Writing her in colour

To write a poem about Kali is to engage in a tradition that has been going on for thousands of years. This is a fact I found oddly reassuring when it came to writing my own story of this enigmatic goddess for Bedtime Stories for the End of the World.

Kali is one of the most iconic figures of South Asian mythology. I come across her ferocious nude form with her blue-black skin and garland of skulls everywhere; in paintings, books, Tamil film songs from my childhood and even on cigarette packaging in a lithograph from the late 19th century. Her origins are beyond recorded history yet she is found in a great number of sculptures and texts from the last 2000 years, the most well-known perhaps being the Devi Mahatmya, literally ‘Glory of the Great Goddess’, written between 400 and 600 CE.

My original inspiration to write about Kali for Bedtime Stories for the End of the World was to imagine her as a concept of time, colour, space and form. I have been contemplating this idea for several years as a writer as well as a dancer. I first saw the concept of Kali as an expression of colour, conveyed by the dancer, poet and feminist activist Chandralekha:

…I had seen Kali in the Kalighat Temple in Calcutta. What struck me was the power of colour—red, black and white. Colours of earth, body, blood. It had a very strong impact. What I saw was a jet-black stone image of Kali, white eyes, white sari, red border, white skulls, and red hibiscus flowers. I was able to see through the crowd of worshippers. In between the movement of the people, I saw the movement of colours. And for me that was Kali- the movement of colour. [1]

This vivid sense of interpreting Kali from lived experience, especially of the ritualistic practices of the women who surround me, seemed crucial and would enable the poem to capture the dual nature of her personality not just as a vicious force but as a mother, creator and protector. I was also drawn to Kali’s metaphysical meaning relating to time; Kali’s name means time in Sanskrit (kala) and she is the ultimate purveyor of time and mortality.

I did have to consider though whether exploring ideas of time and colour would alone make a particularly interesting poem. To that end, I went about finding a story about Kali that would provide further life to the poem.  And there are so many stories to choose from: her battle with the demon brothers Shumbha and Nishumbha, Kali having a deadly dance dual with Shiva, her role as the patron deity of thieves. Each story seemed to emphasise a different aspect of her nature, most often her fierce and callous temperament when it came to killing her enemies or her aggressively sexual nature. This is encapsulated in the phallic way her tongue is depicted which I recently came to know was the inspiration for The Rolling Stones’ famous logo.

I ultimately settled on writing a perspective of Kali as a mother addressing her daughter, her darling girl.

The language of both tenderness as well as firestorm speaks to me. I hope Kali’s voice will speak dark and true through my poem.

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[1] Chandralekha in Bharucha, R. Chandralekha: Woman, Dance, Resistance, 1995, p.97.