A Rose by any other Name...


What's in a name, you say?

In Kalimpong I overheard a little girl complaining about the name of the mountain to her father.

"What kind of name is Kanchenjungha? I don't like it."

"And what do you think the mountain should be named?"

"Megha Mountain. Because it touches the clouds."

A while later, as her parents called after her, I realized she had given the mountain her own name. We were leaving, so I didn't get around to asking them, but I have questions.

Did she mean to claim the world as her own, or did she want to become the world? Or did she, as a child, recognize that she was, in fact the world- she was the mountain in the horizon and the clouds kissing its snowy peaks?

Kanchenjungha is a Tibetan name, by the way, meaning 'the five treasures of the snow', named after its five high peaks. The mountain is worshipped by the people of Darjeeling and Sikkim.

And mankind has long worshipped the immensity and beauty in the world, recognizing the divine in it.

And the other day, a woman ranted on the internet, and hoped that God would destroy Allah. And I wondered what would happen if the Universe committed suicide- if the world would suddenly implode and we would all simply cease to be? For if the kid was right, and Blake was right, the divine is in the world, and the world is in us, and we are the divine.

And we shrink ourselves into narrow nomenclatures and hate ourselves and slowly, slowly kill ourselves. And the majestic mountain calls, and we are blinded by the fog.

(Photography by ©Ruchira Mandal)

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