Namaste Readers,
I am writing this as we step into the festive celebration and worship of Shakti, the all-pervading and all-powerful feminine force of the cosmos. From within the womb of these active days that evoke the divine feminine, I urge you to resist every form of despair. It is only in the fierce presence of the rejuvenating creative energy that Shakti embodies, we can hope to find the balance to keep moving through this treacherous world.
Durga Durga! May you be protected.
For as long as I can remember, I have been looking for the goddess. In the presence of that which suffers without complaint, in the strength that endures in the wake of destruction, in revolt against the perpetual silencing of truth, in the seeking of unparalyzed courage to face the oppressive threats to freedom, in the embracing of necessary anger to fight the bigotry that pervades the modern world; it is her essence that percolates through the epidermis of life. Whenever humanity has grappled to summon the greater virtues, she is invoked. This is not a taught or inherited wisdom, this truth is inherent to me, like water is to fish. I often wonder whether it can merely be a coincidence that I was born into a tradition that has cradled Shaktism since its birth.
Shaktism, the tradition that centers the divine feminine as ultimate reality, has deep roots in Bengal. Long before temples rose in stone, the goddess was worshipped in forests, riversides, and village shrines, her presence invoked in the fertility of the land and the rhythm of the seasons. It is then not a coincidence that her arrival is celebrated as Sharadotsav or autumn harvest festival. Over centuries, this devotion expanded into rich philosophical schools and temple rituals, yet it never lost its intimacy with earth and body.
By the medieval period, Bengal had become a flourishing center of Shakta practice. The Tantric traditions, with their emphasis on transformation through the body and the senses, found fertile ground here. Texts like the Chandi Paath (Devi Mahatmya)1 were recited in homes and courtyards, while folk traditions carried the goddess into songs, clay idols, and village festivals. The worship of Durga, Kali, and a host of local village deities reflected the belief that the feminine force, or Shakti, is immediate. At once nurturing and fierce, protective and destructive, the ground of both life and death.
In Bengal, Shaktism is a worldview that held the feminine principle as both cosmic power and daily companion. The autumnal worship of Durga, which later shaped modern celebrations of Durga Puja, reflects this inheritance: the goddess is invoked as a warrior who destroys the demon, but also as a daughter returning home, a mother who feeds, a presence who enters kitchens and thresholds with equal sanctity.
But the autumnal worship of the feminine is not limited to the region of Bengal. Every autumn in India, the earth prepares herself for nine nights of devotion, a time we call Navratri2. It is a festival of the goddess, where each day awakens a different face of her: the fierce one, the mothering one, the wise one, the one who destroys, the one who creates.
Navratri is not only a celebration of idols and rituals. It is also nine days of journeying inward, an invitation to look for her in the soil, in the hearth, in the trees, in the softest corner of our own bodies. These nine nights are said to be hers, but they also belong to anyone who has ever searched for strength, for tenderness, for the place where divinity and survival meet.
The poetry-prose that follows is a personal meditation on those nine days. Instead of recounting traditions, I trace an inward pilgrimage, introspectively searching for the goddess in pyscho-spiritual terrains represented by the caves and forests, faces of strangers, in meals shared, in solitude, and finally, in the soft crevices of the body that I inhabit.
Homecoming
One day I felt the urge of madness. I sat naked on the bathroom floor and sobbed—hours measured by the breaths I took, each drop of water wasted on my bare back. My body swelled in an angry red hunch, tired from carrying centuries of conditioning and collective pain. My fingernails scorched the cold stone beneath me; I felt nothing, collected nothing at the corners of those nails. Why can’t I touch you?
The next day I began walking barefoot. I crossed every nook, peeking for you around corners, lifting every stone as if you might be hiding beneath. I dug into the earth until my fingers were raw with dirt and blood, searching. I sat on riverbanks, skipping pebbles and hoping you would rise—awaken from some deathlike slumber. I lay on the grass and watched the dreaming sky, anticipating your presence in the shadows, in the dying of each star.
Someone said you lived inside temples, so on the third day I made my way into tombs of carved monolithic stone—intricate shapes, hardened walls. All I found was fragrant smoke and foreign chants: metal that gongs, wishful faces bowing to an idol, prayers offered for redemption to an ideal god. The echo of faith felt thin there, like a language that had forgotten its own grammar.
On the fourth day I ate rice and drank water from roadside stalls and carried on for a thousand more miles, until I reached the border of a mountain state. There were hippies, travellers, pilgrims of nature—each promising an encounter with the sacred through objects made of earthbound materials. I picked up amulets and trinkets, handled them one by one, pressing each to my palm, searching for your warmth or the glisten of your eye. The objects were honest enough; they only ever promised the thing their makers could give.
I walked even further on the fifth day, away from the clutter of life and any sight of living crowds, searching for a people-deprived land. I reached the cave of a solitary monk who had lived there for twenty years. I sat in the spread of his quiet presence, in the aura of his truthful air, and searched for you in him and his cave—wished, foolishly, that you would appear in a flash. But he offered no spectacle; only a steady, ordinary breath that held me like a hand.
On the sixth day my tired spirit roamed a paddy field. I thumped my feet into the mud and sank. On the other end was a cluster of huts—proud villagers of a fortunate land sowing seeds of ancestral knowledge and reaping harvests of quiet wisdom. Their place of worship was a flowered shrine; an etched epitaph on an edgy stone marked the ancestors of this fertile place. I looked for you in the shine of those stones, in the inscribed words, in the essence of ripening grain. Instead I found a hearth where a home-baked meal tasted like the warmth of a mother’s womb.
On the seventh day I pressed into the forest—trees reaching like accusations toward heaven. Under the blackened soil lies an interconnected web through which they speak; a neural network of root and fungus that listens. I learned there that they can, quite literally, talk. I sat beneath a tree and told her everything that weighed my heavy heart. I expected a figurine to rise from the earth; instead I found myself naming my grief to the swindling branches, the branches answering in blooms and the hush of aromatic wildflowers. The air whispered in an old, elvish tongue. The leaves giggled in responsive harmony.
On the eighth day I stopped wandering and settled under the mother tree—the one that hosts a cathedral of life, bears fruit, and nurtures the earth selflessly. I bowed and begged her to protect, to feed, to guide. I sank into a long meditation: no movement, no food, no water. I entered a state that was almost lifeless and yet felt fiercely alive—an absence that contained presence.
The ninth day marked my awakening. I rose like someone leaving a dreamless sleep, fresh with a new-found energy, a shift of perspective and a steadier heart. My hair twisted into a tiny bun; I bathed at the riverbank, each splash a small offering. I arrived home within myself. I laid a hand on my bare navel, closed my eyes, and looked inward. I whispered,
“There you are. At last I found you.”
700-verse sacred text within the Markandeya Purana celebrates the unified nature of the Goddess, encompassing both her fearsome and compassionate forms, and is considered a powerful tool for spiritual transformation and protection
Navratri, a Sanskrit word meaning “nine nights,” is a significant Hindu festival celebrating the divine feminine energy (Shakti) and the triumph of good over evil, specifically the victory of Goddess Durga over the demon Mahishasura
Berkana is a non-stripe based reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming my patron through Paypal.
I don't feel so festive this year considering everything including my chaotic personal life. but your piece brought me back to life. Maa esheche. ❤️
What you have called poetry-prose I’ll just call life whispering. That’s was beautiful and inspiring Swarnali. Such wonderful writing and feelings. Thanks you so much