kankari mohey maari, gagariya phod daari
He cast a pebble at me, and broke my pitcher.
So sang the innocently seductive Anarkali (Madhubala) in the classic Bollywood epic Mughal-e-Azam (1960). This may seem like an awfully odd thing to say, and not remotely sexy. But there are layers of meaning embedded in this line that need some unravelling. To begin with, this song is one with a Radha-Krishna theme. Radha and Krishna are the most popular couple of Hindu lore. Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu, is portrayed as a flute-playing cheeky cowherd who often flirts and torments the cowgirls. Chief among these cow girls is Radha, who is depicted as being jealous of other cowgirls, madly in love with Krishna, and deeply desirous of his attentions. One of the many ways in which Krishna torments the cowgirls is by casting pebbles at the water-filled pitchers they bring up from the river (think wet-shirt contest). So when Radha protests that Krishna has grabbed her hand, and broken her pitcher, the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
But that's just layer one. Beneath this Radha-Krishna motif is the fundamental imagery (common to many cultures) that identifies wombs with pots and pitchers. The shattering of a pot speaks of sexual intercourse, and the loss of virginity in particular. And so, there is hardly anything innocent about the court dancer singing coyly of broken pitchers to prince Salim.
There are other similar metaphors for sex one commonly encounters in the movies--and most of them equally evocative of sex as a battle, a tug of war. Losing items of clothing, jewelry, and especially nose-rings is one such sure-fire clue that there's been a roll in the hay. Women of easy virtue, courtesans and gypsies (no kidding) often happily sing provocative songs about dropping earrings (Mera Saaya, 1966) and letting scarves slip (Pakeezah, 1972). [Watch Pakeezah at http://moovieshoovie.com]
Tadka Dal
Women of virtue, guard your pots (or at least pretend)! The rest, celebrate your lost noserings.
Source
Pots and wombs go back a long way. The Mahabharata gives us an intriguing character called Gandhari, a woman from Gandhar (you'll know it as Qandahar, capital of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan), who married Dhritarashtra the blind chief of the Kaurava clan. After several years of being unable to bear a child, Gandhari finds she is pregnant, only to finally give birth to a clay pot. She throws the pot to the ground in anger and frustration. The pot shatters and each of the one hundred shards turns into a son and one lone shard a daughter.
As for nose-rings, there is a custom common in some quarters of north India where girls, on reaching puberty, get their nose pierced. They then take this nose-ring off on the night that their marriage is consummated (also presumably losing their virginity at the same time).
Thanks to Laura Wagner for suggesting this topic.
