Animus, Psyche and Culture by Sulagna Sengupta;

Author:Sulagna Sengupta;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PSYCHOLOGY/Mental Health, PSYCHOLOGY/Movements/Jungian
ISBN: 9780429752858
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Durga, Dopdi and Fierce Narratives of the Feminine

It is that time of the year when tracts of willowy kash (Saccharum spontaneum) can be seen near riversides, and sounds of drumbeats are heard from afar. The month of Ashvin is auspicious in Vedic calendar.2 The air is soaked with the fragrance of jasmines, altars are strewn with flowers and assorted objects, and the floors are adorned with mystical drawings. The goddess is embodied in myths and folklores of the land, in food and hearth and in numerous rituals of worship performed within homes. But her real traces are in the women who tend to these homes, their cheerful and sad faces veiling countless stories of rising and falling. Women who toil in distant towns and cities, their bodies worn out from labor, but spirits still unbroken.

The myth of the goddess spans a transcendent whole. The female body has many potencies, from desire, dissent, capacity to labor and care. It is the body which is imagined when memories of the goddess surface – richly draped, mounted on a lion, arms spearing a demon. Scores of male potters in an old city quarter named Kumartoli in Kolkata, sculpt her form from riverside clay, paint her in luminous hues and embellish her with jewels. Thousands gather yearly to celebrate a myth, centuries old. In those hours and days, the goddess seems incarnated in every being, radiating in all who have gathered around her. It is not the veracity of the myths that concerns anyone, but the emotions they are evoked in the collective as the festivities unfurl.

Myth has it that a cruel, power-crazy demon performed many sacrifices to ask Brahma for a boon of immortality (Bhattacharji, 1995). When that was not granted, he asked that he be killed only by a woman. Believing this to be impossible, the demon began tormenting everyone and seized dominion of all three worlds. The gods were forced to confer and find a way out of this predicament, and it was then that Durga was conceived. The benign and beautiful Parvati, Shiva's consort, was imbued with battle prowess and transformed into a fearless, potent figure named Durga. It is a mythical trope that suggests the liminality of the archetype, and its fluid and shifting nature.

The transmuted goddess radiates fury and grace, a numinous vision that draws thousands of people to festival grounds during the autumnal season. On an illumined podium, is a surreal tableau of clay sculptures – embellished, exaggerated and primeval. An assortment of arms and crests adorns the goddess. Amongst these, a trident from Shiva that can impale flesh and impart consciousness, a conch shell that signifies victory, a lethal battle disc gifted by Vishnu, the ubiquitous lotus, symbol of wisdom, sword, bow and arrow, mace and axe, a thunderbolt from Indra and finally, a snake that marks her consort's muted presence. Celebrated annually, the event is inscribed in UNESCO's Representative List as an ‘intangible cultural heritage of humanity’.3

The numinosity of the image stems from its play of opposites.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.