BROWSE Columns
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My mother calls me every morning and recites the
panchangam = the Hindu calendar, beginning with the year, which shows, perhaps, her long view of life and belief in, if not immortality, at least a lengthy prelude to mortality where action influences attitude and creates
gothras = people who were born in the same cowshed except today, bars invite folks to sit and commune, make conversation, form communities, and yes, build cowsheds where couples couple and create lineages that conform to rules, where people in the same cowshed cannot marry each other because it is consanguineous, and when they do get married to those in other cowsheds, this intention of wedlock is read out loud in a sanctified
pandal = bedecked flower-laden coconut-leaf-covered incense-filled auspicious space where the community gathers and elders witness a pot-bellied priest who holds aloft a turmeric-basted paper that announces the
muhurtha = auspicious date, fortnight, month, constellation, solstice, and year of an upcoming auspicious event, before zooming out into the night of Brahma and the
yuga = age which stands on its final leg before it collapses into
pralayam = apocalypse where the waters churn and swallow everything, so I hold my breath as I begin every morning with a
sankalpam = intention which I recite sitting on a mat made of deer-skin, not killed I assure you but procured from an ancestor who perhaps killed it in order that his progeny could pray, which I do as I recite the
mantras = chants that my mother taught me so that I can get a precise list of blessings for me and my family including well-being, stability, courage, victory, protection, longevity, health, and prosperity, all of which I ask for on this specific day, whose contours I know because my mother has, throughout her life, started her morning by tearing the calendar that she calls
Rani-Muthu = queen-pearl, which tells her if the day is going to look upward or downward, and at which hour the snake-swallowing
Rahu kalam = period where bad things happen
will happen
Shoba Narayan is a bilingual Indian-American poet who identifies as a woman of color. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from a few literary journals including Mukoli: the magazine of peace, The Stillwater Review, The Seraphic Review, Rogue Agent, Red Noise Collective, Humans of the World (third place winner of their Summer Poetry Contest 2023), Lucky Jefferson (poetry contest finalist) and others. She has published five memoirs. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Condenast Traveler, The Guardian, and Gourmet, winning her a James Beard award and Pulitzer Fellowship. She hosts the Bird Podcast.
