Reflections on Navaratri, night two

Colour: red

Red, is the colour of action, of desire, of blood, of life; And curiously, also the colour of danger. Red entices and seduces. Red also warns and stops us in our tracks. Red is ripe, red is a spark, red is alive. Red is the fire, red is venom, red is death.

Rajas, passion, we are told is for the select few. Anger, desire, action are all the domain of the kings, ordained by birth. And yet, we witness omnipresent passion that at once creates and destroys. The dull green African tulip tree bursts forth with iridescent flowers, a boon won from its long standing penance under an unrelenting sun. Its fiery petals burn with ceaseless passion, their thirst unquenched by the rains that they swill. They nourish the weaver ants that mercilessly stitch up the tree's leaves into sequestered nests. The thirsty fiery flowers quench the thirst of squirrels, bulbuls, spiders, and honeybees. And even as they quench such immense thirst, they seduce and drown a few insects in endless pleasure [1].

Who controls who does the penance, where goes the boon, who thirsts, who burns, who drowns, and who dies?

The red-whiskered bulbul eats the toxic fruit of the oleander tree and feeds it to fledgelings, unmindful of who parented them [2].

There is one fire of passion in this universe that burns us all. The goddess of death demands that we all submit to this universal desire shamelessly. Those who yield, those who resist, those who do penance, those who indulge, those who drown, those who fly…all of us burn into one fire that burst forth with myriad crimson sparks.

[1] There is documented evidence of insects drowning and dying in the sticky flowers of the African tulip tree. We do not know why the tree does this or if the tree even lures them to kill.

[2] Bulbuls are amongst the species of birds that practice allofeeding, beak-to-beak feeding of mates, chicks, siblings, and peers, sometimes of even other species.