The ether works in mysterious ways when forces connect and the joint surge of energy makes you wonder how come someone is also thinking and writing the same stuff as you. Nature works in mysterious ways.

In my post about Childhood Memories From The Past I had talked about growing up to be a feminist in a Hindu household held together by an old gentleman, my grandpa, and his love for Durga Ma.

And within a few days comes an article on Huffington Post written by Melissa Soalt where she talked about her experiences in India. Her love for Mother India was true in its raw earthy form:

She is also the Primordial Womb world. For thousands of years, Indians have worshiped the Great Womb, an aspect if not icon of the Mother Goddess herself: domed monuments and vulva shaped statues adorn public spaces. At nineteen, India's formidable girl power appealed to my budding feminist ideals; a vulva here, a vulva there, and with a cabal of goddesses, as fierce in their sexuality as their ability to restore cosmic order and save the world from doom, I mean... what's not to love?

She clearly understood the magic that holds us together. Sure, she gave our country a Hindu interpretation but that the heritage every Indian has whatever be their religion, where we think of our land as a benevolent life giving lady. A mother gritty and sturdy, enfolding all in her warmth and yet she can be destructive - natural disasters, man made disasters, riots against communities, against humanity etc are all a part of her identity and cannot be denied.

And yet she speaks also for the rising feminists who have left to prove in terms of their education but are now exploring and voicing their sexuality. The awakening was perceived by Melissa Soalt as well:

he'd helped me with my knapsack, then stuck too close and tried to help himself to me-that was it, I went off: I slammed him in the head; I bashed him about the face and neck and shook him like a rag doll. Then I did the unthinkable: I cracked his offending hand hard as I could. I nailed that sucker. Little bones crunched and "gave" beneath the fury of my fist. I watched him deflate like a punctured balloon, stunned by the power emanating from this hippie turned Beast Girl--and frankly so was I. A home-run grin peered through my fury. It wasn't that I enjoyed hurting him--well, maybe just a little--but that I had issued his terror, not the other way around; that my body, which I'd spent my entire girlhood hating, was an instrument of power.

And she met her primordial self like we all do when we stand up against the male predators. A tribal woman from the past, a warrior from the past.:

Call it cellular memory or the magic of Mother India but when I struck back, time and space swung its doors wide open, or so it felt, and I went swirling back through evolution deposited into the skin of much earlier predecessor: Neander Babe, I call her. She had thick gnarly legs and a tribal chic 'do. I remember feeling as if I'd slipped into that genetic pool, merging with prehistory, as if I'd landed in a time that predated domestication and vaginal deodorants, the hum of civility. Before our own discordant madness was pruned back by fear and by fear's debilitating offspring: internalized restraint.

That power exists in us all- the women of India. Its not a thumping approval that we are looking for but that high of empowerment, a feeling that we are the mistresses of our own fate, that we can speak our minds and protect ourselves from any shit thrown at us from the world.

It was surprising to read the views of a lady of another culture understand exactly the way we women tend to view our country or how the Hindu women have finally taken ownership of their Goddesses.

While writing this I learned something new. Kali, who is typically portrayed as bloodthirsty--feared and revered for her battle-girl persona--is also a symbol of women's empowerment, described as a perfect model of female balance: powerful, active and assertive--never pointlessly destructive. And what exactly are her legacies? She returns women to "three virtues" historically denied women in most cultures: Strength (moral and physical); intellect and knowledge; and sexual sovereignty.

Here's my loving shout out to Mother India and her fetching femmes fatales--girls, keep the force alive.

Thanks Melissa was wording it so well.