Kali Puja Has Kolkata's Heart

Ma Durga might be the city's most celebrated annual visitor, but Kali is the resident Goddess, notes Sandip Roy.

Durga Puja is indisputably Kolkata's biggest festival, a major driver of the state's economy.

It's been described as the world's largest public art installation, part of UNESCO's list of the world's intangible cultural heritage. This year the city's Durga Pujas recreated the Tirupati temple and the Las Vegas Sphere, paid homage to the Indian Constitution and recreated the Sundarbans in a Kolkata neighbourhood.

Ma Durga might be the city's most celebrated annual visitor, but Kali is the resident Goddess. H E A Cotton, the English barrister and historian. wrote, 'Kali, the patron saint of the city is at Kalighat.'

Kalighat is the city's most celebrated Kali Temple, the place where the right toe of Sati's little foot supposedly fell when her dismembered body was scatted all over the subcontinent. But it's not the only famous Kali Temple. There's Thantania Kalibari, Firinghee Kalibari, the Chinese Kali bari, Dacoit Kali Mandir and, of course, Dakshineshwar where Sri Ramakrishna worshipped the goddess.

After the hoopla of Durga Puja is over and the tourists and visitors are gone, the city seems to heave a sigh of relief as it celebrates Kali Puja as its own homespun festival.

If Durga Puja is an ostentatious all-you-can-eat five-star buffet, Kali Puja is home-cooked ghar ka khana. Kali Puja also has its pandals or temporary temples in street corners, elaborate lighting displays, and crowds out till late. But the goddess always takes centerstage, not the art.

Our neighbourhood Kali Puja routinely blocked the entrance to our house. When we grumbled about the inconvenience, the local club youths replied we should consider it a privilege that we were so close to the goddess. One year it proved too close.

An errant firework set the pandal ablaze and the flames licked our bedroom windows. I remember people frantically pouring buckets of water from our balcony as the flames leaped and danced. The next day we could see that the walls of our house were scorched and covered with soot and the goddess stood exposed amidst the charred ruins of her pandal.

She didn't look entirely out of place. This is a goddess as comfortable inside a home as in the crematorium. She thrives among ghosts and demons. The day before Kali Puja, vegetable vendors sell baskets of chopped greens, 14 kinds of saag to represent 14 generations of ancestors whose ghosts are supposed to return to earth at this time. Whether they really sell 14 greens is debatable, but we eat it as an article of faith.

Kali is one of the 10 Tantric goddesses or Mahavidyas -- Kali, Tara, Shoroshi, Bhuvaneshwari, Chhinnamasta, Dhumabati, Bogola, Matangi and Kamala. There are stories of how she slew the demons Chanda and Munda, who had brought the gods to their knees. That's why she is also known as Chamunda.

Though now she is depicted with one foot on the body of her husband Shiva, some say originally she stood on a corpse. Shiva was incorporated as a way to bring her more firmly into the established Hindu pantheon. Whether she sticks our her tongue in shock because she realises she is trampling on her husband or because she is drinking the blood spurting from the necks she has severed depends on which version of Kali one prefers.

Even now the Kalis one sees all over the city reflect that identity split. Some are smoky blue, others are jet black. Some are naked and dripping blood. Others have white pith ornaments demurely covering her nakedness.

On the moonless night of Kali Puja, one can still find some glossy black goats tethered to a pole, clearly waiting to be offered to the goddess, though most now sacrifice pumpkins and ash gourds. The meat from that sacrificial goat is cooked without onions and garlic and called the niramish or 'vegetarian mutton curry', an oxymoron confusing to everyone outside of Bengal.

While most Kali Pujas follow the same depiction of the goddess, tongue out, poised on top of a prone Shiva, the congested Chetla neighbourhood of South Kolkata has become a little Kali Puja theme park of sorts. Every other lane has a Kali Puja, some garage-sized, some 20 feet tall, some 75-80 in all.

This is where one finds Chhinnamasta, who holds her own severed head in her hand, jets of blood spurting from her neck and stands above Rati and Kamdev.

Or the Hazaar Haath Kali (first pic above), her hands fanned behind like a peacock's tail and Shiva Kali, half Shiva and half Kali.

Or the blood red Rakta Chamunda, her hair standing on end as if in electric shock, the goddess who destroyed the demon Raktabeej by swallowing every drop of his blood before it fell to the ground and spawned new demons.

And Kalis not hitherto known in the scriptures like Mohanbagan Kali in the colours of one of Kolkata's most famous football teams. "Barasat (on the outskirts) is known for the height of images. Chetla is known for variety," said Dibeyendu Mali of the Chetla Physical Culture Association.

"I don't know why Chetla became a home to so many Kali Pujas," added Tarun Kumar Dutta of 86-Palli club, "I just call it Ma-er den (the gift of the mother)."

But this is a mother that's harder to explain to outsiders than the more family-friendly Durga. Many are aghast by her bloodthirsty, almost demonic, form. Others, writes Indologist Wendy Doniger, have turned her into a 'veritable archetype for many Jungian, feminist and New Age authors'; Allen Ginsberg depicted Kali as the Statue of Liberty, her head adorned with the martyred heads of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American couple executed during the Cold War for being spies for the Soviet Union.

For her devotees she is a mother. Unlike Durga, Kali has inspired a whole genre of Bengali devotional songs, Shyamasangeet. Famed Shyamasangeet singer Dhananjay Bhattacharya would perform at our neighbourhood Kali Puja. As he stuffed wads of paan in his mouth, we would wonder how he would sing. But as soon as he sat before the goddess, his voice soared, as he cried Ma while rockets exploded in a burst of stars in the sky above.

That devotion, passionate and intense, exemplifies the city's bond with its dark-skinned goddess.

Perhaps because Kolkata understands that this goddess is prone to being misunderstood and misinterpreted, it chooses to keep her close to its heart. The love the city has for her is as fierce as the goddess herself.

Durga Puja is without doubt the festival of festivals in Kolkata, the city's showpiece. But Kali Puja is the festival that has the city's heart.

Sandip Roy is a podcaster and columnist and the author of the novel Don't Let Him Know.