Kali Ghat in Kolkata, India

This post is going to be less about my observations of children in India (although the are some images that are vivid from this experience.) Here are a set of images from the Kali Ghat. Ghat means temple in Hindi. Kali is one of the faces of Shiva, who is the God of destruction and transformation (the counterpart to Vishnu, the perserver). Shiva has many faces and Kali, the goddess of chaos and primal energy is one of them. At the Kali Ghat, each day thousands of pilgrims come to worship Kali and make ritual sacrifice. What a constrast from the orderly and peaceful Buddhist ceremonies we saw in Thailand. The rituals here are worthy of Kali's name - chaotic, destructive, powerful and transformational.

Arriving at the temple, a long line of women in colorful saris and men in sarongs and leggings are waiting barefoot to give their offerings of red hibiscus to Kali (red and black are her colors). A Brahmin (the highest caste) see us (the Westerners) and leads us in the Brahmin entrance. (Caste is palpable here. In the chaos of Kolkata traffic, the mere sight of the Brahmin's white long shirt and leggings brings the cars to a halt so he can cross.) He gives us red flowers to lay on the Kali altar in the pressing mass of people who are praying aloud, then leads us to a screened window to watch the preparations for the goat sacrifice, bringing us to the edge of the ritual space and inviting us to witness. For an hour or so before the sacrifice begins, men and women come barefoot to pour purifying coconut milk over the large wooden U that will hold the goat's head still when it is beheaded. A woman in a blue sari with golden trim paints the posts with red bindi paint (the caste mark in the center of the forehead of higher caste women.) Each worshipper kneels and puts his or her head through the U, which the Brahmin says is representative of them also sacrificing themselves to Kali.

Parents bring their small children to teach them the rituals of worship (just like the man at the Chinese temple in Chiang Mai). A father picks up a coconut from the ground and hands it to his son, demonstrating how to crack the nut on the flat stone of the áltar.' A woman brings a bowl of curds and spills them onto the stone. A small street boy in grey ragged shorts flits in and puts a bite of curd in his mouth before anyone can stop him and scoots away again. I wonder if there are karmic consequences for stealing from Kali?

Three black kid goats are ritually washed and purified in preparation for the sacrifice. Two are standing placidly by the wall, but the other is bleating plaintively. A man in a blue sarong clears the stairs and brings out a large blue drum, larger than a big conga, and starts to beat in a mesmerizing rhythm. Two men enter the sacrifice area; one grabs a goat by the front and back legs and lifting him high, brings his head down between the two bars of the U. The other pins his head with a steel rod through the posts, and then the blade comes down and in one clean cut the head drops to the ground and the body is lifted to let the blood flow over the altar, the legs still struggling and moving.

All of these images call up the question of what is the nature of devotion? Here in this teeming city, and perhaps in the rest of India, ritual and belief seems to be woven into every aspect of daily life. Disturbing, chaotic and also moving.

M