Stories have a life of their own. Some stories are written even before the words are found to tell them, or hands to write them, or souls to narrate them. Then, like a soul choosing the right body, a right person is chosen to tell the story. The person brings the story alive and the story makes the person.
The Storyteller
Some stories are told and retold through centuries. The village elder tells them, the teacher tells them, or a grandmother tells her wide-eyed, sleepy grandchildren as bedtime stories. Every 'telling is different and the stories alter through each telling. They are not absolute. There are holes in their narratives, which add newer meanings after each reading. Mythological stories are such stories – their narratives are loose and the chronology debatable, yet they alter the soul of the listener with every reading.
The Listener
Listening to a story is also a very intimate affair between the teller and the listener. Reading alone is just a solitary journey within oneself – there is no intimacy. There is great wisdom hidden in ‘listening’ to a story. For centuries, the massive texts of Krishna Bhagvat and Devi Bhagvat are read during Krishna Janmashtami and Navratri festivals respectively. The listener plays an important part in this narration. Before beginning, the narrator bows down to the audience and then bows down in front of the deity. As the incense burns, the strings of the fragrance wafts weave the into heart of the listener.
I will tell you a story that has had a great impact on me since I listened to it. The story of an asur Raktabeej from the Devi Bhagwat. It sets a premise of the birth of Kali – one of the many forms of the Devi. It is unlike any other mythological story I know and has given birth to a lot of questions and reflections that have remained unexplored.
A Note. This story has different narratives too. No narrative claims to be the correct one. The names, the characters, and the chronology of events can change, but the essence remains the same.
The Story
Listen one, listen all. Listen with you hearts open and with your souls thirsty, with your ears open and with your skin tender. Listen in the quiet and listen in the chaos. Listen deeply and listen as you flow. But, listen to this story that has traversed the cosmos to find you, to find me.
There is a young and mighty asur – a demon. He is a king of his own kingdom. But, he is constantly unhappy looking at the Gods who rule the heaven and the earth, while our asur only has his one kingdom. He too wants it all for himself. So, he sets out to pray to the naïve Lord Brahma – the father of the universe, the unbiased, and the true creator. He sits in solitude and chants the Brahma mantra. He sits in the rain and in the sunshine. He continues to sit in the storms and the winds, season after season.
Lord Brahma watches him and tests his dedication. Years pass. And our asur’s dedication doesn’t shake. Pleased with such a disciple, Lord appears before him and grants him a boon of his choice. The lord says – ‘I am pleased with your tapas. Ask any boon of your choice.’
Our asur knows what he wants: immortality to fight and reign the world as its ultimate ruler. He asks. Lord Brahma is silent. Granting immortality to any being born on earth defies the very fibre of nature that gives meaning to life in earth. The Lord asks him to ask any other boon. Our asur thinks for a moment asks the same boon in a convoluted manner. He says – ‘Lord, give me your blessing that if anyone tries to kill me, and a single drop of my blood touches the earth, I will be born again’. Lord Brahma grants the boon and our asur is delighted. He offers his pranams to the lord and leaves for the kingdom charged with his new-found power. He comes to be known as Raktabeej.
After Raktabeej returns to his kingdom, he goes on his mission. The world gets to know of his boon and everyone drops their weapons in every battle against him. He declares war against kingdom after kingdom. He doesn’t stop until every last inch of the earth is his. Now, he has dominion over all worlds. He then turns towards the heaven – Indra’s swarg: the swarg with all its riches, with the creators of life on Earth – Lord of light, wind, water, etc. He wins that too.
He now has everything he had wanted. But, our asur is unable to stop his blood-thirsty rampage. So, the tri-shakti – Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh become worried and decide to intervene. They decide a strategy to stop this unstoppable demon. Each god contributes the essence of his power and together a form of Shakti is born – Goddess Durga. The goddess is the definition of beauty, elegance, and fierce power. She has three pairs of arms, each carrying a weapon – the trishul, the damroo, the sudarshan chakra, the conch, the lotus, and the bow. Even as she holds all these weapons, there is a serene smile on her lips and her eyes exude a deep peace. The gods bow down to this form of adi-shakti, the primary power and off she goes to do the task for which she is called.
In the battlefield, Goddess Durga stands in front of Raktabeej and his asur army. The asur army has several strong and fearful demons – Shumbha, Nisshumbha, Chanda, and Munda. She wields all her weapons and slays the army, until only Raktabeej remains. Everytime she cuts into his skin, each drop of Raktabeej’s blood creates another Raktabeej. He births himself a million times.
