Naked to the Elements

Two days ago, Vinaya called me over the phone. I was glad to hear his voice. I told him: "Vinaya, you have entered my university's syllabus. My collegue Krishna and me, we have designed a course on Bhakti women saints, and your translation of Akka figures in the reading list." Vinaya sounded upbeat and the conversation took us to the topic of "nakedness." Akka, a 12th century Bhakti saint, had famously abandoned her cloths. She is depicted as covering her body with her long hair in popular visual representations. But, I always felt that "covering" is our ugly minds looking at her and foolishly trying to "cover" her up in the false modesty of our hypocritic gaze on a naked female body. I picture her in all her abandonment - flowling hair, her nipples exposed to the elements, pubic hair visible..and her, singing the praises of her very own god of her universe - "her lord, white as jasmine" (coming to me in the English poetry of A.K. Ramanujan). Vinaya translated it as "Channamallikarjuna, Jasmine tender" - I love it also, it signifies the tenderness of her intimacy with the lord, and also reflects the local god she made universal with her devotion. I then spoke to Vinaya about this experience that I had long ago. I was travelling in a friend's car in the coldness of a North Indian winter. The car passed by a street - one of those Delhi streets that have these huge trees in the sidewalk - comparatively clean and peaceful, but also dotted with some walkers. I suddenly felt in my subconcious mind, I had a vision of something I normally don't expect in a public street anywhere. I thought I had a glimpse of a male genitalia for a second and then the car had passed that scene and therefore, probably, I wasn't sure I had seen it at all. I turned back. And, there there were. Not one, not two, but three naked bums. One was slightly old and wrinkled. The others were fairly young, maybe middle aged. They were all crossing the street in the cold January of a New Delhi winter. The bodies didnt give out the meaning of "mad" (the only other naked body that you might come across in a public street like that). They seemed calm. I was surprised by my own reaction to the sudden glimpse of human nakedness, when you least expect it. I didn't feel "strange." I didn't feel "disgust." I didn't feel, they didn't "belong." It was so mundane, so ordinary and precisely because of it, so extra-ordinary. I did ask my friend whowas driving whether he noticed them. He hadn't. That he missed them clearly showed me how these bodies were just part of of the landscapte. And, I suspected, it might also be because of the aura they were sending out. They were not drawing attention to themselves. Nor were they covering their selves and hiding either. They were just "being..." My friend said, maybe they belonged to a sect of digambaras (has a beautiful translation possible - the one who has chosen the four directions as her raiment) with their ashram nearby. That made practical sense. They entered my bucket list of things to do in my life. I had to reach there somehow, one day. I had to give up my self. I had to become comfortable with my beautiful/ugly human body and present myself to my self and the worl - with no claims, no thing to hide!