Ma Durga may be the city’s most famous annual visitor, but Kali is the resident goddess, notes Sandip Roy.

IMAGE: Hazaar Haath Kali. All photographs: Sandip Roy

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

It has been described as the largest public art installation in the world and is part of UNESCO’s list of world 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 neighborhood.

Ma Durga may be the city’s most famous annual visitor, but Kali is the resident goddess. HEA Cotton, English lawyer and historian. wrote: “Kali, the patron saint of the city is in Kalighat.

Kalighat is the city’s most famous Kali temple, the place where the right toe of Sati’s little foot is said to have fallen when her dismembered body was scattered across the subcontinent. But this is not the only famous Kali temple. There is Thantania Kalibari, Firinghee Kalibari, Chinese Kali bari, Dacoit Kali Mandir and, of course, Dakshineshwar where Sri Ramakrishna worshiped the goddess.

IMAGE: Rakta Chamunda.

Once the hype of Durga Puja is over and the tourists and visitors leave, the city seems to heave a sigh of relief as it celebrates Kali Puja as its own craft festival.

If Durga Puja is an ostentatious five-star all-you-can-eat buffet, Kali Puja is home-cooked ghar ka khana. Kali Puja also has its pandaltemples or temporary shrines on street corners, elaborate lighting and crowds late into the night. But it’s always the goddess who takes center stage, not the art.

Our neighborhood Kali Puja regularly blocked the entrance to our house. When we complained about the inconvenience, the young people from the local club responded that we should consider it a privilege to be so close to the goddess. One year it proved too tight.

An errant firework set off the pandal on fire and the flames licked the windows of our rooms. I remember people frantically pouring buckets of water from our balcony as the flames leapt and danced. The next day we saw that the walls of our house were burned and covered in soot and that the goddess stood exposed in the middle of its charred ruins. pandal.

She didn’t look completely out of place. She is a goddess as comfortable in a house as in a crematorium. She thrives among ghosts and demons. On the eve of Kali Puja, vegetable vendors sell baskets of chopped green vegetables, 14 kinds of saag to represent 14 generations of ancestors whose ghosts are believed to return to earth at this time. Whether they actually sell 14 greens is debatable, but we eat them as an article of faith.

IMAGE: Shiva Kali.

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 killed the demons Chanda and Munda, who had brought the gods to their knees. This is why it is also known as Chamunda.

Although she is now depicted with one foot on the body of her husband Shiva, some say she originally stood on a corpse. Shiva was incorporated in order to bring him more firmly into the established Hindu pantheon. Whether she sticks out her tongue in shock because she realizes she is trampling on her husband or because she drinks the blood that gushes from the necks she has cut depends on which version of Kali the we prefer.

Even today, the Kalis seen all over the city reflect this identity divide. Some are smoky blue, others jet black. Some are naked and dripping with blood. Others have white pith ornaments modestly covering its nakedness.

On the moonless night of Kali Puja, one can still find glowing black goats tied to a pole, clearly waiting to be offered to the goddess, although most now sacrifice ash pumpkins and gourds. The meat of this sacrificial goat is cooked without onions or garlic and called the niramish or “vegetarian mutton curry”, a confusing oxymoron to everyone outside Bengal.

While most Kali Pujas follow the same depiction of the goddess, tongue out, posed atop a reclining Shiva, the crowded neighborhood of Chetla in south Kolkata has become a sort of small Kali theme park Puja. Every second lane has a Kali Puja, some the size of a garage, about 20 feet high, some 75 to 80 feet in total.

IMAGE: Chhinnamasta.

This is where we find Chhinnamasta, holding his own severed head in his hand, streams of blood gushing from his neck, and standing over Rati and Kamdev.

Or the Hazaar Haath Kali (first photo above), her hands spread 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 under an electric shock, the goddess who destroyed the demon Raktabeej by swallowing every drop of his blood before he fell to the ground and spawned new demons.

And Kalis hitherto unknown in scriptures as Mohanbagan Kali in the colors of one of the most famous football teams of Kolkata. “Barasat (on the outskirts) is known for the height of images. Chetla is known for its variety,” said Dibeyendu Mali of the Chetla Physical Culture Association.

“I don’t know why Chetla has become the home of so many Kali Pujas,” added Tarun Kumar Dutta of Club 86-Palli, “I just call it Ma-er den (mother’s gift).”

IMAGE: Natraj Kali.

But she is a mother who is harder to explain to outsiders than the more family-oriented Durga. Many are appalled by its bloodthirsty, almost demonic form. Others, writes Indologist Wendy Doniger, have made it a “true 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 followers, she is a mother. Unlike Durga, Kali inspired a whole genre of Bengali devotional songs, Shyamasangeet. Famous Shyamasangeet singer Dhananjay Bhattacharya would perform in our neighborhood Kali Puja. While he was stuffing wads of paan in his mouth, one would wonder how he would sing. But as soon as he sat down in front of the goddess, his voice soared, as he shouted Ma while rockets exploded in an explosion of stars in the sky above.

This devotion, passionate and intense, illustrates the bond that unites the city to its dark-skinned goddess.

Perhaps because Calcutta understands that this goddess tends to be misunderstood and misinterpreted, she chooses to keep her close to her heart. The city’s love for her is as fierce as the goddess herself.

Durga Puja is undoubtedly the festival of festivals in Kolkata, the centerpiece of the city. But Kali Puja is the festival that holds the heart of the city.