Writing is a lot like conjuring. It is a ritual. You need to disallow any other activity that you may try to invite into the room as writers love to distract themselves for as long as it is possible. If you think writing isn’t a ritual, it runs the risk of being labelled a chore or, at best, a mechanical routine that hardly gets a chance to sparkle with creative influx. So writing is indeed a ritual that is absolutely smashing.
This is not the case with every ritual. Rituals, as most of us understand them are dangerously close to being obscure reasons to do something that is not done normally and are surviving only because no one has had the courage to speak against them. Take the case of a funny ritual known as ‘tie the cat to the pole’ while performing a yagya or havan. There is a story about a Rishi in Vedic times who had domesticated a cat but always asked one of his disciples to tie the cat to a pole. He did this as he did not want the cat to disturb him during his daily practice of yagya. He did not tell anyone the reason for his command and no one ever questioned it. After his death, his chief disciple sat down to perform a yagya in that ashram and the other disciples quickly rushed to tie the cat to the pole. This became a practice and soon graduated to becoming a hard-core ritual.
I believe it is people like the Buddha who understood such things happening all around. He, therefore, called his teachings a raft: You don’t need to carry it around with you after you’ve crossed the river. That’s it. A habit needs to exist so long as it is relevant to the person who is affected. Rituals must also be questioned. For instance, even as one interested in the craft of writing, I decide to first type out the first alphabet in caps and then delete it to then punch in the title… and if I do this every time and share Instagram reels about this and start having a fan following who do the same because this action leads to an essay, poem, or story that gets read by many, then I have successfully kick-started a ritual.
I came across an Instagram reel about something just as funny and something having the DNA to become a ritual. While walking through an underpass, one of the thousands of devotees at the MahaKumbh 2025 jumped up and touched the ceiling. People coming behind him funnily started doing the same. Some others who could not jump that high simply moved to a side, touched the side-wall and folded their hands in reverence. In less than two minutes, nearly everyone was repeating this action. A ritual had successfully begun. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that rituals aren’t contemporary because newer ones are being born every other day.
It is not foolhardy to wish that people need to be discerning enough to stay away from an action that is simply a ritual that is neither relevant nor connected to the way we live in this century. Rituals are not always connected to pilgrimages and pilgrims… they have a sound footing in society and have infected everything starting from a child who is born to the time he gets married to the moment of his death. No escape there. Rituals everywhere.
It is time to say goodbye to rituals. But wait… if you have one that is in a relationship with writing or reading, let it be. That’s possible a good ritual.
.
.
.
Arvind Passey
17 February 2025
