A Traditional Story of the Brass Oil Lamp from India

A silent witness to many arrivals as a nation learns to stand up on its own

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Amnesia is partial by definition. Is memory measured by how much is expressed or how much is recollected? What if memory fetched is high, and the ability to connect the dots and express is low or non-existent?

How selective memory loss can be became apparent to me recently when my 93-year-old mother struggled to recollect our neighborhood of 45 years — her recollection was close to zero. Yet only a week earlier, she gave me some astounding details of her distant past, like the events around the birth of her first child.

Time leaves scars on our bodies and minds. It is nature’s art of tattooing our unique stories on ourselves. What follows is a story told to me by her that I have reconstructed slightly for flow and context.

The pain and anguish of a nation torn apart by an act of political engineering by colonialists who were ready to exit after two centuries of plunder played out on the streets every hour of every day.

It was well over six years since the colonial looters had been nudged out of our shores, but the wounds remained raw. Everyday violence ensured the wounds never healed — a fresh bout of street violence was a simple argument away.

The streets of Delhi, Meerut, Jhansi, Calcutta, and Bombay were ever ready to erupt -anything from a boisterous pandemonium to mild violence could trigger from a street corner, from a conversation over chai, from an altercation over how cattle were being traded.

Any of those could last from a few minutes to a few weeks of nationwide protest and agitations, with fragile being an understatement to describe the social web of 1953.

The soil on our earth was the ultimate melting pot -where blood and skin from freedom fighters and murderous mobs, innocent family men and marauders, slaves and their masters, gun-toting white skins and confused gentry willingly or unwillingly fed the fuel for a seemingly never-ending conflict.

The Endless Sky Is Not the Same

Yet, not all was hell. Some 1300 miles from central Delhi, in the hinterlands off the western coastline, the only noise was the gentle wrapping of the sea waves as she landed on the white sands of Tonse village.

You would be forgiven for thinking it was a set to a tune, but the larger waves came in perfect rhythm — every 4th minute it would land and the wavelets would continue for the next several hundred seconds.

Meanwhile, the bent and crooked coconut palm crooned over the water’s surface for the thousandth time that day — as if she was going to soak herself into the waters — a game she would never win, but would never stop trying either.

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” -Maya Angelou

The blue sky looked over the spectacle majestically — with a cloudless clear blanket for miles as if she had nothing to do with all the smoke and commotion in northern states.

She seemed to be in perennial bliss, having known not a blur in her eternal state — untouched, undisturbed, utterly still, and oblivious.

As night fell, a bunch of oil lamps came up in the small villages — none of which was touched by the modern-day wonders of electricity.

In Parkala, the village headman was preparing for a different ritual — his daughter was due to deliver a baby that night.

He had already arranged for an elderly family woman who would be the midwife — an experienced hand to assist in childbirth.

The herbs, anti-septic oils, sandal paste, and hot water would be kept ready and made available as required.

The medical team was made up of two: the mother of the pregnant woman and the midwife. Combined, they had delivered over three dozen babies over the years — with little more than confidence in the heart and a prayer on the lips.

They had all the pre and post-natal procedures at their fingertips — diet for the mother-to-be, post-partum care, care for the newborn, bathing, cleaning, precautionary steps, and even knew how to get the baby eased out of the birth canal should there be minor complications.

“Where we love is home — home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” -Oliver Wendell Holmes

‘Everything is set, I just need the big 7-wick brass lamp now,’ said the older mother to her husband, the village headman, who was nervously pacing outside in the living room. He lifted the massive four-foot brass lamp with one hand and moved it close to the door of the birthing room.

‘Top it up with 7 wicks and fill it up with oil,’ she said to her assistant, the midwife. The headman had already had the brass lamp washed, cleaned, and shined up for today.

The brass lamp was a family heirloom that had passed down the lineage and was used for the birthing room alone. It was last used about five months ago. The handcrafted brass lamp had a gorgeous peacock head over which the lamp was mounted.

The peacock had the most exquisite stones embedded in its eyes and beak. The master craftsman who had created this gem was no longer alive, but his craft weaved a mystery through the generations that followed.

A Silent Witness Etched in Brass

When the oil container above the peacock’s head was half full, and the lamp was lit, the peacock’s eyes shined deep green, but when the oil level was full, it would glow a deep blue.

What secret alloy he had embedded in the oil container was a mystery, and no one seemed to understand. But the peacock seemed the most intelligent being around — having seen dozens of childbirths, it appeared to have an ethereal wisdom in its eyes.

