KARACHI: “It is not just a festival where you tie a thread around someone’s wrist and he’ll forget about it the next instant. No, the thread binds and protects. He will look out for you for the rest of his life. It’s a serious responsibility,” said a sister at the Shri Laxmi Narayan Temple at the Native’s Jetty here on Saturday.

The occasion was Rakhsha Bandhan and several sisters were present at the temple to buy a rakhi of their choice and perform pooja before tying the sacred thread around their brothers’ wrists. “It isn’t necessary to tie the rakhi at the temple. We can also take it from here and do it at home,” said Kesar Devi, who had her own rakhi in her bag as she volunteered peeling vegetables at the temple for parsad distribution later.

“I will leave here with a thaali that will have not just the rakhi but also a coconut, some incense sticks or a little clay diya, mithai, some fruit or special parsad from here along with kumkum for the tilak, or red mark on the forehead, for my brother. I’m sure he’ll have a gift or some money to present to me in return but really what matters is his looking out for me. That’s what brothers do, don’t they?” she smiled.

Vishaka Devi, a first-year intermediate student, said that after performing pooja at the temple she first tied the thread to Bhagwan, her god. My brother’s turn comes later,” she said while tying a rakhi around her brother Rajinder Kumar’s wrist.

Meanwhile, Ratan Kumar, who also made a new rakhi sister at the temple, said that he hailed from Lyari, where many Hindu females tie rakhi to Muslim males and many Muslim women tie rakhi to Hindu men. Touched at being honoured by a friend’s wife on Saturday, he put his hand over her head and promised to protect her for life.

“Though this festival has come to become more of a ceremony between real brothers and sisters, it really began as an honourable relationship between strangers. Twenty years ago, two girls to whom I was not related by blood made me their rakhi brother. Now they are married and live in India but never fail to send me a rakhi by post. It is a very special bond,” he added.

“It’s really a duty-bound obligation of protection that comes with the role of a brother, dharam ka rishta. Rakhsha Bandhan literally means ‘bond of protection’.”

There are many myths and legends attributed to the festival. Some say that the rakhi thread was actually an amulet or taveez to be tied around the arms of men who were going to war. According to another legend, Krishan hurt his hand and seeing this, Daupadi, who looked up to him as a brother, quickly tore a piece of her sari pallu to tie around his wound. Sometime later, when she was being harassed by some villains, who started pulling at her sari pallu, Krishan came to her rescue and made her sari pallu so long that they kept pulling it and pulling it and the cloth just kept unwinding without any end to it. There are many more such stories.

According to Arjun Maharaj, the poojariji of the Shri Laxmi Narayan Temple, Rakhsha Bandhan begins on the full moon in the Hindu month of Shravan but it could go on for seven days after that as some girls tie rakhi later, too, when their brothers, who may be out of town or abroad, return home.

The Ravi Maharaj of the Shri Ratneswar Mahadev Temple in Clifton, too, said that the shubh mahurat, or designated time, for tying rakhi was between 1pm and 9pm on Saturday but the festival may last for a week.

Meanwhile, vendors outside all temples of the city, most of whom happened to be Muslims from Mirpurkhas, were selling a huge variety of rakhi. They were available in several colours though red and yellow seemed to be most popular among the buyers. The cheapest rakhi cost Rs5 and the most expensive ones were between Rs40 and Rs100. The Rs100 rakhi was imported — from Hyderabad Deccan in India. “They have zircon, beads and rudraksha seeds. The combination helps ward off the evil eye and brings good luck to the wearer,” said Murli Dass, the lone Hindu vendor outside the Shri Laxmi Narayan Temple. The vendors didn’t just sell rakhi, but bindi, key-chains and other little trinkets in case the brothers would want to buy their sisters a gift.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2015

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