Mother Goddess Kamakhya

I
The world will end
In a deodhani’s¹ dance
Blood trickling from the corner of her mouth
Black pigeon feather stuck to her chin.
What is her prophecy today?
No prophecy today, she only laughs.
And somewhere in the background,
A black goat bleats.
The mother goddess loves blood.
She drinks thirstily
Goat-blood, pigeon-blood, bull-blood.
And once a year, she menstruates.
A great event: the only time her devotees
Consider menstrual blood sacred.
(You cannot worship a vagina
And expect it will not menstruate.)

II
There is a tortoise which has seen
A hundred, five hundred xankarabdas² now.
Sunning the algae on its back,
It dreams of a terrible goddess
Fallen from the sky,
A yoni on a phallic mountain.
The birth of a noble generation
And its gradual degeneration
Later, the tortoise still suns itself
And cringes, at the nightmarish vision
Of a blood-bathed people.
Its ancient limbs thrill at the sound
Of taal, khol, dhol, mridanga³.
It has seen an eighty year old oja⁴
Dance two feet above the ground
And a deodhani swing her torso
Up, down, round and round.
The bull calf ’s lowing is drowned
The kharga⁵ falls to the ground,
And the mother goddess is sated.

III
I, terrible goddess of Kamakhya,
Have seen it all –
Have seen the beginning
Now bear the end.
My little world will end
With the last bleat of the lamb.
Death – moss covered –
Will live on
Feed on
Blood.
I created this nightmare.

***

¹Shaman.
²Assamese years.
³Percussion instruments.
⁴Practitioner of the Ojapali art form, performed mostly on religious occasions.
⁵A huge blade; cutting instrument.

***

The legend is that the temple of the goddess Kamakhya was erected on the
Nilachal hill in Assam at the place where her vagina fell when her decomposing
body was being carried across the three worlds of Hindu mythology after her
death by her inconsolable husband, Lord Shiva. She has been the patron
goddess of the Assamese people for centuries now and who knows but that the
political bloodletting taking place today in the valley below flows from the
goddess’s own blood lust?

***

Published in Etchings 3/2007