Part I: Where Our Hero Innocently Undertakes a Leisurely Journey and Discovers His Destiny.
Navratri was my awakening to Uttarakhandi Marshallese-ness and the beginning of a Karmic quest that fulfilled my destiny. Uttarakhand is the harbor of Hindu spiritualism: the sacred rivers flow from its snows and millions of pilgrims annually arrive to trek, bathe, and worship at its myriad temples.
My home sits midway up a mountain with one of these very sites, Chandrabadni Temple, at its peak. Shiva’s wife, Sati, was split and scattered about Uttarakhand and her torso fell here. The temple itself is a circular building with a conical roof and appears to sit on pine trees already perched above the clouds, allowing views of a snow-capped range that buffers China.
After a few hours working our way up the mountain to the temple, I was laced with a bracelet, marked with a tika, and handed a coconut. Wait, what? I was presented with a coconut, in the Himalayas. I barely held my laughter. After a year spent cracking coconuts (the proper death stare, angle of attack, tooth-tear, ripping method, location of first puncture) in the Marshall Islands, I was handed a coconut at one of the holiest sites in Hinduism. I did not expect this, did not know this was common; this was my first time in a Hindu temple. Nevertheless I felt comfortable, destined from birth to be in this very spot (or at least destined from a year and change ago), fated to destroy this coconut with the strength of my ri-Majol-ness. In my euphoria, I was flipping the coconut between my hands…and then a teacher named Jyoti snatched it from me, grabbed an ax (an ax!), and started opening it. Now, you need no ax to open a coconut, but more importantly: she was robbing me of my destiny! I felt the Fates measuring my thread, preparing to cut. Who ruins someone’s destiny? Did she not know?
The coconut was butchered, literally and figuratively, by Jyoti and her adorable ax swings. It eventually split but shards flew into her eyes, onto the temple, onto Sati’s torso, into Shiva’s nose…it was a debacle. Still, we ate coconut at the top of a Himalayan peak. After, we took the coconut husk and brought it over to a dedicated side temple. Inside was a pyre overflowing with coconut husks. If only the Marshallese knew about these practices, the dedication and reverence shown to the sacred power of the coconut. I was ready to sacrifice myself, but Navratri is a long festival and the pyre was not to be burned for nine more days.
Destiny, roused.
Part II: Where Our Hero Returns to Champion His Fate but is Again Thwarted in His Attempt at Fulfillment.
We returned nine days later, my enthusiasm at a rolling boil. I didn’t know yet that the conclusion of Navratri put everyone at that very level of intensity. Approaching the temple I heard the rapid beating of drums, the bustle of children, and the screams of…women? Were those the screams of women? I didn’t understand anything except that the cumulative volume waxed in approach. I was mentally preparing myself: no adversary, be it woman, beast, or Sati herself, would prevent me from coconut sacrifice this day.
My adversaries were complicated: the screaming women were enthused devouts dancing as dervishes then sprinting erratically through the crowd; the children zig-zagged around the temple, hunting for whatever free food was being offered; the drum beat emanated from musicians riling the rabble into chaos and rebellion because the temple was closed. Wait, what? The temple was closed? The doors were locked? Peopled herded, women danced, men pushed, but I would not be denied. We scaled the crowd, bounding on toes, then shoulders, then heads, cradling my coconut like a football. We forced our way through a sliver in the gate and I was at the portal of the temple. I entered, received another bracelet, another tika, and my coconut was quickly taken from me and given for prayer. I sat on my knees after receiving my tika, awaiting the return of the key to my destiny. The coconut was pushed to the back. I could see it, it was there, just behind the…just around the…just let me have it and…
In the ebb of the crowd, I was pushed out of the room by a man with an unofficial name tag: "Line Moving Man."
Destiny, foiled.
Part III: Where our Hero Comes to Understand Faith in Karma and His Destiny is Fulfilled.
A few weeks later, at a time that could be anytime, yet in a place that could only be the center of a verdant Himalayan valley, I was cooking dinner with the rest of the teachers. As a nascent Garhwali, I am often assigned to garlic peeling or potato boiling. On this afternoon I was honored with cleaning the dishes. Mid-lather, a German girl who had been helping at APV hurled herself through the door indicating that she had a problem. I spoke English, she spoke English; I stepped up. I assumed that she had diarrhea or stepped on nettles or a leopard threatened her life–something ranging from personally trivial to apocalyptic. She then pulled from her bag a coconut, gently reclaiming her breath and asking that she needed it opened, split along the equator, halved, exactly the way all coconuts are meant to be open, exactly the way I had been trained, exactly the way that the Fates intended.
More succinctly: She asked me to fulfill my destiny.
The others in the kitchen pounced on her ineptitude and ignorance. "Not possible," "no, can not happen this way," "too hard," and "I do not see it," reverberated in broken English, and hope darted from the girl’s eyes. I calmly and confidently asked for a chance at it and understood that despite two previous failures, my Karma, the cause and effect of the universe, had finally tipped. Those in the kitchen looked at me oddly and their silence challenged: take a shot, foreigner.
I grabbed the coconut, felt its hair in my palm, glared at it. It did not know (or did it?) that it was futile to resist me, that it had met its match, that it was doomed. I showed it respect: I flipped it, listening to the milk slosh inside; balanced it, sensing the thickness of the meat at each pole; rubbed it, calculating the radius of husk around its equator. And then I pounced.
I tore the dried husk with my teeth–three, maybe four quick pulls (did that coconut just tremble?)–and the naked core sat in my hand. I grabbed a knife (did that coconut just plead?) and rapped its center, spinning it slowly, coordinating the blows. And so simply, so quickly, it cracked in half (did that coconut just cry?), ceased remonstrating, conceded. Everyone agape, I handed her the coconut and walked casually back to washing the dishes.
Destiny, fulfilled.
Charles Iannuzzi works on curriculum and syllabus development at APV School in Anjanisain, Uttarakhand.