In desperation, she tries to stop the blood from reaching the earth by drinking it. Her arms and feet move in a nervous frenzy to slay and to drink Raktabeej’s blood. She drops all weapons except the sword. With one hand she butchers the bodies with her sword, while the other hands tear the bodies apart and empties the blood in her mouth. She loses herself and is consumed by one mission – of not letting his blood reach the earth. She loses her clothes; her hair come loose, and she stands naked in a field of Raktabeej’s lifeless carcasses, and moves to the next Raktabeej after next with her sword.
The blood inside her, the blood outside changes her skin tone. And she becomes Kali – the dark one. After killing every last Raktabeej, she is possessed with darkness, her eyes blood-red and her feet crush every living thing on her path.
Seeing Kali go on a rampage, the Gods convene again.
How can they stop this mother of all become her own anti-hero? She has created the cosmos, she has birthed everything. How can they watch her destroy it? So, they turn to Lord Shiva.
Shiva goes towards Kali. Her eyes are in a daze and she cannot see him. Noticing her suffering and agony behind the visible rage, Shiva lays down in front of her.
Kali lifts her foot to crush him and as it lands on his heart, she feels a low hum of peace and is overcome with tears of regret.
Her frame as such is frozen in time – skulls garlanded around her neck, weapons in her hands, Shiva beneath her foot, her eyes wide in disbelief and her tongue out.
*
At the surface, the story has a straightforward message – a life lesson. If you look deeper, there can be something hidden under the obvious. A story can be assimilated in two ways – outside in, the way of taking a message and internalizing it: and inside out – the way of getting into the skin of the story, seeing its veins and blood and other pulsating parts, feeling the warm and cold areas, and finding the right pulse of its heartbeat.
The outside in way is to take one life lesson and then to hold on to it forever, never looking back to see if it is still alive.
Let us go under the skin of this story and see it inside out.
Inside Out
Even though Raktabeej is a demon, there is a certain authenticity in him. From the beginning, he remains true to his nature – an asur, the anti-hero, the villain. His ego and greed drive his excruciating quest. He starts his tapas with an intention that arose from his ego – to dominate the world and defeat gods. When he prays to Lord Brahma, his efforts are paid off, his prayers answered.
Why does he ask for immortality as the boon? Why not some other power? When he goes on his quest, he chases his desires. He becomes undefeatable, winning every battle. After winning the kingdoms on earth and the heaven is he satisfied? He now has everything he had always wanted: dominion over gods, and unimaginable wealth. He has reached the solitary peak of his own demon-hood. Yet, his dream has slowly become his own nightmare, making him a prisoner of his own self, intoxicated by his own power, thereby trapped in it. Being limited in time may seem like being trapped in a clock, but without being bound by it, existence would be a trap just as well. Raktabeej is caught in this trap. He is unable to release himself from this prison, unable perhaps even to understand his entrapment.
The only resurrection from this nightmare is the amplification and expansion of this extreme state. He does exactly that – goes on a rampage destroying everything.
If we look closely and get inside his skin at this point, we can almost hear a cry for help. When the gods convene to kill him, they answer his call.
The Face-off
Durga is a form of Shakti – the one that is the nurturer, the one that helps germinate the seed, helps rain reach the clouds. She is the life-giving life-force that creates and nurtures everything. When this gentle form of Durga faces Raktabeej and he starts spouting up blood from every blow of her weapons, many more Raktabeejs germinate. This is a moment to consider – what does Durga think? Is she overcome by hatred or does she start emptying the blood in her mouth as a mother cleaning a spillage of a child?
Seeing Durga on the battlefield, perhaps Raktabeej breathes a sigh of relief. Unable yet to see the end of his suffering, maybe he submits to this life-governing shakti in front of him. When his arms fight, perhaps his eyes plead to be released? When she turns into the wrathful Kali, perhaps he sheds tears of joy at being consumed by the very force that created him? Maybe he overcome with reverence at her compassion, because she is ready to drink his blood - limit his birth.
The Dark One
There is a special significance of the ‘dark one’ coming to bring change in the world. Krishna is the ‘dark one’ – the one who twisted the rules to win the war, the first therapist, the first politician, the first one to manipulate a mass. These are the qualities that are denoted by darkness, the shadow, the night that supports the day. The darkness that gives a window into what needs to be cleaned. Without this, how can one know what doesn’t need to be?
