In the midst of an invisible global pandemic that is fast gaining ground, we have almost forgotten that we are in the second day of what is undoubtedly an extremely important Indian festival: Navratri which invokes Goddess Durga addressed variously as Matarani, Shakti, Ma all symbolizing female energy and the universal transcendental mother.
Earliest appearances of and references to Durga are found in fertility goddess myths – the epitome of the ‘Earth Mother’ who is worshipped in a human form around the new harvest then immersed only to be invoked during the next harvest. In Indian mythology Durga has various lores associated with her and in fact she assumes various names with multifarious connotations. Durga for Durgati Nashini is the destroyer of evil. On the lines of the Adam-Eve Biblical myth, Durga is created by the male gods and empowered too by them. She is endowed with the choicest of weapons, the most formidable ammunition to destroy Mahishasur who has made life difficult for the devas and is blessed with a boon of being invincible in a sense i.e. the condition stating that he cannot be killed by a male. The overarching patriarchal language works to his disadvantage as the clever devas see a catch in the boon and create a female to kill him instead.
Though this exposes the inherent sexism in language where the female or the feminine principle is both sidelined and invisibilised even as a persevering Mahishasur asks for the boon of immortality (no male figure should be able to kill him); yet at the same time, opens a space by bringing in the feminine principle all the same. It implies that while asking for the boon, it never occurred to Mahishasur to buttress himself against a woman and yet it also implies that the catch lies in the overlooking of this huge unavoidable presence of the feminine principle; thus finding a rupture and inherent flaw in language and exposing its patriarchal bias.
Durga equipped with armoury and divine strength, a prized and coveted weapon in each of her ten hands, succeeds in destroying Mahishasur and becomes Mahishasur Mardini or the slayer of the buffalo demon. Of course she cannot be credited for it entirely as it is a ploy by the devas to get a woman to kill the demon king and it is really the cumulative power of the male gods manifested in the female form that destroys the much feared asura. Nonetheless, she personifies shakti or the feminine principle of power and energy and that is how enters and becomes entrenched in the collective unconscious of a people. Her worshippers are the shakta clan or the worshippers of shakti. This persona of a fierce, formidable yet radiant and smiling Durga with her lion on her side, intoxicated by the extent and intensity of her victory is hugely popular in the Eastern part of the Indian subcontinent even as she stands over the decimated body of the minotaur-like asura poised with the trishula or trident in her hand piercing his heart. Durga is worshipped for four days as she is supposed to be visiting her maternal home with her children and will eventually return to her husband Shiva’s abode in Mount Kailasa.
As one moves towards central India and goes up north however, Durga changes into Vaishno devi who also does kill the demon Bhairav but nonetheless has a more docile and accommodating persona. She also does have ten hands but not a formidable stance. She has a gentle, forgiving expression on her face and is worshipped for nine days commonly known as Navratri. She is also sitting on a tiger and there is no slain demon visible in the vicinity of the goddess. On the eighth day girls who have not attained puberty are worshipped and fed as the human incarnation of the goddess. The fertility myth gains more prominence here as a pot of seeds is sown on the first day which sprouts into a crop by the ninth day when it is time to bid adieu to the pot and the devi, both. All in all, the persona of Vaishno Devi is much less convincing as epitomizing shakti as compared to that of the idol of Durga worshipped in Eastern India. Perhaps one needs to look into anthropological reasons or societal norms determined by occupations (fertility goddesses would be more commonly worshipped in communities that are still agrarian like in North India) which lead a community to stage the divine in a human form embodying a certain persona and temperament.
Nonetheless, the ten-handed goddess has been venerated, worshipped revered in different forms and names in different parts of India. Even in her most pacifist form, the fact that she is the personification of shakti or female power, the archetypal mother figure which has the potential to destroy evil in every form cannot be negated. This naturally implies that the inherent and latent power of the feminine cannot be ignored which in its own way has manifested in popular culture as ‘narishakti’ or the power of the woman, depicting women who stand up against injustice as some kind of a Durga. Though obviously there is a problem with deification of women too but that is a different debate altogether.
Notwithstanding this, what has media and consumer culture done to Durga and thus the image of woman today? Let’s just take one instance and that should suffice. The MTR advertisement shows a ten-handed housewife with an easy to cook MTR breakfast item in each hand catering to the diverse palette of her family starting with the in-laws to the husband to the children. And all this with greater ease, alacrity and comfort than the mythological Durga or the Vaishno devi could have ever experienced as they engaged in a fierce combat and killed their respective adversaries. Destroying evil forces was their mission which is why they were additionally endowed with arms which could hold weapons, strength and prowess and were on a mission to kill and not to die. Unfortunately the ten-handed housewife of the MTR ad has no such all-consuming mission. She is happy using her ten hands to multitask around the house and keep everyone happy with the consumables she can produce with each hand. She is out to please, not destroy evil. It is a chore, not a mission and that is how the image of the woman with ten hands undergoes a transformation in the collective unconscious again.
Those invisible ten hands are what make women better multi taskers and therefore it is not a big deal if they work the double shift because obviously they are born to do it. The impossible which was carried out by the goddess Durga can be handled by the men but her appendages and endowments invisibly embedded in today’s woman has mutated to serve the household and the modern nuclear/joint family. Am I overanalyzing and obsessing too much over a mere analogical depiction which borrows from myth?
I don’t think so. Because the depiction tells me that my turf is not the external space of the battle ground but the domestic sphere of the kitchen. My challenge, not some invincible and indefatigable adversary to overpower but to put the right kind of food on the table to please. In the myth, the gods each come to Durga and place their weapon at her feet; in the ad, the woman goes to each member of the family like an order taker in a restaurant to know their breakfast preferences. Depictions and constructs once materialized and visualized lodge themselves deep in the subconscious and become a part of a value system.
Durga is relevant only if we do not resort to and passively accept the convoluted distortions that change female potency into servitude. What we need to distill from this writeup is that we cannot be passive consumers, of products that are shoved down our gullets because along with the product what we are ingesting is also a certain value system. We need to be careful and critical of what we take in, because what goes in is exactly what eventually comes out.
