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Sunday, January 4, 2004 |
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Sunday, January 4, 2004 |
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Between Worlds: Travels among Mediums, Shamans and Healers
The book, which focuses on life in the Ravi river valley of Chamba, is a journey into the unreal in this seemingly real world. It is a quest for knowledge, understanding: to know how the healers make it possible to “be on the edge of one reality and on the verge of another;” how they are “able to see, smell, taste, touch and hear things from several simultaneous points, but always against the one same measure — the measure set to a harmony with the patterns of the universe.” Right from the word go, you find the writer relentlessly pursuing her quest. Her enthusiasm and keenness rubs off on you as you join her painstaking and persistent search, which entailed travelling far and wide across the Chamba district, braving steep ascents to shrines atop mountains, and daring dogmas to doggedly explore the inexplicable. The pace of the pursuit and the interest aroused in the mystical subject never flags as you move on from one enchanting experience to another. Whether it is the writer’s visit to a trance medium to assist her aunt remove the ill effects of the “oprah that some jealous person had cast upon her” or the arduous trek in the dead of night to Trilochan Mahadev to witness a trance possession or the steep ascent she undertakes with a trance medium to reach a “power spot” where the puja for rain is performed or the ritual she witnesses to cure a girl who had been possessed by a banbir, a formless, faceless god or her illuminating meeting with a gaardhi, a practitioner of magico-religion and above all an exorcist, or the chosen chelis (women trance mediums) she meets — all these encounters bring before you a community, which still believes in the natural and traditional system of healing, celebration and worship. You realise that appeasement of gods of nature through magico-religion is fundamental to this community. Not only does the absorbing narrative present you the complex and unique mythico-religious culture of Chamba, it also gives you an insight into the lives of trance mediums and practitioners of magical cures who are “ordinary men and women …yet painfully set apart from their society by virtue of inhabiting a separate reality, of being blessed — or cursed — with extraordinary powers of perception, divination and healing.” In detail, the writer satiates your curiosity about these mediums or chelas and all that is required for going into a trance. She describes how they work in partnership with the spirit of the god they represent and completely efface their individual personalities; and the kinds of props and symbols they use to enter into and communicate their psychic experience. It is intriguing to note that different divinities like Shiva, all devis, naag devtas and a number of other local gods reveal themselves in their chosen chelas. The encounters offer a vivid and varied account of the writer’s innumerable quests to delve deeper into the mystery shrouding those who remain suspended between worlds. By seeking the help of locals in her search and with the major share of the story taking the form of a travelogue, you get a faithful presentation of the happenings. The meetings with mediums leave you with different emotions. At times they leave you in awe of the magical goings-on, at moments disturbed and even repulsed at the sight of the flagellation held during trance possessions and at other places sceptical about the very existence of a spirit entering them. Interestingly, the writer has retold a number of legends related to the Ravi valley. Each journey or trek to a shrine or meeting with a medium is interspersed with a mythological tale. So besides learning about the eventful though lonely lives of trance mediums, you also get briefed about Chamba’s folklore like how Trilochan Mahadev, tailor of Lord Shiva, ended his life by jumping into the Ravi; the way Chaumunda Mata is propitiated in order to seek her blessings for rain in the region; why Queen Sunaina, later deified as Sui Mata, was sacrificed so that the Chamba state could get water; and the story associated with the shrine of Kasse Wali Mata, the goddess of forest. All in all, a fascinating fare about a world caught between worlds! |
Uma Singh’s Between Worlds takes you to the world of occult and the supernatural. No, you definitely don’t enter this world of oracles, exorcists, psychic healers and trance mediums, you just stand on the threshold and catch glimpses of a life that seems unbelievably bizarre and unreal. Just as you get introduced to these mediums and healers who remain suspended between the natural and the supernatural world, you too find yourself between worlds. You find yourself at crossroads: unsure about the existence or non-existence of this unreal world. One moment there’s no reason for you not to believe the tangible, even though weird, magico-religious occurrences, while at the other your faith dithers, unable to fathom the mysterious realities.
