Calcutta in early October was bustling with the annual Durga festival. The goddess Kali, the most popular of the Hindu pantheon and especially venerated in Bengal and Assam, had innumerable names and avatars, as did her husband Shiva, the god of destruction. Durga is one of Kali’s metamorphoses, but her bloodthirstiness is less pronounced. Gigantic effigies of the goddess had been erected everywhere in the city. They showed her in the act of punishing the deity of water buffalos, and beautiful, angry eyebrows were depicted on the valiant face. At night the statues, standing out sharply against the bright lights, received the adulation of the crowds. Calcutta is the center of Kali worship, with its temple, the Kalighat; and the activity there during these festivals defies the imagination. As soon as he arrived in the city, Honda hired an Indian guide and paid a visit to the temple. The core of Kali is shakti, the original sense of which is “energy.” This great mother goddess of the earth imparts to all female deities throughout the world her sublimity as mother, her feminine voluptuousness, and her abominable cruelty, thereby enriching their divine nature.
