Thread ceremony for Thane girl

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Thread ceremony for Thane girlhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Thread-ceremony-for-Thane-girl/\

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29 May 2009, 0425 hrs IST, Bella Jaisinghani, TNN

MUMBAI: A family in Thane revisited a long-forgotten Vedic practice on

Thursday when they put their eight-year-old daughter through the

thread ceremony, ordinarily considered a male rite of passage, at the

hands of the city’s famed women priests. Her father, Amod Ketkar, a

40-year-old employee of the Bombay High Court, says he was merely

following a family traditionâ€"his own sister had undergone the

initiation rite as a child.

Impish and moody, Sejal Amod Ketkar, who has just been promoted to

class three in the Marathi-medium Bedekar Vidyamandir, sat through the

hour-long upanayan or yagnopavit ceremony, reciting the Gayatri Mantra

and Sanskrit shlokas with practised ease. “Her grandmother has been

training her for a few weeks,’’ says her mother Asmita who works with

Kale Consultants in Seepz. She laughs and adds, “It has all turned out

so picture perfect, I wish I had invited more people in a more

elaborate ceremony. But my daughter had never seen the ritual being

performed for a girl before, so she insisted she would do it only if

we had a small private function at home.’’

Apart from the child no one else in the Chitpavan Kokanastha Brahmin

family had any doubts. In fact, Ketkar insists he is part of the

orthodoxy. “Would I believe in rituals otherwise? The upanayan is one

of the 16 sanskars that are part of Sanaatan Dharma, and the mantras

are known to help the child concentrate on her education through her

scholarly life. As I did for my teenage son when he was little, I want

my daughter to benefit from the power of the Gayatri Mantra and chart

the correct path,’’ he says. Pre-empting any doubts, Ketkar clarifies

that the ritual will not affect the child’s daily routine, let alone

lead her towards renunciation.

Still, this departure from convention did come up when they went

looking for a priest. “We asked around Thane and travelled all the way

to Pune but male priests were reluctant to perform this sanskar

(ritual) on a girl,’’ says Asmita. “We finally got lucky when the

local purohitas led by Vaishali Kale agreed to our request.’’

Citing examples from the Vedic period, the priestesses of Thane note

that sages like Gargi and Maitreyi underwent the thread ceremony and

became proficient in the scriptures. “It was after the decline of this

egalitarian period that the practice of upanayan gradually became

restricted to males,’’ says Purohita Kale, who initiated Sejal by

whispering the Gayatri Mantra in her ear. However, instead of the holy

thread worn by boys, the girl will wear a necklace of fine tulsi

beads.

Interestingly, apart from the feeble opposition that the priestesses

encountered from the Thane clergy, the girl’s thread ceremony has not

invited undue comment. The chief priest of Siddhivinayak Temple,

Guruji Gajanan Modak, says, “While each household devises its own

spiritual barcode, there is nothing in the scriptures that prevents

girls from undergoing the thread ceremony. The upanayan signifies that

a child is now mature enough to follow a guru and learn the

scriptures. In the olden days, it was performed when children left

home to join the gurukul.’’ Devdutt Pattanaik, another authority on

Hinduism, has not heard of such a precedent but says it is entirely a

matter of individual choice.

A stickler for conclusive evidence, Amod Ketkar, however, is looking

for the ‘Harita Smriti’, the scripture that is believed to sanction

the ceremony for girls. “The Asiatic Library does not have a copy, but

I’ll hunt it out and spread the word,’’ he promises.

The Ketkars had broken the mould earlier too when they requested

wedding guests to shower blessings written on chits of paper instead

of uncooked rice or akshata. “Sadly, emancipation is a slow process,’’

says Ketkar.