It's TEEJ and my underpants are RED

Photo Credit: Cdn.theatlantic

 I colored my underpants red this morning.

"Happy Teej", Mother Nature wished me.

The color red is ubiquitous in Hindu culture. From small pujas (worships) to grand marriage ceremonies red is omnipresent and regarded as the color of saubhagya (fortune). All these months I have been observing all red; the dummies clad in red saris and kurtis (traditional attires of Nepali women), churis and tilharis (bangles and beads), newspapers and magazines all covered with models in red. It was a feeling of plunging in the virtual ocean of red.

From my windows I see all women dressed in bright red dresses singing and dancing colored with the emotion red, about power and courage, about purity and joy, about enthusiasm and interest. Television is showing a red mob all surging on Pashupatinath, to impress Lord Shiva and ask for the prosperity.

With red tika and some red flowers Shiva linga (Lord Shiva's penis) is being worshiped.  I wonder if his linga also ejects red; the symbol of purity and divinity. I haven't heard that yet. But the reality is I have to worship Sapta Rishi (Seven Sages) every year to plead and make them happy so that they would forgive me because my vagina ejects red every month and I may have impure the environment around me with my redness.

What an irony? What is the use of coloring the world with red two days ago when we need to apologize for our redness later?

I would have asked this with Lord Shiva today, but alas, he only meets those with red chura and sari, not the one who is effusing red. So, it's better to go to the bathroom and change my sanitary pad rather than go and ask him "Shiva, why has red different meaning for you? Can't you stick on to one either as pure or as impure?"