The goat, which had been tethered a short distance away, was brought forward, and Milan picked it up and put its head in a two-pronged metal stand shaped like a giant tuning fork. One of the priests then painted a saffron stripe on its head and stepped back. Another man, barefoot in a dhoti, came forward with a long, sharp cleaver, just like the one held by Tara in the prints. With a single swipe he cut off the head, and the priest pulled the body away, where it lay writhing on the ground. There was a strong smell of warm blood, moist earth, decaying flowers and incense. Milan placed a bunch of smoking agarbatti incense sticks in the sacrifical pit, and dipping his fingers in the bloody sand, smeared his forehead.
“All auspicious work starts in the name of Ma,” said Milan. “Tomorrow, on the night of no moon, I will announce my candidacy. With Ma’s aid I and my colleagues are ready to fight this battle. She is the most powerful protector you could want. I tell you: with her power, no one can stand against us.”
The following day I returned to the cremation ground to talk to Manisha Ma. What interested me was how different her vision of Tara was to that of Milan, who clearly saw the goddess as a supernatural channel through which he could gain worldly power. Manisha, however, believed that Tara was a motherly figure who had saved her, looked after her when she was most vulnerable and who above all had brought her love. I wondered what this actually meant, and what kind of life Manisha had lived before moving into the burning ground.
As Tapan Sadhu continued following the test match at the back of the hut (“India are ninety-four without loss!”), and as a roving chai wallah poured clay cups of tea to the growing circle of listening sadhus and sadhvis, Manisha settled back on a durree surrounded by her skulls, and began to tell me her story.
“I was born in the town of Ariadaha in south-west Bengal,” she said. “My father worked for the Public Works Department. His job was to announce how the water would be distributed. He had a drum and a megaphone, and used to tell people when the water supply would be cut off and when it would be turned back on again.
“I had seven sisters and one brother. When I was born, before my father got his PWD job, we were very poor, and often ate only once a day. Some days my mother could only afford manioc, which she would cook with a little salt and give to us to eat. I was close to my sisters and also to my father, who loved me very much. But my brother was the one my mother loved. He was very spoilt: if the slightest thing went wrong for him she would stop eating and go on a fast, and if there was only food for one, then he would get it. One of my sisters died when I was three: we both had a fever and as my father could afford only one piece of fish, he gave it to me. The next day I got well, but my sister’s fever increased and she died. My mother still says your sister died because of your father. If he had given her the fish, she would have lived.
“After my father got his job with the PWD, I went to school, but only until class five, when I was eleven. Even before then I was not a good student: the school made me feel confined and I was always running away. My parents scolded me, but it never suited my temperament. I still am not good at reading or writing. After I had passed out of class five, my father decided that we needed more money as he couldn’t feed us properly on his small government salary. So when I was thirteen, we moved to Calcutta, and both my mother and he went to work in one of the jute mills in Baguhati. We used to wait impatiently for them to return. My mother would bring flour, and when she got home we all made chapatis. Sometimes I earned a little too, cleaning the dishes and washing the clothes of our neighbours. But I didn’t mind. I was very excited to be in Calcutta, which was full of cars and buses and cinemas and all manner of things we rarely saw in Ariadaha. We were staying in a third-floor apartment, and my sisters and I would look out at the Howrah Bridge rising in the distance and all the great sights of the city.
“Two years later, when I was fifteen, I went to work at the mill too, and was put in the finishing department. When the jute came out of the machine, I was part of the team that cut it up and made it into the jute bales which were then sent to America. It was very hard work, and so dusty that everyone who worked there developed breathing problems. Some of the girls got caught in the machine and were badly injured. But I used to pray to the goddess and she always looked after me.
“From my childhood I was very spiritual. Both my parents were religious too, and at home we had a small puja to the goddess every day. I was always attracted to the Devi, in her different forms—Ma Kali, Ma Durga, Ma Tara and so on—and I always believed that it was she who saved me from danger. Even as a child I used to love to attend festivals and melas, and especially the Durga Puja, which was my favourite week of the year. I loved to see the immersion of the goddess in the river at the end of the ten-day festival. While we were there I would seek out the company of sadhus and ask them questions. One of my earliest memories is of the Durga Puja, which I first visited in my father’s arms. It was a pleasure just to look at the fair and all the bangles and bracelets on sale. On that day my father would always save up and buy us all hot jalebis.