35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘THERE’S BLOODLETTING AS WE SPEAK’
beckoned, a knowing smile on his face, taking me up some steps
and around to the front of the shrine and a point where, if the huge
silver doors were opened, I’d get a good view of a real goddess.
My personal Brahmin roughly elbowed several shrivelled old men
aside, dragging me to where some of his colleagues held the doors
closed. He told me to place the flowers on a tray one of them held
containing a flickering camphor lamp.
‘Must offer Kali Ma some rupees,’ said the Brahmin
knowledgeably. I put a ten on the tray. ‘Five hundred minimum,’ I
heard.
‘See what she’ll do for ten,’ I told him. ‘We’re in a recession, you
know.’ His expression implied it was my funeral.
Suddenly, the two gatekeepers flung open their doors and there,
staring out at me some ten yards away, swathed in floral garlands,
was Kali Ma herself. Three piercing red eyes gleamed from basalt
pupils, her face was jet black, a huge gold nose ring protruded from
the two white dots of her nostrils, and her broad golden tongue
cascaded out from a line of sharp gold incisors and hung two feet
down over rows of flowers. The whole idol was draped in blood-red
robes two yards wide, and sat in an enclosure surrounded by a low
wrought-iron fence. Behind it a solid silver arch framed the whole
haunting image. The glimpse lasted no more than a second before
the doors were heaved shut again. It doesn’t do to let people become
too familiar with their god.
The Brahmin examined my eyes to assess how impressed I was.
‘Thanks,’ I told him.
There is always an odd power to these idols, a sense of something
alive, something tangibly real. And why not? God can be anywhere
she likes. ‘Come,’ he urged, clearly pleased.
We skirted the shrine, ascending some stone stairs to a small
platform overlooking a courtyard. As I looked below, a man brought
an axelike sword down on the neck of a goat, severing the animal’s
head in a single stroke. Other Brahmins seized the goat’s body and
sprayed the blood pumping from the raw pink hole where its head
had been all over a series of low walls bearing stone effigies. An
excited crowd gathered round, chanting and smearing themselves
with blood, then uttering a great cry to Kali.
‘You want sacrifice the goat,’ the Brahmin asked me sincerely.
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