Force of Nature: Few Thoughts on Kali
by Gauri Raje
Kali stems from the root word ‘Kaal’ (Time). Kali, the mistress of time; time herself. Over time, the popular association of the colour black is identified with the work Kali - she who is black. But I prefer the root word association.
Kali is nature. Kali is bloodlust and fury on the battlegrounds. Kali is crone. Kali is the force of destruction and unabounding love. She is contrast and contradiction.
Like many other Gods and Goddesses in the Hindu pantheon, the divine goddess we know of as Kali has many names and many iconic representations across the Indian sub-continent. In the East of the country, she is known in the form that is visually most-known - dark with large beautiful eyes and a lolling red tongue. In the west of the country, one of the forms the Kali/ Devi Shakti is known by is Chamundi - the killer of the demons Chanda and Munda, with a shriveled hag-like form and dried garland of skulls adorning her neck. While in the east, the Durga puja festival time in October celebrates the divine feminine; in the west of the country, this honouring of the divine feminine is through the festival of Navratri - the festival of the nine nights. Both these festivals are where women are forefronted - not only in terms of the goddesses they honour; but the festivals are a time when women lead in the puja and the singing, dancing, and celebrations. At Navratri (festival of nine nights), a different manifestation of the divine goddess is celebrated each night with dances and songs. Before Diwali, and the darkest nights of the year, time is carved out to remember the feminine energy that births, sustains, and in its own mysterious ways, destroys what must be dissolved.
Kali bringing heads of the demons Chanda and Munda to Durga.
The goddess emerges in the Hindu pantheon around 1000BCE, and as with other goddesses of Hindu antiquity carries a multiplicity of contrasting characteristics. She is the embodiment of Shakti, divine feminine power. She is also an embodiment of nature in its rawest form. To this extent, she carries the nurturing and the most destructive power of nature. She is not an angry goddess, yet is the embodiment of fury. It is difficult to characterise her as a wild goddess, but she rejects all constraints of culture. Kali is the wilderness of nature. She calls, very simply, to be and all the freedom that rests within that phrase. To this extent, her very presence harks to apocalypse and to the nurturance of nature.
Kali is the one goddess in the pantheon of Hindu mythology where there no stories of a childhood and a growing up of the goddess. The goddess emerges from another goddess (Parvati or Durga - there are different versions) either as an adult or as a crone. She has no consort she lives with. She lives with her devotees in forests. When she chooses, there are stories of dances or encounters with Shiva, also known as Kaal (Time). Kali is a force unto herself.
‘Her with no-image’
With these huge energies of the mistress of time and destruction, Kali in contrast is also the bearer of love and compassion. Praises to Kali are filled with honouring her as the mother, the bearer of compassion and motherly love. ‘She is the foremost among the Dasa Mahavidyas, the Ten Great Wisdoms, in her form of Dakshinakali or the Divine Mother, especially in the eastern part of India - Bengal. In her archetypal form, she is not necessarily presented in an iconographic form, but as a stone block or a mound. The worship of Kali, as Divine Mother, is characterised by sel-surrender. By Ramakrishna, one of her greatest devotees, she is described not as presence in image, but Her with no image; she is all consciousness. She guides her devotees according to each one’s needs, nature and circumstances. In this she is impartial. In her form as Smashankali, the Lady of the Dead, death is a moment of transformation rather than annihilation. The flames of the funeral pyre are the flames of compassion.
Although the form and stories around Kali in her terrifying form dominate her narrative, Kali is also the goddess who can match Shiva step for step in the dance of the cosmos. Her joy of dance is not led by music from the outside; the music is within her. She dances to her own rhythm. It is the dance of Kali that draws my attention in our times full of fire, anger, and pandemics.
Jo'Artis Ratti and dancer Samantha Donohue at the Santa Monica protest. (Jeremy Hartman)
In these days of raging forest fires, the coronavirus pandemic and calling out of racism articulated through the Black Lives Matter movements and marches across the world, Kali seems to be playing out across the world in street corners, cities and countries. Not just as a goddess of death, but as the energy that brings together the force of destruction with the emerging beauty of creation. The one moment that struck me was of a protester; the dancer Jo’Artis Ratti dancing agitatedly right upto the line of riot gear laden police facing him. This wasn’t a dance of joy or celebration. A journalist who witnessed the dance called ‘krumping’ described it as, ’What’s initially striking in the videos is the brawny look of Ratti’s body language. He lifts his arms and thrusts a fist, but it hits nothing, breaks nothing and isn’t meant to. The pantomime of head-butting and jabbing, with moments when his whole body crumples as if in grief, lasts mere seconds. Every gesture is sharp but evanescenscent, vanishing quickly as it takes shape. This is a man palpably bearing his pain, anger and rebelliousness, and holding his peace.’
This is Kali - bearing witness, taking apart, and creating compassion simultaneously. That which we fear, and look on in awe.
