Profile of a Diva –Durga

Distant drumbeats announce the arrival of the Durga idol to the local pandal. Like every year this year too I felt that unmistakable elation at heart, the sense of freedom and celebration which I am sure is a common sentiment shared by millions. Apart from celebration the concept of this female Deity has always fascinated me. She is the primordial mother force, all pervading yet so practical, down to earth,so professonal and probably that's why so contemporary!

Born out of the collective anger and exasperation of gods she is a war goddess; a fierce, fighter against any force that dares to disrupt the cosmic equilibrium. She is an agenda onto herself, an avowed activist against terror, a one woman demolition squad against evil. She is one goddess who has been frozen in the frame of war amidst her family snap. In fact her construct is not complete without the context of evil. Take the Ashura out of the picture the very idea of Mahishasuramaradini would collapse.

She is a strange synthesis of the opposites. Born out of combined male energy she is a female force. In many sense Durga redefines the concept of power. She is not just a fusion of collective power. Gods wanted a power to destroy their enemy; she came out in the form of a power that gave birth through destruction. Power needs to be perpetuated and multiplied. It needs to be recycled, regenerated through the process of creation and not limited and marginalized by the catastrophe of destruction.

There was nothing miraculous about her operations as described in the Chandi.She used no magic,no mesmeric charm with which most of the divine powers are ordained.
She displayed hard work. She fought, She took the beating, she got tired, took refreshing drinks and engaged again in her mission with renewed vigor .She never looked for outside resources,but delved deep within herself and came up with new profiles of power. She not only demonstrated multitasking at its best but also displayed her ability to be a multi entity to rise to the magnitude of the task at hand.

She represented the purest form of governance. The problems she had set to solve were not created by alien forces. They have their origin in the mismanagement of power by the gods themselves. All ashuras were made powerful by some god gifted boon be it from Brahma ,Vishnu or Shiva .Wishes were granted right left and centre by gods with full knowledge that the recipients nursed bigger personal ambitions and there were strong chances of the boons being abused . They would come to their senses when their own boon was used against them. When things had gone out of control big time SOS were sent to Devi.

Devi had to be invoked. She would never appear uninvited.As a crisis manager she would only swing into action when collectively approached by the gods. Once called she would take complete charge, no questions asked, no fault finding commission being set up. She would tame power hungry brutes, terminate the tormentors and then would hand over control to the male gods again to run their show. Once her job was done she simply disappeared.

Even her social visits among the mortals are short and swift –once a year for a few days. She is powerful because she is the eternal provider and would never ask for anything. While other gods fight with each other for their share of offering from the mortals she would never even utter “perform my puja”. She would appear at the end of each battle with a blank cheque of boon to the gods-an unconditional commitment to save and serve.

As more and more Durgas are adorning the positions of power in big houses hitherto managed by their male counterparts Durga remains single most manifestation of a woman in action with full array of feminine roles- a mother, a leader, a manager and a home maker offering unique principles of managing power and taming the tormentors and practicing family codes in the dry corporate world.
Ya devi corporateshu netri rupen samsthita
Namastasmi namantasmai namanstasmai namonamaha.