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fense that had made the stings associated with the garland less potent. A few days earlier we had visited the Kali temple on the outskirts of Cidambaram. At the entrance stood a female devotee, her forehead red with thick layers of kumkum powder, while inside were a group of women in red saris seated in front of one of the Kalis. There were two inner sanctums, Tillaia Kaliamman in her colorful sari and golden earrings, which the priest would swing away from her face to reveal her other faces, and the other Devi, Pratyanga Kali. I had heard about her for years, but descriptions could not compare to her darshan. She was cooled by the late-monsoon drizzle, dressed in a white sari with kumkum powder covering her face and the top of her chest leaving only her eyes uncovered like a black mask in a sea of red. Gazing at her I felt she could make me a better person in all the different ways a better person could play out during the course of a life. I saw her face every night, she was with me from then on, and was ready to meet me in the Siva temple spoken of above.
Despite the sting of being deprived of a garland of flowers the priest's intention may well have been some form of respect. The placement of flowers over a stranger's head has a certain intimacy; culturally it would be inappropriate to touch a woman other than his wife. Maybe for him the garland was a form of touch. There is so much complexity woven into the Hindu tradition. Because of that complexity the question of whether or not the Hindu goddess(s) is empowering to women cannot be boiled down to one definitive answer. To do so would ignore the multifaceted array of interpretations and praxis, as well as the layers and levels of the Hindu Indian experience. Just the same one can utilize the Goddess as an entry point for gleaning a better understanding of the complexities of Indian culture and of Hinduism in particular. Since we have created our gods, just as our gods create us, Devi as a source of empowerment ultimately depends on the lenses of her devotees.
I shall focus on the Tamil village goddess Mariyamman, recognizing that the lenses through which she is viewed play a crucial role in where she stands within the hierarchies of the Hindu pantheon, or even if she would want to be associated with the pantheon. That in turn speaks to what the lens-viewers interpret about one another. This in turn leads to questions about caste and class which must be acknowledged when discussing Mariyamman even though the intricacies of colonial and post-colonialism's impact on identity are beyond the scope of this chapter.
The day after we had darshan at the Tillai Kaliamman temple we visited a bronze maker in Swamimilai, down the street from the Murugan temple. He, along with his workers, made traditional murtis, each mold fashioned anew and individually carved. I had already shopped sensibly in his larger room when I walked into his smaller store. It was like she called me
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| SR No. | 007005 |
| Book Title | World of Philosophy |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave |
| Publisher | Shanti Prakashan |
| Publication Year | 2011 |
| Total Pages | 1002 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 30 MB |