Devi

9th October, 2013

Pandhrigota has two concrete constructions, toilets and a temple they built for the Gaon Devi after the mud temple was washed away by heavy rains. Today, they were going to carry the Gaon Devi, Sitla Maa, to the mandap where they had placed another idol of Sitla Devi for Navratri. The procession started and everybody started walking towards the temple, chanting and playing musical instruments.

 After they completed their rituals, they wrapped the Sitla Devi in a red cloth and carried it around the village. We stopped at somebody’s house and suddenly there was a little chaos. A Kaki told me that this house had Sarawati, Lakshmi and Kali Ma’s idols and they were going to carry it to the mandap. She also said, “Aj shyamko jaldi a jana, Devi ayegi”

At that time, it did not make any sense to me and I did not give her words another thought as I had seen something really interesting. About three to four men were bringing out a long bamboo stick. When it finally came out of the house, I realized that it was a flag. But that was not all, there were two more to go. After a while, they managed to get all three of them out and we all proceeded to the mandap. I struck up a conversation with another Kaki who told me the significance of the three flags. The white one depicted Saraswati, the black one was for Kali Ma and the red one was for Lakshmi. They did not move idols to the mandap, as they did not believe in displacing the idol from its home.

After the aarti, we requested the people to stay back so that we could make a resource and a village map. Since we did not have any colours to depict the different resources, we decided to go natural and use the different leaves available. When we were about to finish the maps, a calf decided that it was time for lunch and merrily munched away the leaves.

In the evening we made our way to the mandap for the pooja and the bhajan session. I was could not follow a word of what was being said, but the music was beautiful. I was about to click a photograph of entire mandap and the people, when a man starting getting spasms. He started moving weirdly and 4 people could not bring him under control. I initially thought the man was getting fits but nobody tried to make him lie down. Instead, he was put down and allowed to remove his shirt and baniyan. I absolutely could not understand what was going on when a lady told me, “Usme devi bas chuki hain.”

Now, I had of stories where a devi would possess a human being and he would go on to perform small ‘miracles’. I had never seen something like this happen before me and the cynic could not wait to prove that the man was acting.

As he was dancing, he brushed across somebody else and that man started getting spasms too. Soon both of them started dancing together, with their energy increasing with every beat. They started going around wildly in circles and one of them always came close to crashing into me. Luckily, I moved. I started looking for my phone so that I could click photographs when the other started flapping his hands and almost made me drop my phone.

The cynic was overpowered by the coward and I ran. 

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Today, we also made the resource map. Since we did not have colours to indicate the various places, we decided to use different leaves. A young calf, however, decided to have a quick snack and started munching on the leaves, much to everybody's amusement.

After shooing the calf away, we finished our map. 

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Right before the bhajan session, we decided to complete our Chapatti diagram. In order to ensure that women participate, we decided to give three chapattis to women and three to men. 

While conducting the Chapatti diagram, all the people kept the chapatti near the centre of the circle, indicating that the services provided to them were good. But I was so prepared for a commotion to break out or an argument to take place that I couldn’t believe everybody was happy. I began inquiring skeptically over how there could be a common consensus on these many services functioning well. I guess, in my enthusiasm to finding the ‘truth’ about how government servants cheat people, I wasn’t ready to believe that things were functioning well.