When Tandava Meets Lasya

In a delightful film called Il Postino, poet Pablo Neruda meets the postman who delivers his letters, becomes his friend and changes his lif...

In a delightful film called Il Postino, poet Pablo Neruda meets the postman who delivers his letters, becomes his friend and changes his life. Neruda wakens the postino, the postman, to the magic of the metaphor, to the possibility of linking the stars to his mortal self, the sea to his emotions, the sky to his dreams and the swaying of flowers to his lover’s walk.

The postman is never the same man again, for the universe has taken him over, linking him to the immensity of God’s creation, expanding his soul.

This the metaphor did to him; not small unimaginative metaphors, but lofty ones, soaked in poetry that sang the metaphysical and wrapped the ordinary in unknown newness.
So the metaphor can do to us if only we hush and reflect.

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Our ancestors had always meant it to be so. They spun stories, mysteries and mythologies and wove simple words and ideas that somehow spiralled the mind into rich avenues of thought. But then they also wrote complex and fascinating stories that belonged to classical and religious texts and left it to us to decipher and understand.

One such idea is that of Ardhnari, of the inseparable Shiva and Shakti, neither functional without the other, needing to be explored beyond its familiar connotations. Shiva is the primeval state, without beginning and end, the static permanent energy. Shakti is the energy that creates, brings forth life and movement and the energy that abounds. Together they symbolise the creative union of all active and passive principles.

But they represent more than just that, for they denote the union of many different kinds of opposites or different ways of being that all of us are composed of.

Shiva dances the tandava, the powerful dance of creation and destruction. But he also dances the lasya, the soft and gentle aspect of dance. He is both, strong and soft and one of the ways that Ardhnari can be defined.

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The image of the Ardhnari shows the clear cleaving together of the male and the female body, half and half. But as an abstraction, it is more of a mingling and less of a clear division. The visual division is of course essential, as it is the tangible image that is symbolic of the abstract idea.

We are all Ardhnari, every single one of us, regardless of our proclivities or in some cases, of our unusual physical manifestations. Within our beings and our minds and hearts flow the blend of characteristics that echo Shiva and Shakti.

We have tandava and lasya, we are strong and soft, or if I shift the interpretation, we are hard and weak. We are active and passive, energetic and calm, or if I shift the interpretation, we are restless and stable. We think with our minds and act with our hearts, we are passion, emotion and icy manifestation.

But in Ardhnari there is no gender for, in all of us there is Ardhnari the metaphor, the blend of Shiva and Shakti. It determines the way we respond to every conceivable situation in our lives at any given time of the day.

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It explains how spirits are broken and tandava turns to lasya. It explains how the lasya of a submissive woman transforms into the tandava of an implacable woman determined to have her way. It explains how the meek rise, how locks, chains and systems get broken.

It is this metaphor that makes us what we are, Ardhnari.