An invite to a poite or sacred thread ceremony of a 16-year-old got me thinking. Would this poor chap manage to wear it through the muggy summers and muggier monsoons, no matter the blink-and-you-miss pleasant winters?
Among the invitees were many men, friends who had gone through the ritual themselves in their early youth. I asked them if they still wore theirs. “No,” came the unanimous answer from the 40-somethings.
I discarded mine just days after getting it, said one. Another said he tied his mosquito net with it having found no string at hand. Another friend apparently discarded his right after he got married. He had got his poite just before his wedding because his mother had threatened him there wouldn’t be a marriage if he didn’t get one. So between his bachelorhood and his childhood sweetheart stood a poite and he didn’t waste much thought before acquiescing, just as he did not waste much time discarding it. And by the way, he added, “I had to perform penance for getting my poite that late.”
The friend who sacrificed his poite to the cause of mosquitoes recalls that keeping the thread was onerous, it required following a ritual too many. “I had to recite the Gayatri Mantra in the evening, keep fasts or have vegetarian fare every new moon. I wore my thread for exactly 20 days. I had to get it because in those days you didn’t argue with your grandfather,” he poured out grievances, circumstances and obligations in one breath. When the time came, he didn’t force his son to get the poite. But the other friend, who got his poite perforce before his wedding, hosted thread ceremonies for both his sons. “My wife is religious. She was quite firm that both the boys would get their threads and both had theirs when they were eight years old,” he said.
Soon after, of course, they rid themselves of their threads. If that is what the foregone fate is of the thread, why go through the trouble of getting one in the first place?
The 16-year-old, for whose thread ceremony all of us had been invited, was getting one on his own initiative, apparently. His father said: “His board exams were on and he repeatedly reminded me that he would have his thread ceremony right after his exams. So I arranged everything.”
The father, a UP Brahmin, had cast aside his own thread. His reasons are quite ingenious. In his community, those who wore the sacred thread had to follow a strict vegetarian diet. But he had wed into a non-vegeta- rian Bengali family. So when he moved into his wife’s house, a vegetarian kitchen was made for him. Sadly, he couldn’t swallow the fare that was coming out of it. “I was losing weight, my trousers wouldn’t fit. I really got scared that I would fall ill. So while I was returning from office one day, I stopped in the middle of Howrah Bridge and dropped my thread right into the river. From that night, I turned non-vegetarian with a vengeance,” he narrated.
Junior, however, is very clear about his eating preferences. He will obviously not forgo his mutton burgers or chicken pizzas. “I will take off my thread whenever I eat non-vegetarian food,” said the youth. At last check, he was reciting the Gayatri Mantra and following all other rituals quite religiously.
All this talk about poite brought back memories of a black-and-white era Tollywood film, wherein a teenaged boy, miffed that his younger sister was going to have a grand birthday party, decided to play mischief. When his father entrusted him with the task of inviting near and dear ones, he went about saying that the occasion was his poite ceremony. A grand shamiana had been put up on the terrace, Odia cooks prepared a grand feast, relations poured in, had their belly full of good food and on their way out put some cash in the hands of the teenage son, who to convince his relatives that he had got his poite, had shaved his head. His father was aghast and his mother outraged. But the boy looked delighted as he stood in one corner counting the coins in his possession. All thanks to his poite!
