A Story Retold
I am about to tell you a story but before that shut down your laptop and mobile phone. Now close your eyes and try to dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Take a deep breath and try to concentrate on positive things happening around you. Can't you find anything positive? Think about today's newspaper that you’ve already read. Just try to recollect one good event that you have read, watched or come across on the street today. Hundreds of different incidents are floating in front of your eyes like a film. As if all the incidents are happening at the same time. Except for the lifestyle and culture pages, most of the newspapers are filled with news of war, corruption or murder. The tumultuous times of the modern day can be related to the tale that we are about to narrate.
Our story or purana beings in a battlefield, where the gods are facing defeat at the hands of Mahishasura, the son of demon Rambha. According to the purana, once upon a time there were two demon brothers– Rambha and Karambha. The brothers were so powerful that they defeated all the kings of the world.
However, their reign over the world was put to an end by Indra, who killed Karambha during the war. Rambha got annoyed at Indra and threatened to commit suicide, but the god of fire, Agni, prevented him from killing himself by offering him a wish. Rambha wished for an invincible son. Thus, Mahishasura, whose name literally means buffalo, was born. With the power to morph himself between human and buffalo forms, Mahishasura grew to adolescence and after some deep penance, he was placated with a gift from Lord Brahma – he could never be killed by any man or god.
An Infernal terror swept up the whole world. A luminous darkness of evil began to spread all around the universe due to Mahishasura's terror. With every possible means, the gods intervened but alas, the divine light could not illuminate the blurred halo that covered the vicinity of gods. God or deity, no one could defeat Mahishasura.
At this point the story tells us something about our own turbulent times. At the beginning of our story, I told you to recollect a few good memories. However, if you felt as though you were drowning in a wave of pessimistic information, you can at least console your heart with the fact that from ancient to modern times; human beings had to suffer through turbulent, unfortunate events. In the myth, after the gods were humiliated and dispelled from heaven, they became frustrated and angry. But they could do little about it. From time immemorial human beings have had to suffer the agony and pain of war -- whether it is during the mythological times or the World Wars or the recent Arab Spring, the Kiev riots or even the rise of ISIS and the Ukraine crisis. All of these disasters have had one powerful common thread that united the collective unconscious of human beings.
Turning to the myth again, headed by Brahma and Vishnu, the expelled gods went to Shiva for help. They narrated the whole tale to Shiva and sought for his power to knock down Mahishasura's reign from heaven. From our experience of the last decade, we observed that when chaos returns with even more force and complexity, the social paradigm collapses. Just like the US recipe of peace and the never-achieved American Dream for people's emancipation. In the last one decade, America went to war many times but they never achieved their goal of peace. Peace missions brought chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and lastly in Syria. Things usually get worse because during war anarchy is the exact equivalent of chaos and human beings in general will not and cannot accept chaos. A war gives birth to another. A “hero” ends up creating a “villain”. A war against the “demons” has always brought about a new “demon” in our history.
So to restrain the demons, an immense mass of light manifested from Lord Shiva's left half, which was joined by similar rays that emerged from the enraged faces of the gods. The unified powers of all the gods resulted in the creation of a fiery mass from which a magnificent goddess was born. With the light of Lord Shiva, her face was created. Lord Vishnu gave her his arms, and Lord Brahma provided her legs. She was blessed with all the powers given to her by the gods.
Gods made her in combination of beauty and power. The ministers of Mahishasura, awed and puzzled by her beauty, reported the news to their king, who commanded his ministers to bring her to him as his bride. In response to Mahishasura's offer, she entered into a war with the demon army and killed many of them.
Mahishasura turned himself into a magnificent, youthful human being to persuade the Devi. According to the story, after a 10,000-year-long battle with her suitor and his armies, Durga killed him by beheading Mahishsura. When a human emerged from the severed neck, the Goddess killed Mahishasura a second time, again by chopping off his head. Back in their abode, the gods rejoiced; in heaven, the resurrected Mahisa was eventually united with his beloved enemy.
Our story ends here. While you tried to take a trip down mythology, there probably were a hundred earthly issues that distracted you from reading the story uninterrupted. The world around us gives so much stress that it is quite difficult for us to concentrate on the good things in life. We think about war, famine, crime, and forget them as soon as a new problem arrives. But inside our mind we always seek emancipation. Emancipation from hunger, war, crime and anything related to evil.
Durga's power is focused purely on the oppression of evil in traditional societies and therefore, can always be related to the discourse of protest against the persisting injustice. In other words, the tales of the goddess draw some serious attention to the brutalities, subordination and other oppressive realities and manifestations against the trammels of tradition on human beings. And her aim is to use the divine power to direct human beings towards putting a halt to negative experiences of exploitation and instead focus on the indomitable spirit of nature.
The story tells us something profound about life -- when darkness covers the earth, a positive energy too arrives for reclamation.
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