Of flowers and goats

Calcutta. Or Kolkata, depending on whether you feel like supporting the colonial British Raj or not. When we stumbled off of the train we had spent the last 30 hours on, the sun was already setting, and the smog created an eerie dusky glow ambience. We left the train station and tried to remember what physical movements were required for walking, while observing the commuter chaos around us. Two young men came up and tried to sell us an enormous world atlas. I tried to show them where I lived on the map, but he was not interested. We finally convinced them that it would be entirely impractical for us to lug around the atlas in our backpacks, and they finally walked off. A communist rally marched by in the gathering dusk (West Bengal is the only communist state in India). Not really shouting any slogans, just sort of marching solemnly by with their hammer and sickle banners.

We began walking in any old direction, and we were immediately submerged into a sea of grimy chaos. Men and women came from every side, balancing enormous baskets on their heads filled with every imaginable item, and they all seemed to be headed directly for us. Street vendors were selling delicious looking vegetables nestled in blankets sitting right on the filthy pavement. After having several thinking-I'm-dead moments (as we so lovingly call them in India), we dodged the menacing buses, rickshaws, cows, and men, and ducked into the quiet sanctuary of the Howrah Hotel.

Next day. After eating delicious paneer and aloo parathas in a small local shop where all the men stopped what they were doing just to watch us, flabbergasted, we drank chai in mini one-use terracotta cups from a street vendor. We strolled across the Howrah bridge, in search of the flower market. We wove our way through more men with enormous wicker baskets balanced on their heads, and random businesspeople wearing adorable sweater vests, staring at us curiously. We followed a man carrying a bundle of flowers down some stone steps, and all of a sudden an orgy of flourescent flowers appeared out of all the dust and grime. We joined the stream of men and women (but mostly men) swimming down the lane between shanty villages. Men leered at us from behind gigantic heaps of marigolds and jasmine, baby sunflowers and rows of gawdy pastel fake flower arrangements. I bought some sweet smelling purple buds on a string, and asked the lady how I should wear them. She just stared at me, so I put them on as a headdress, much to the delight of the crowd standing around watching me.

Taxi to the Kalighat temple. Down a long winding alley way lined with stands selling religious paraphenalia like tikka powder, sweets, flowers and gruesome Kali drawings (Kali is the ferocious demon-slayer black goddess in Hindu faith), to the craziest temple I've experienced yet. Kali is one vicious lady, and apparently ridiculously demanding. We once again joined the stream of people seeping into the temple, slipped off our shoes, and bought some flowers to perform puja.

Somehow, we made it inside the actual temple. There were people EVERYWHERE, moaning and sighing and waving sticks of intoxicating incense in circular motions around the Kali shrines. Someone shoved me forward, and a man instructed me to throw my flowers toward the diety. I did. He asked me my name and I told him and he blessed me by pressing orange tikka powder to the goddesses' forhead and then my own. All of the incense and the hordes of people was starting to make me feel dizzy.

After leaving the inner part of the temple, we came across two dreadlocked dudes from America, the first tourists we had encountered in Kolkata so far. They had just watched a goat being sacrificed, and proceeded to describe it to us in gory detail. Cecilia, Matilda and Emily walked away in horror, but Sara and I stayed rooted to the spot, fascinated in a sort of sick way by the ritual. We watched the whole process--devotees walked into the enclosed area with their children, performing puja and showing their children how to do the same. Eventually a man and his family came in towing their goat--just a little baby. The priests washed him in holy water from the Ganges, and blessed him with a red tikka bindi. Then they put his head in the chopping block and....a horrifying sound. The goat screamed just like a human. It was gruesome. I couldn't stop watching. Sara and I just clung to each other and bore witness to the procedure. For some reason I'm really glad I saw it, although the image is definitely etched into my memory for eternity. The amount of devotion that those devotees demonstrated was just incredible--that goat may have been an essential food source for the poor family, but it was so important to them that they sacrificed it in an outstanding display of devotion to Kali.

Humans....we're such odd creatures. And we have found such different way to demonstrate our passion for the supernatural. I grew up in a faith that sits placidly humming organ songs and plunking quarters into a shiny tray that gets passed around. But I could have just as easily been born into this world, one that believes making this ultimate sacrifice is the only way to appease the angry goddess Kali and restore some order into this chaotic world.