Goddess Kali

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The portrayal of a mere face, this characteristic Madhubani painting, rendered using a small piece of paper unlike a Madhubani canvas which is usually a large sheet, and more befittingly, for a Madhubani painting is basically a paper transform of centuries old village women’s art of adorning the mud-walls or door-fronts of their huts or houses, obviously very large canvases, with patterns drawn with coloured dusts, minerals and powdered stones, represents Kali, the goddess that annihilates and symbolises the destructive aspect of Shiva. The painting has been rendered using four colours : blue, red, yellow and orange, unmixed and in their basic tones. Though this canvas does not represent her as indulged in an act, she is basically the goddess of battlefield, blood-shed, sacrifice and destruction, fond of fresh human blood and of roaming in cremation ground.

This blue-complexioned image of the goddess, too, is a little awe-striking, it does not, however, have that ferocious look, emaciated figure, large loose breasts, disheveled hair, awe-striking eyes, or as one wearing garlands of skulls and girdle of severed human hands, as Puranas like Agni, Garuda, Devi Bhagavata and Bhagavata, describe her form, and her images are usually represented in visual arts. Except her blood smeared lolling tongue, revealing at least a deeper red than the red of her lips, the form of eyes, particularly the extra white of eye-balls and black pupils, the strange saws-like eye-brows and the flames of fire emitting on all sides, the oval three-eyed face of the goddess is almost normally conceived. In iconographic perception, as also in various myths, Kali is represented as eliminating hosts of demons singly, sometimes bare-handed. Kali in this Madhubani folk seems to have been conceived as doing performing this role simply by her presence.

Cosmologists and metaphysicians contend that Kali manifests ‘Adi-shakti’ : the primeval cosmic energy. Undoubtedly a daring experiment with Kali’s imagery by Golu, a known artist in Madhubani tradition, he has painted out of his inherent wisdom the goddess just as a face, but not as a mere anthropomorphic manifestation he has visualized her as the source of all-pervading incessant energy which he has painted as bursting, all around and incessant, from her being, and for this burst of energy her mere presence is all that is needed. He has not portrayed her as engaged in act or even as an anatomical being but as the source of energy with its rays radiating from her being on all sides. Not incidentally, his perception of the goddess’s blue form seems to have a cosmological meaning. The sky or ocean, blue is the face of energy, or he has seen them as the face of the goddess. The goddess’s face has been framed within a lotus consisting of eight petals symbolising eight basic divisions of the day, and thus, the time in totality that Kali pervades by her presence.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books.