Maata main sumiraun

 Bhavani main sumiraun

 Sumiraun deuhaare baba than

 Tohre saran baba main jagi ropaun

 Mori jag pooran hoye 

I call on Maa Durga

 I call on Bhavani

 I call on the abode of Deuhaare Baba

 O’ Baba, I surrender this yagna to you

 With your blessings, may my yagna bear fruit

The last offering has been given to Agni in the havana kuṇḍa. Through her folk song, the songstress integrates into a Vaidika ritual, and the pantheon of our gods and goddesses, the deification of a mound of mud that lies a little outside my village. I stand up to take the āratī and take my leave to go back to the city. But, my mind is buzzing with the kind of questions which often arise after the realization of the profound, which has existed in plain sight all along.


How does a mound of mud become sacred? This land, where water changes its taste at every kośa, language changes at four, why does the sacred exist at every door?

Nowhere does this integration come together as evocatively as in a village, where life, nature and cosmos are made sacred by that invisible, yet, all-pervading consciousness, which defines this land we call Bhārata.


My village is named Trilokpur – the place which contains...