Fourteenth February or Valentine’s Day is a massive event in Hindu College, where a sections of students celebrate ‘the Virgin Tree’ and conduct the V-tree puja in which they recite this ‘aarati’, accompanied with the fanfare of elaborate puja gear and 'condoms'.
जय दमदमी माता
मैया जय दमदमी माता
तुमको दिनभर देखूं - 2
रात भर सो नहीं पाता
मैया जय दमदमी माता
36-24-36 ये तेरी काया
मैया ये तेरी काया
गानो पे ठुमका लगाता - 2
जय दमदमी माता
जब तू TV पे आती
तो हॉस्टल नचता
मैया तो हॉस्टल नचता
तुमको देखते देखते - 2
सुबह हो जाता
मैया जय दमदमी माता
दमदमी मैया की आरती
जो कोई नर गावे
6 हफ़्ते के अंदर
नई गर्लफ्रेंड पावे
मैया जय दमदमी माता
बोलो दमदमी मैया की जय!!
The above prayer roughly translates to:
Hail Damdami Mata (goddess)
I look at you all day
And cannot sleep the whole night
Hail Damdami Mata
Your body is 36-24-36
This is your body
I dance to the songs
Hail Damdami Mata
When you come on TV
The hostel dances
Hail Damdami Mata
Looking at you
The sun rises
If men sing in your worship
Within 6 weeks
They'll get a new girlfriend
Hail Damdami Mata
Hindu College, which is very proud of it’s ‘Virgin tree’ celebration, is at it again. Apparently, this ‘ritual’ holds a special place in the hearts of Hinduites, who seem to be amused by the visibly sexual representation of ‘Damdami Mai’. In a university space where any conversation about the ‘sexual’ is regarded a taboo, this kind of a celebration is often termed as liberating, the fascination for a kind of a ‘celebration’ which doesn’t shy away from acknowledging sexual desire, fantasy, and use of condoms.
Every year, several students gather around a tree amidst a lot of fanfare to paste a picture of a woman and proclaim her as the object of male desire. When questioned about how their ‘tradition’ might reek of misogyny, they defended their position by asserting that, “the condoms are used for AIDS awareness and not as an act of desperation and vulgarity.”
Let’s be clear, there is no problem with condoms being used for a public installation, but the ends that this event serves and the intention behind it has very little to do with spreading ‘AIDS awareness’! In fact, it is possible that those seeking to ‘spread awareness’ are participating in a highly masculinist event which might even be encouraging intolerance towards other forms of sexuality and gender identity. There is no real attempt to celebrate sexuality on an equal footing, amidst an audience charged with masculine aggression.
Is it not the same as men from the college across road (St Stephens College) making chick charts and rating women students and displaying it on the notice boards or high school boys making a list of ‘attractive girls/girls with the best body parts’?
Your despicable excuse for an opportunity to grade and rate women on their appearance is not something which we cannot see through. This virgin tree celebration is just another trope which objectifies women. This is no 'innocent' humour, but a contributor to rape culture, which also slut shames women who assert their sexuality and blames survivors of abuse for ‘asking for it.’
The organisers of this ‘tradition’ – who repeat this act, year-after-year, and pass the baton to their juniors to continue their ‘legacy’ – lay false claim on arguments about safe sex to couch their own misogynistic ideals and objectification of women that they claim to ‘worship.’
Much like how screaming ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ doesn’t remove the effects of patriarchy, and in fact becomes an easy trope to do anything while still claiming ‘love for Mother India,’ this event too becomes an easy cop out while paying lip service to some distorted and hollow notion of 'sex-positivism'.
The V-tree ‘puja’ itself is ridden in a Brahmanical and casteist notion of prayer and reward – pray to the Virgin tree to lose your virginity. This mock ritual actually ends up finding itself replicating the idea of a ‘male priest’ who is ordained by the Gods to perform the ‘ceremony.’ The idea behind the ritual is to take the ‘blessings’ of a glorified sex goddess, who will bless them into finding a girlfriend under six weeks!
We wonder what Damdami Mai does to ensure so! Does she appear in dreams with ‘tips’ or does she whisper sweet nothings in the ear of the seeker, or does she cast a spell on the beloved?
The idealised Damdami Mai is the fetishised body of a celebrity who they think is the epitome of ‘sexiness’. What the celebration does is that it reinforces the existing patriarchal structures which are responsible for ingraining insecurity in the minds of young women with all their beauty products and body ideals – all for the pleasure of and determined by an external male gaze.
Men and women are conditioned into believing in certain ideas of desirability and respectability, which are deeply influenced by the popular depiction of women that are deemed worthy of being regarded as ‘sexy.’ Who are the people who find themselves out of these circuits of desirability and why? What are the parameters of this ‘sexy’? Who is considered sexy and who is not?
What this event is, is a spectacle with revellers, voyeurs, all complicit in the stroking of a collective fantasy, where it doesn’t matter who gets excluded in this celebration and the discomfort it might cause to people, especially women — who are either left with the choice of laughing off this ceremony as boyish fun or condemning it and being labelled as ‘conservative’ or ‘feminazis,’ who are incapable of sharing a laugh.
The boys hostel union that failed to provide any active support to the strike against high fees and discriminatory regulations for womens’ hostel in Hindu College, are are adamant and militant about never breaking the tradition of the V-tree puja.
Their new found love for “equality” has claimed to have added a new “introduction” to the ritual this year, “a Love Guru, the male counterpart of the Damdami Mai”, to be elected by the women's hostel. Wow, how democratic! Yes, ‘Fair and Lovely’ is okay, if there is ‘Fair and Handsome’, right?
This is our last appeal to the Boys Hostel Union and the Students Union to stop this V-tree puja once and for all, women's voices and anger is not going to stay silent for long! There are no chick-charts anymore, there dare not be another Anga Oath, and so too will be the fate of virgin tree rituals – be warned!
(This statement was sent to The Quint by Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage), an autonomous women's collective of students and alumni from colleges across Delhi that seeks to make accommodation regulations less regressive and restrictive for women students.)
(The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)