The headman muttered — ‘I have already arranged for five wicks and enough oil for it to last the night. We need only five, not seven. Why seven?’.

His wife murmured something inaudible as the midwife smiled knowingly. The birthing room air was thick with unspoken conversations that no one could hear—none except the wise peacock.

A Vaastu Compliant Embryo Zone

The birthing room was strategically located in the southwest corner of the massive house as governed by the principles of Vaastu.

It was the most compact room in the entire household, with the entire structure made of teakwood and mahogany.

The split-door entrance to this room was a pure mahogany structure of height five feet and a frame of 6-inch thickness.

There was a heavy brass chain about a foot long that would hang off a large brass circular ring embedded into the twelve hexagonal wooden beads -each large enough to fill an adult palm, that decorated the doors.

If you weren’t adequately aware while stepping into the room, you would be knocked out cold by the mahogany bead, and the doors, even if not locked, would not budge an inch. The arriving babies and the young mothers were out of easy access — not even to house members.

The main puja room was the only room leading to this birthing room. And the main deity looked right into the birthing center at all times — kind of a 24x7 blessing zone, if you will. The Vaastu principles were applied to the hilt, and over generations, they manifested the principle of divine energies.

The birthing room was mostly dark except for a one-square-foot window to the south side with square holes that stood out within the six-inch thickness of raw wood surrounding it.

The peacock head brass lamp seemed to carry a royal demeanor when seated inside the room. With its shiny green eyes, the peacock seemed to keep vigil over the sensitive vibes that traveled the ether in and out of the room. It was a science we understood nothing about.

A gentle breeze suddenly picked up toward midnight. The grandfather in the living room clock struck twelve times above the headman’s wooden cot.

He was resting lightly, and the gong strike stirred his sleep. He abruptly woke up and paced the room again, bending slightly toward the puja room to listen to any noises.

The young mother had entered labor in the birthing center. Her mother and midwife were comforting her and singing a famous birthing song — a pre-lullaby uttered just before birth.

It said something about a golden cradle being prepared for the prince's arrival — who is none other than the Lord in his childish new designer clothing.

A quarter past midnight, the midwife raised the blood-soaked baby into the air, the cord still shining with beads of blood dripping into her cloth-rolled hands below.

Steam from a mid-size copper container with hot water gently flowed, showing up as it encircled the peacock occasionally. The older mother happily sang a rhythm, knocking the baby on his bottom as he burst into a shriek that pierced the night.

The headman gently bent against the puja door, trying hard to listen to any signs of who had arrived. Just then, the grandmother yelled -’ you can go to the temple tomorrow; it’s a boy!’.

The headman silently said a prayer and went back to sleep. The peacock added one more feather to the repertoire of the spectacle of human birth it had witnessed.

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” -Haruki Murakami

Time and the waves certainly wait for no one. The skies darkened, and the monsoons poured copiously as the wave patterns were lost in the unending rains.

The sky changed hues between dark grey and black over the months. The soil on the coast changed from deep muddy red in the rains to a shiny golden brown in the summer, but little else. The paddy fields rose and fell in rhythm with the changing seasons.

The lone bent and defiant coconut palm on the Tonse shores had still not given up its valiant attempts to kiss the water’s surface. The blue sea seemed to continue to mock the palm as if to remind him he was not good enough.

Folklore Delivers Morality Innocently

Back in Parkala, the little boy who arrived just past midnight was now a four-year-old bustling energy ball soaking in the attention and joys of a crowded home. They called him Babu.

That morning, Ramu, the darkest, youngest, strongest farmhand who would singlehandedly drive a pair of oxen across an acre of farmland for the plowing circuit, came running toward the house.

‘Taramma, Taramma, please call your son Babu over. He doesn’t listen to us. He will not let our cows go uphill to graze’, he screamed.

Taramma was surprised. She called Babu and asked what he was up to and why he was bothering the workers.

Four-year-old Babu, shirtless, with a half-eaten mango in his hand and soiled shorts, pleaded. ‘Amma, they let the cows go up the hillock to graze. But they don’t know the tiger of ‘punya koti’ will be there to eat our cows. I don’t want the tiger to come and pounce on our cow. I think Ramu doesn’t know the story of ‘Punya Koti.’

Fast forward to many decades: the young mother turned 93 early this year, and little Babu turned 70. How things changed and still remain the same. As with the old bent coconut palm and the sea — they are still playing catch up.

That was the story retold. Memory is selective indeed. Don’t you agree?

Thank you for reading my story.

I write about life, tech, markets, and startups. My expertise is in Strategy and Lead Generation for startups. You may connect with me on YouTube and my website.