Birth of Meera (I)

Meera

 Meera of the 21st century was not born out of a womb but out of will. She was born out of a similar fire from which emerged King Drupad's daughter, the dark complexioned, slender waisted, black eyed, Draupadi in the famous epic of Mahabharata. She too was a grown up (21 year old) when she was born but unlike Draupadi, Meera did not have long hairs. She had trimmed and round baby head when she was born. The rest of her features, body weight and even height matched Ujala's. 

 Although Ujala did not make love to conceive her, there was impregnation, labor pain and the final delivery. The outcome of this long termed agony was to be the oblation in the altar of the sacrificial fire from which Meera emerged.  

Ujala apparently loves glorifications and exaggerations and yet she would never be dramatic to the extent of romanticizing a GenZ's existential crisis as Meera. The memories of excruciating labor pain and days filled with "Push! Push! Push!", "a little more", "breath in and breathe out", "try harder!", "you're almost there, a little more push!" which are still fresh and will always remain so, would obliterate all doubts that would question whether the birth of Meera was real. 

Millennials and their successors, born at a time when 'parenting' became a common fashion, often wish reliving their childhood  (not adolescence, not late teens) memories again. Despite being a phase offering you the least choices or consequences for the choices you never made, childhood is a cute, carefree, slow paced phase of life (I envy your ambition GenAlpha). Things speed up dramatically afterwards and that is how you pass through the weird puberty. Late teens coupled with college is when you experience, without much warning (like was the case in puberty), an already advanced, velocity! Speed with direction. This was the phase when Ujala was impregnated with everything which was to be later torched in the yajna (Hindu ritual of purification) for the birth of Meera. 

 It was quick and the distance from which it is now looked at makes it appear even shorter. But Telescopic. For the first time, Ujala saw her every little choice creating consequences! It was surreal and magical at the same time because now she had more choices than she ever had and all with powers! The effects created by her choices were always much more accelerated and magnified than her anticipation in this phase. Her compliments carried more meaning, her careless words were more offensive than they ever had been before, her opinions (now the opinion of youth) more significant. At the same time her mistakes were no more silly and yet she could hope to change a government policy by joining protests. She scribbled, sketched, drew, journaled, sang, danced, acted, laughed, loved, wrote, read, recited and then debated, unionized, hated, created, fought, sought and abandoned too. All because she had the choice to! 

Bhagwat Gita says that none of our choices are good or bad, it is only our intention behind them that counts. On that front, she hardly had any. This aged her. Rapidly. She was in a blank, black, infinite space at one point of time and was dealing with ten times stronger gravity than she was accustomed to, at the other. Suddenly she was older than everybody around. Old enough to start a new lifecycle. 

Paramhansa Yogananda, the author of 'Autobiography of a Yogi' and renowned persona credited for taking eastern spirituality to the west, defines God as a mass of light with which we commune in our meditation. He uses the metaphor of a projector to explain what God is and how God experiences his own creation by scattering his light in billions of us. Our entire lives are like short role plays on a movie screen and the final salvation lies in assimilating in God's light eventually. Meera is one such carefully curated projection of Ujala (the light). (Why did she choose the name of the 16th century feminist is to be discussed in part II). There have been many short naming phases impregnating her in the past too. They were driven by her fascination with self created identities, roleplay, personifications; fueled by her desire of a more feminine name than 'Ujala' and nurtured by discussions on how she wanted to be parented (the defiant and crazy, lost and lazy child) with her own parents (half share in property and no questions asked, obviously! (to which they would revert that they had no property and many questions on what she wants to do with it)).

Ujala understands the responsibility that comes with this creation. Meera is not an act of narcissism to be used for Ujala's unfulfilled wishes but a sacred commitment towards herself and the world. Meera would inherit all the resources of Ujala, her degrees, identity for the formal social setup, education, accolades etc. to navigate the world with. At the same time, she would be free from all the bondages of Ujala's life and yet would have better beautifully drawn boundaries for hers! She would be perfectly parented with the model curated from the best of techniques evolved from hits and misses of Ujala's parenting, her research on the subject and constant upgradation through the best of the books available. 

In a constantly changing, liberal, secular and plural world, Meera provides Ujala with an anchor and a framework to act towards her purpose in life and duties towards the world. Ujala probably has lots of lived life lessons to share with Meera (Yes, she did not lose all her hair in vain) and Meera, the newly born young woman has an uphill task of using the right ones at the right places, all the time. Ujala is a big broad screen and Meera is an art in making. 

Buddhist philosophy says that we are neither our bodies nor our minds. Yogis believe that we all are a constant will inside the soul, separated from the almighty. Therefore, all of us are exactly the same! If we are still keen on playing a role on the screen, all we need to do is to create ourselves in the best way possible and closest to the original, flawless, universal form of light. There lies the intention with which Ujala ignited the fire harnessed by King Drupad centuries ago.