The power of smidgen Sindoor

Time of India

11-06-2025

Sindoor is amorphous! When a married woman scales it from the top of the forehead to the middle of the skull along the tiny hair parting, it becomes a valley; flowing through it an impassioned route to feminity, the boat of marriage thus sailing by keeping the oar intact on its gunwale. Sindoor is applied by Hindu women, a de rigueur.
Some apply it every day; a long stretch through the parting till the inseparable red pores start fading, and some do away with a shorter length. Many hardly wear it now; one could owe this to the hard-nosed imprecation of marriage, why then the need to sprinkle the perfumed garden? Husband is now the squall who sputters; 'Sindoor' thus becomes an 'objet d' art, magnifying its exuberance during festivities like Karvachauth where married women therapeutically indulge in their own 'Sindoor craftsmanship'. And not to forget the Hindu Bengali women who smear each other with Sindoor during 'Sindoor Khela' or Vijayadashmi.
What is it that makes 'Sindoor' pervasive? Is it devotion to the husband or is it a celebration womanhood, or is in fact a blissful sanity accorded by cultural consanguinity? The ill-disposed are quick to respond, 'Why the dividing line of the hair is empty'? The old-rickety women who have nurtured 'Sindoor' like the strict lines on the palm offer no remorse and often nudge, 'it is a sign of prosperity, applying the red vermillion makes marriage a solid rock without any cervices.' I am reminded of my friend who during 'Chhath Puja' had the red river flowing from the forehead to the bridge of the nose; crimson sprinkled to form an arabesque singing the union of a woman with her belief to love unconditionally.
'Goddess Durga' doesn't leave my impressionistic eye either. The stark red vermillion on her forehead impinges an opalescent hubris. Look at the strength it evokes if stirring up a gaff and the chiseled idol scaled to characterize the red radiance.
Aishwarya Rai, Miss World 1994 and a popular celebrity at the Cannes Film Festival, did the anomaly; rather it turned out to be exquisite. She appeared like a carnivalesque of a woman in a spiritual palimpsest of a 'white sari', an essence of peace and contemporaneously crowned by a fierce bold 'red sindoor' attitudinizing conjugality, a coup de maître! Will she wear it the next day? Hard to say!
'Sindoor' has become more of an appurtenance rather than a sine qua non for everyday deck-up. The shift has been imperceptible. The affluttered mother-in-laws' have become quiet as the new age daughter-in-laws' are now adroit to handle their 'sindoor synapse'; the husbands now wonder if the red streak of love planted on the forehead has irreverently unclaimed them? It's not that I have never applied it; yes, I have! And I have to admit it made me look different but nothing to do with who I am. It's been years now and it is asynchronous in my married life; its significance arbitrary along the scrofula surrounding the marriage masochism.
However, there comes an accession which has made 'sindoor' anthropomorphic. It was wiped off brutally by the terrorist during the Pahalgam terror attack in 2025, and Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi did not accept the dark in whisper. The 'red' in 'Operation Sindoor' reflects the incandescent tempest that is ready to strike the malfeasance of the perpetrators who left many women as widows with their virtuous sindoor burnt forever.
Can 'sindoor' ever be left bleeding? The power of it came down heavily on the miscreants, and 'Operation Sindoor' swallowed the currents of anachronistic hatred.
'Sindoor', with its adventurous spirit will always remain the soi-distant essence of a Hindu woman. Things have definitely changed, one hardly sees married women applying it fervently, and however, it still defines the indomitable spirit to create a crease of one's belonging and coveting the idea of inseparability.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.