Kali as the dark one is transformed from her gentle form and the blood of raktabeej flowing inside her. In this supreme form of goddess who can consume the cosmos, Raktabeej’s blood is bursting out of her. She has torn her clothes, she is dancing naked with bones and flesh around her, with blood on her tongue, she is now only hunting for the next body, the next drop of blood. Just like Raktabeej. As she kills him, she has become him.
There is something powerful in this image. Blood is the life-force and so is the earth. One of the symbolic representations of earth and nature is Shakti herself. And Durga is a combination of all feminine and masculine aspects of the supreme gods and goddesses. When she drinks the life-force, her essence undergoes a change like a smoke cloud covering a clear expanse. It flips to reveal the other polarity of her nature – Kali – darkness to consume darkness.
She is simultaneously possessed and filled with rage. Amidst the carcasses of Raktabeej, blood and bones all around her, she is destroying everything on her path.
There is this Kali in all of us. The one that takes us away from life. The one that propels us to do the unimaginable, the destruction that will put mythology to shame because there exists a certain attraction in destruction as a means of creation, in being consumed by fire to be reborn, in standing at the end of your own wits to find your way back, in losing yourself in making every wrong right. Kali wants that but she realises that it is impossible. That she cannot make everything right, that perfection is synonymous to death. Nothing happens solely in perfection, in rightness, in goodness, in beauty.
Shakti brings these polarities together – she is born as Durga and becomes Kali. In that moment when she transforms into Kali, she holds both these polarities together. She still has access to the Durga and she has just become Kali. After drinking all of Raktabeej’s blood, she loses touch with her Durga side – her conscious side. She shifts to the other extreme. Like an angry mother she wants to give the severest punishment to her own child for destroying their own house.
Consciousness
Even if Kali becomes the very thing she has come to kill, the gods cannot contain her to save the Earth. Here comes the feminine wisdom. Only a woman can hold both ends of wrath and love at the same time. When Shiva comes in front of her, he submits to his Devi and lays down in front of her: supposedly saying to her – do what you will, if it calms the embers of your rage.
This is the image of Kali we pray to: The singular moment when her foot is on Shiva’s heart and her tongue out, her eyes wide.
This moment is pregnant with so many possibilities. She has tears of recognition and shame in her blood-shot eyes. She may feel the weight of the skulls in her hands, her neck, and the carcasses hanging at her waist. She may still feel the thirst for blood on her tongue. But now she is in touch with her true essence – the Durga, the consort of Shiva.
The universe might have paused to take notice of the many polarities existing at the same time: the Durga and Kali, creator and destroyer, fury and love, thirst and shame, and the beloved and killer.
***
Inside out, the view of a story is different; that not every blessing is absolute; that not every curse one-sided, that a mirror hides a darkness, that light has its own shadow, that every ‘this’ side has ‘that’ side.
Raktabeej starts on one extreme and his soul is salvaged. Durga starts from another and even her soul needs to be salvaged. The gift this story leaves is the ability to discern. Nothing is only what it seems. If we have the ability to see beyond what is obvious, the precious sight leaves a precious lesson. Raktabeej is not absolutely demonic. In his individual, selfish quest he gives us the gift of Kali and Durga. In a sense, she is born because he held on to his truth. Later he blesses his own soul with the gift of being salvaged by the power that created him. Like a child gives his own mother – who has given birth, raised, nurtured, and given him the tools to navigate the world – the very power to kill him. Kali is not absolutely divine in her fight either. She shows us the threat of becoming and eventually losing oneself in the darkness to fight the darkness.
Yet, there is salvation when we submit to the serenity within us.
Any truth that is absolute at one moment hides the other side. There isn’t a single truth that can be held as a life lesson. Life-lessons are meant to grow as we grow and ripen in the world. Personal truths win sometimes, social, cultural or universal truths win at other times. Even in their point of existence, they are not absolute. They need to be navigated with the right tools that are required in that moment. The ability to discern the truth of a particular moment and ‘showing up’ to it: To traverse in this forest of truths, picking up flowers and fruits that nourish in that moment; and then while moving on, leaving the seeds behind in a clearing for a new tree to grow.
This festival of the devi – the 9 days of 9 forms of this essence – do look for which fruits are rotting, which seed need to be dropped, which new fruit and flower do you want to consume now, which though and belief system you have outgrown, which new needs to be mined.
May the Kali within us, guide us to that singular moment that culminates awareness with power.
तुला कमेंट मिळाली का? उत्तम सादरीकरण केलेस. आपल्यातील स्त्रिशक्तीची अनेक रूपे जाणवली म्हणूनच तिला अष्टदुर्गा, अष्टवधानी म्हणतात.