BAGH

Last year, around the time of the Durga puja, I spent some time in south Bengal at my ancestral home. South Bengal is rife with stories of Dokhin Rai, the tiger demon king, and Bon Bibi, the goddess that delivers us from him. One of my favourite books, "The Hungry Tide" by Amitav Ghosh, mentions this story. In South Bengal, I saw Bon Bibi everywhere. She was all the young women who were ambitious, hard-working and putting their kids through school while being personally persecuted by men or seniors in their lives. She is undaunted.

In the wild jungles, washed by the monsoon, stands a temple.

A woman has bathed in the temple well for thousands of years.

She is smooth like a stone on the bottom of a river bed.

Her many lives have been washed away, and she has become anew what she used to be: once again an infant, once again a child, once again an adolescent, once again a youth, once again a woman, once again an aged senior, once again a corpse.

In the jungle, they know her by the name of Bhagh.

She walks amongst the trees, camouflaged and silent.

In the jungle, they know her by the name of Huli.

When she is angry, you can hear her everywhere.

In the jungle, they know her as Bon Bibi.

She is the defeater of Dokhin Rai.

In the jungle, they know her by so many names

Except for the name by which she knows herself...

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