The God reference

If you are a first time visitor to this blog and are unaware of Indian culture, you might be surprised that I frequently refer to my husband, my owner, my Master as God. Not a term I have seen used elsewhere. It might also make folks uncomfortable given the linkages to religion.

For me though, it is the most natural thing to do and the most suitable way to describe the relationship I am in. In my culture, your husband is your God. Our mythology is filled with this imagery and there are stories about women gaining extreme spiritual and mystic power based on their unfailing and complete devotion to their husbands. In one story, a woman rushes to serve her husband when he calls for her and leaves her current chore of drawing water from a well. The bucket is raised half way when she just abandons the rope and rushes to wait on her husband. I was fascinated when I learnt that the bucket remained suspended in mid air waiting for the woman to get back to the well after serving her husband. I was educated from my early childhood about the power of a chaste and dutiful wife.

Which Indian does not remember the Story of Savitri, the ultimate symbol of a chaste wife who confronts the God of death and wins the soul of her husband back?

Men whose women were devoted to them were also believed to be protected from bad things happening to them.

I remember this story, where there is this demon king who goes to war with the Gods and cannot be killed as long as his wife sits thinking about him in prayer. He is vanquished only when one of the Gods takes the form of her husband and appears before her and she is tricked into abandoning her practice for an instance. As soon as she does that, her husband becomes vulnerable and is slaughtered in the battlefield!

One of the ways for women to attain salvation is also to forget about everything else and just immerse themselves in service of their husband. You don't have to read religious texts or perform any religious service or worship a far off distant God. Just serve your husband and you will reach heaven and attain salvation! What path could be easier, specially for a submissive :-)

Throughout our religious texts and stories, the women of Indian mythology refer to their husbands as  Swami (Master), Parameshwar(Foremost God), Prabhu(Lord) etc.

Thus when I decided to become a willing slave to my husband, addressing him as my God, my Swami, my Parameshwar seemed just the right thing to do. How can you submit more to anyone than to God, to whom can you offer more complete and more unquestioned obedience to than God, and who owns you more and has right over your body and soul, happiness and sadness, freedom and liberty than God? Who can do with you whatever comes to their fancy, controls every aspect of your life, rains pain and pleasure on you as they seem fit and yet gets your undying love, adoration, affection and fierce loyalty but God?

My husband is my Master. My husband is my God and I am his slave whose life revolves around pleasing and serving him with my all my heart, my body and my soul.