We live in a world where gender binaries are frequently applied to everything we see around and not just living things. The colour pink is ‘feminine’ and colour blue is ‘masculine’, dolls are for girls and cars for boys, men are strong and women considered weak, and rational behaviour is male while emotional behaviour is female.
Of course, all of these are not innate, as we’re led to believe, but keep changing with time and place. Did you know that even as late as the 20th century pink was considered to be a colour for boys and blue for girls? Our ideas about gender change as society and its culture changes. For example, let’s take knowledge – it’s a word most people today would associate with the masculine gender because we associate knowledge with rationality, logic, intelligence, superiority and power. If you want to test this out ask someone to give a name for an imaginary scientist in a story you are writing and see how many give you a male name and how many a female name!
However, in Hindu mythology we have a goddess for knowledge and not a god – Goddess Saraswati.
When Brahma, the creator, created the cosmos there was chaos all over. In his enthusiasm he’d created so much but he did not know how to put things in order. He wanted someone to help him, someone with knowledge to rein in the chaos and establish order. And so, from Brahma’s mouth came Saraswati. Saraswati was dressed in white and in her hands she held a veena, a stringed musical instrument. She also held books in her hands (she had more than two!) and rode a swan.
When Brahma saw her he immediately fell in love with her. She looked so beautiful and majestic! When Saraswati went to his right Brahma sprouted a new head just to look at her. An annoyed Saraswati moved to his left and he sprouted yet another head! And so it went on till Brahma had five heads!
Saraswati knew that Brahma was not supposed to be swayed by emotions (creation is a job that requires a lot of concentration after all), so she did not want to encourage his attention. She turned into a cow and fled from him, but Brahma turned himself into a bull and went after her. An enraged Saraswati then transformed into a mare but Brahma changed himself into a horse.
Saraswati was livid and cursed Brahma that for behaving in such an unworthy fashion he would never be worshipped in temples on earth. Finally, Shiva had to intervene and chop off one of Brahma’s heads to bring him back to his senses. Brahma chose to keep the rest of his heads – four in number. At last there was peace. Saraswati put the veena on her lap and began to play. As the musical notes wafted through the cosmos things began to fall in place. The sun, the moon and the stars were born. Order was brought into the universe and the chaotic world slowly settled into a rhythm. Brahma’s creations, big and small, were magnificent but it was only after Saraswati brought order into the world that they truly came alive.
And it is thus that Brahma, a male god, took help from a female goddess, Saraswati, to bring order and logic into the cosmos. And when it was he who allowed his emotions to get the better of him it was she who remained rational and stoic! Remember this story the next time someone says girls cannot do maths!