The Twilight Goddess -

Diwali is a son et lumière of lights, orchestra of the fire crackers and underlined by rich mythological significance. This day is celebrated in honor of Rama’s homecoming to his beloved kingdom of Ayodhya, in the north-western region of India after defeating the non-Aryan king of Rakshsas (demonic significance), Ravana in an epic war to win back his wife and honor. Besides, such a robust history of Diwali, amongst the endless beauty and warmth of family and friends, most of India excluding eastern India worship our banker – Goddess Lakshmi. On a no moon night, most Indian families get together under the glow of a thousand splendid lights and pray for peace and success.

East of India and particularly Bengal and her neighbors are known to stand apart as free thinkers, vocal, vociferous and wear their hearts on their sleeves with great style. The raaz riyaaz (rules and rituals) of any festival in Bengal boast of spectacular scale, craftsmanship, gastronomic extravaganza and delirious community spirit. So, on this amavashya (no moon) night, Eastern India and particularly Bengal worships the destroyer of evil, the ultimate imperishable and indestructible form – Kali. In most of Bengal, appeasing the dark complexioned goddess associated with futility of time, death and destruction of evil is not an easy worship. But, those who are involved in these gigantic and prolonged practices are convinced of their victory and conquests in life.

Tara- lady twilight of Tarapith

Imagine drinking from a skull? My generation has seen a bit of it and disapproved a lot of this foreign invasion of Halloween and children delirious with plastic skulls and skeletons .But this practice is real in an epic place in the green plains of Bengal called Tarapith. Tara is another name of goddess Kali and pith means a holy place. Tarapith is an eerie place, with a sinister reputation. The hamlet of Tarapith is centered on the Kali temple; the inhabitants live by practices that are clearly outside the boundaries of conventions of Bengali society. Actually, quite honestly, any society! In Tarapith, Tara lives and loves in the midnight. She drinks the blood of the goats slaughtered to propitiate her anger and win her favor. In a country where Gods and Goddesses take the form of nurturing mother or father figures, the worship of Tara at Tarapith is an increasing oddity, a misweave in the weft of things, where can be found scenes almost unknown elsewhere. Lady twilight is believed to be especially attracted to bones and skeletons, and for this reason the dreadlocked and ash-smeared sadhus while living in the cremation ground above the river and under the great spreading banyan trees decorate their huts with lines of human skulls. However, this sounds to you, the place is like a canvas in motion for surreal art. It is the place where She Shakti (life force) beckons her devotees. Her devotees embrace Tarapith as a place for realization for illumination.

Spirit of tara

Tara is not the benign mother nursing her children or the grand beauty bedecked in ornaments and fineries. But she is depicted almost naked with matted hair and a blood-red lolling tongue and sitting upon a tiger’s skin with four arms, wearing a garland of freshly severed heads. She wielded a blood-smeared cleaver as she stood victorious dripping with blood, over a dead corpse. To the uninitiated she is terrifying, ferocious and nothing Godly about this mother protector of us all.

tantra mantra & Tara

Residents of Tarapith have a lot of clarity on Tara’s preferences, appetite and inclinations. She resides in the burning cremation Ghats above the flowing river along the town. She is the most wild and wayward of the Hindu goddesses and cannot be tamed and contained in a temple. She is goddess of supreme knowledge, the ‘Absolute Shakti’ or life force, cheater of death and conqueror of time, the mother who takes any form from death to horror and terror to protect her children and serve with severity the unfortunate ones deserving of her wrath. She is the Goddess of ‘tantra mantra’ (chants and hymns of witchy wooo).Tara Devi is not alone. She is assisted by her scandalous sisterhood of outrageous and nightmarish lower Gods. They seamlessly glide from the most alluring beauties to spine-chilling forms. Devi’s groupies are called ‘Dakini and Yoginis’. These avatars enjoy an insatiable hunger for human consumption and wicked sexual practices. While Tara enjoys fresh blood from sacrificed animals like goats, the Mundamala Tantra (chants describing Kali with a garland made of freshly beheaded human heads) explicitly states that she prefers that of humans, in particular taken from the forehead, hands and breasts of her devotees.

Such is the erotica-mystical practice and worship of Tara or the fierce Kali in Bengal on Diwali and every other day of the year. Just writing this down has released me of some pent up feelings. I can only imagine how Tara Devi’s devotes feel, completely enslaved and overwhelmed by the mystical powers of Devi.

India, a country where many worlds exist and race with ferocious velocity yet barely there is a collision. We are a country impacted by invasions, massacres, effected by political fundamentalist movements: The birth place of yoga that charms and rules the west today, and great many thinkers who have had humungous impact on humanity. The mysterious east – that is us, India a repertoire of bizarre practices, filled with queers without seeking new age attention, muddled and murky but with clarity: Perplexed beauty of it all, rests on the balance of all I mentioned racing adequately with modernity.