yet enticing,
with smoke from cinders and nicotine.
 
With lemons impaled on sickles,
and lemons tucked into his cheeks,
the star of the show arrives.
His sore, shining flesh
is slapped with neem leaves 
and whipped with lashes. 
His shadow is stalked by murmurs,
as in a séance.
When the smashed pumpkins spew vermillion,
gangs of brawny young men hold hands
and wrestle into the commotion.
The trembling, scarlet-painted lips
portend about the grief and the generosity
of the next four seasons.

As the smoke
spirals into the ominous overcast sky,
an old man with a hand-mike,
a seer of sorts, 
reminds the crowd about the ongoing quest
to descend the divine to the human domain.
The lens turns from the chaotic outside
to the inside of the temple, the sanctum.

The fiery goddess:
the endless shakti, the akshara,
is donned with a lustrous silver crown
and is decked with ruby-embedded ornaments. 
Pining for months to see her in such full glory
and carried away by her overpowering aura,
the eyes of her ardent devotees
brim with tears of ecstatic joy. 
Smeared in the scent 
of jasmines & sandalwood paste,
and splashed with hues
of vibrant turmeric & visceral red,
Her allure is as cleansing as menstrual blood 
and as sustaining as amniotic fluid.