The bag flies at midnight

Having been away from home these past three years, I finally felt that pride of the young unicorn, laying aside all fear to bear love to a fair maiden. From regions of perpetual snow to the depths of the oceans to the interior of the earth, where in obscure grottoes reside unknown cryptogams and chuds, footbag stands the universal language. Kicking the bag across some of these trails was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world. Was there joy in the brilliant sunshine? As much as Adam must have felt caressing his naked skin.

Some footbag forms, among the world's most beautiful, are entirely absent in the world's metropolises, where players are often under the influence of performance enhancing drugs or the conservative footbag educational system, which teaches to the tests.



Shiva, lord of the bag, in an 11th century representation.



It is believed that baggage spread with Vedic culture. Bag and its divine choreography permeated all facets of being, giving expression to spiritual aspiration and ecstasies. The most spectacular example was that of Shiva, the cosmic bagger and possible progenitor, who with his steps relieved by enlightenment the suffering of devotees. In Nitin Kumar's eyes: "His gestures, wild and full of grace, precipitate the cosmic illusion; his flying arms and legs and the swaying of his torso produce the continuous creation-destruction of the universe, death exactly balancing Natarajabirth. The choreography is the whirligig of time. History and its ruins, the explosion of suns, are flashes from the tireless swinging sequence of the gestures." Aspirations to this brand of beauty and ecstasy have been rare since the Enlightenment, but the practice lives on even if its meaning may be lost.