Holy bolts

What gods do when in love

It was interesting to read, amidst the encircling gloom, of the Delhi High Court’s judgement in favour of Maneet Grover and Deepa, who ran way and got married in a temple but had to seek police protection from Deepa’s family (the boy’s side has apparently welcomed her). Justice B.A. Khan told the lawyers: ‘‘Kings have abdicated their thrones and rulers have given up power. It’s human nature, my learned counsel. Nobody can obstruct it.’’ Since no relationship comes with a guarantee, we can only wish them well and hope it’s not a case of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.

But this new scene in the Divine Comedy of existence makes one inevitably wonder. What do the gods do, when in love? The ancient religions may be able to answer that, since they seem to be the only ones with avatars and amshas of the One. In fact, the Dhyaus of the Hindus, the Zeus of the Greeks and the Jupiter (Jeu-piter, Father Zeus) of the Romans and all the other agnates and cognates have never really gone away.

If you look at the European nations, you find that though official church doctrine prevented the worship of the Ancient Ones, thus denying them spoken homage, they rampaged silently nevertheless in the European consciousness through painting and sculpture. The neo-classical Greco-Roman buildings, educational systems, names, scientific classifications and even church fronts, were all ‘illegitimate’ tributes to the old gods and their idealised ways. Thus, while Europe embraced the practical benefits of church-created collective societies, it never really gave up its old gods, though to admit it, even to itself, before World War II, would have been impossible.

But the hunger remained, reinvented as scholarship, because the gods and their realm are some of the most creative and pleasurable intuitions of the human mind. Be it the nine Muses of the Greeks or the nava rasa of Bharata Muni, the old ones had some brilliant ideas. Thanks to meticulous scholarship and the political changes wrought in the world, the last century ‘‘gave back’’ the old gods to a more democratic world in a larger process of sharing.

Issues of ‘ownership’ of faith are now more politically fraught than ever, especially in India. Which is why it makes sense to know as much about the Ancients as we possibly can, so that they can continue to fulfil our emotional and imaginative needs as they were meant to, without being made hideous by political filters. In terms of how the gods loved, versus how we lose our hearts, it’s encouraging that they, like us, are risk-takers.

Princess Rukmini (an amsha or aspect of Mahalaksmi) falls madly in love with Krishna. Her brother Rukma is opposed to him. So Rukmini sends him a message to come and take her away and the Lord decamps with her at her swayamvar. The Mahabharata is full of stolen brides (in the Ramayana, it becomes the central event, with Ravana’s risk resulting in his destruction). The Ashwins take a risk when they fall in love with Sukanya, the beautiful young wife of old, decrepit Chyavana Rishi. She leads them to her husband who offers a trade-off. If they, the deities of healing, will restore him to vigour and youth (guess where ’chyavanprash’ comes from?) he will help them get soma, the magical drink that the Ashwins are denied. Power is traded for power through the intervention of power.

The omens seem legible. We need not be utterly ‘impractical’, perhaps. But maybe when the chemical fizz called love strikes, it is possible, even permissible, to take a risk. The gods themselves had no guarantees. Things often did and do go wrong. But to have never risked at all, to have crept safely always, in pre-ordained patterns from birth to death? Is that life?