Two Memories of Jewels
They say that when it comes to memories, you always remember the moments seared with emotion; a slash of fear, a slice of jealousy, a flush of longing. One of my first memories had all three. I remember standing at the paisley hem of my sister in our living room, the arm of our brown velour couch - on which I rested my chin to watch TV - holding me up, the tassles of our orange lamp giving off a devilish glow.
I knew what was about to happen was special because of the pure ceremony of it; my sister and I standing one behind the other, our dad kneeling before us. I was jealous that my older sister got to go first, because I always was, but glad too, as I felt the warm clamminess of her palm seep into mine. Filled with butterflies, we dug our crescent moon fingernails into our fingertips as our Dad held up the gun to our little fleshy earlobes to puncture them fresh. Tears streaming down our cheeks, our nubs tingled. Yet we were happy because we were now initiated, part of our people, though we don’t quite know what that meant. But we sensed it.
My Mum was four too when she had hers done. One of her six sisters’ (she forgets which one) and her crossed the rapids of the Sigatoka river - the same rapids within which, years later my cousin would drown - piloting a small white dinghy to the front door of their fuwa’s house. Their fuwa lined them up in the backyard, under her lemon tree, their wet footprints forming spirals in the dust. Plucking a thorn from the tree, she pointed it up to the hot Fijian sun to sterilise its tip, and pricked their ears; the citrus and heat working its magic in their skin.
This tradition of ear piercing in Vedic culture, handed down through generations of my family, is one of the sixteen ceremonies meant to be performed between a person’s birth and death. It is a ceremony based on acupuncture. The ear, shaped like a foetus, is mimetic to the body as a whole, and by piercing the ear in the centre of its lobe, we can regulate the electric current that runs throughout our whole bodies: it is not too frenetic so to avoid short-circuiting in frenzy, and not too faint so to keep your vibration alive. The earlobe is the meridian point that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. When it is pierced, both spheres are stimulated into thought.
I didn't learn this until long after my ears were pierced, but when I did, I loved it. Because now that I am older, my piercings have become a different type of meridian point for me, one that connects me to the two spheres that gave me life; my mum and my dad. It encircles the tradition of my mother’s people and the medical knowhow of my father, a doctor who was able to perform the procedure/rite in our living room. And though it is my mum’s earrings I often loop through my ears, it’s my dad’s holes that support them, the holes becoming just as much of a decoration as the earrings themselves. Because now that my dad is no longer here, I carry his holes as a mark of him; the tiny absence of flesh, marks his.
Silver anklets; age thirty four.
Thirty years later, another memory emulsifies. One spiced with jealousy and longing too. This time for belonging, some kind of longing to be.
I have travelled to the desert of Pushkar, Northern India. Its hot winds have called me over to study Odissi, a classical Indian temple dance I began learning at the local community hall, during night classes there. This is a dance form so different to the springy elevations of ballet I began learning at age four.
Odissi is grounded deeply in the earth; when performing, you stamp your bare feet in plié, while the beat corresponds to the spoken rhythm of the music. You sway your waist while sculpting complex mudras with your hands, and simultaneously sweep your eyes from side to side. I’m not so good at it; my waist has its own mind, moving the opposite side from everyone else’s and my brow is so furrowed in concentration when I dance, my classmates give up on urging me to smile.
This is a portion of India where I believe my Indo-Fijian ancestors to have hailed from. It feels important to make this pilgrimage to India back for them - one they could never do in their lifetimes. But it feels important to make pilgrimage for me also, to feel the dust of their land, the desert, under my feet.
Feet become important here to me - not only because I’m paying such attention to mine, but also because they are visible all around me. As I sit and drink my chai in an open roadside café before class, I watch bare footed women, balancing copper pots on their head, tracking indents in the dust, the tails of their saris fluid with their footsteps. No shoes, but thick silver anklets instead. Western wisdom would question the sense at wearing no shoes for such a trek, in a soil where snakes and shards of glass are common, but bare feet soak up the earth’s energy, from the electrodes embedded in it, helping to regulate the cortisol, that stresses our bodies into shock.Their anklets are beautiful, resting just above the ankle bone; I too prefer them to shoes. Later I learn the small bells that decorate them, give off vibrations that ward off snakes.
Vedic tradition believes, if you encircle something, you render it holy and amplify its beauty. That’s why Indian women wear bangles, necklaces, earrings, bindis and boldly circle their eyes with kohl. Their jewellery is their wealth, taken with them, something they can sell quickly if trouble comes. Theirs are links of their own lineage to be passed down. That is why I’m here, to find those links.
There are anklets of lineage in Odissi too, ones that represent the passing down of learning from guru to student. One of the best dancers in our class, Maryam, is awarded thick silver anklets with bells on them, by our teacher, who holds them up to her third eye, then wraps them around Maryam’s ankles. In the genealogy of our dance, passed down from teacher to student, when you reach a reverential standard, you wear these ghunguru to mark your stature. As you stomp, the bells chime to the beat of the music, pleasing the audience and gods with their sound.
On the first day of class, eager and new, I turn up wearing my mother's anklets. She gave them to me before I left for Pushakr. They are far lighter than Maryam's, with tiny bells shaped like seeds near their clamp - seeds for a new journey, shaped like upside-down tears. They were given to her when she married my father. She wore them on her wedding day before she and my father moved to New Zealand, another journey to a foreign land. But when I turn up, I learn from my teacher that only married women are meant to wear anklets.
After that, I decide not to wear my mother’s anklets to class again.
But at night, when I practice my dance steps on the dusty floor of my guesthouse, I slip the anklets on, and hope my ancestors can hear the bells and feel their vibration, of me dancing on their land. I can almost hear them cheering.