The fearsome Durga has descended, decorated with a garland of her enemies’ skulls, her 10 arms frozen in the act of killing the buffalo demon Mahishasura. All through Navaratri, she will be worshipped in her many forms — fearsome and benign; she will grant boons and slay enemies. Along with daughters Laxmi, the harbinger of wealth and Saraswati, the repository of wisdom, this trinity of the feminine divine encompasses a range from the auspicious to the bloodthirsty.

As adoring crowds, largely female flock to pandals to soak in their divine energy, the contrast between the power of the goddesses on the pedestal and the women worshippers outside could not be greater.

Sure the ordinary woman is considered auspicious, especially at festive times, but only as a virginal daughter or fertile wife under control and sitting by a man during religious rituals. The widow, the unmarried woman past puberty and even the barren woman, is a potential threat to be banished to the edges of society. With modernity, a girl’s sell by date may be pushed back a bit past puberty, a widow may no longer be tonsured and the barren women will endure not desertion, merely a set of humiliating medical procedures. And without a shred of irony, all these manifestations of womanhood will be called Devi, and with the honorific bestowed, society will freely continue to control and exploit these goddesses.

The question to ask is whether the goddesses’ power ever existed independently from their consorts. The gods roamed the heavens and earth, Indra their king, freely engaging in dalliances with the apsaras. Krishna’s flirting with the gopis was transcendental and the object of veneration. But even before Lakshman carved one for Sita, the goddess knew there was a rekha, a line she dare not cross. Laxmi and Sarawati are benign consorts and dedicated wives.

Durga, too, after the crisis that causes her to go on a rampage, returns to domesticity, tamed by her husband, who puts a stop to her frenzied dancing and uncontrolled laughter, lest it wreak havoc on the world. In the end the fierce Kali/Durga, slayer of demons outside the home, turns out to be everywoman, giving in to her husband. And while a few women emulated her warrior ways, most women learnt not to laugh to loud or dance too hard. Only Radha’s dalliance with Krishna was in transgression of societal norms, perhaps the only improbable female icon in mainstream mythology.

The woman in this culture is fated to be, simultaneously, a repository of honour and a prisoner, a paradox best portrayed in Satyajit Ray’s Devi. The character of Doyamoyee in the film, played by a young Sharmila Tagore is determined by her father-in-law, the man in charge, to be Kali incarnate, and goes from being a carefree child to a cloistered object of veneration, hidden away and only brought out for public display. She is revered now, as a worker of miracles, but there is no power in this, for she remains subjugated, stripped of all joy. She is forced to buy into the myth of her incarnation, in other people’s definition of her. Because if she is not a devi, she is nothing. Unable to perform the miracles expected of her, she slowly loses her mind. The tragedy of Devi is the tragedy of many women, placed on the altar, worshipped as goddesses and imprisoned in their roles as wives and mothers.

Devi may be fictional, but the cult of Kumari, the living goddess is real. A young girl is plucked out of a life of obscurity, and displayed as divine. A glimpse of her is said to bring good fortune and crowds throng to her. Her feet can’t touch the ground, so she is carried everywhere, but barring rituals, she leads a secretive, isolated existence. Come puberty, she is rendered impure, and no longer of value, discarded.

Still her fate is better than that of the Devdasi, literally the servant of god. Dedicated to Yelamma, the goddess of fertility, in a ceremony similar to marriage, she becomes for all intents and purposes a prostitute. Her virginity is sold to the highest bidder. The devdasi system, now outlawed, but still practiced supplies, under the veneer of religion, sex to those in power. Poverty stricken parents, in a bid to unburden themselves of girl children continue to condemn their daughters to this life of sexual slavery. Yelamma may be a goddess, but she has no power to protect, for power lies as usual with a man, in this case with the priest, who uses his devotion of her to exploit her devotees.

The goddesses are ultimately no guardian angels. Inspite of the outwardly feminist appearance of goddess Durga, and the venerated status of Lakshmi and Saraswati, none of the trinity really protest the tyranny of husbands, ask for equal rights or rail against being seen as producer of sons. Not surprisingly, in spite of legislation, women’s inheritance rights are often overlooked, dowry as a practice is still rampant and female foeticide has resulted in a seriously skewed sex ratio. That men continue to ascribe, in a patriarchal society, the power of the divine to these goddesses, and to all women, is then quite possibly a manifestation of their guilt, a pretend worship of those they otherwise control and exploit.

The human and divine seem to be very different worlds, with different standards. Still given their status as goddesses, and inspired by Kali, the manifestation of female rage, and with a little help from the divine wisdom of Saraswati, women can foment a revolution. After all Durga’s warriors are female. And in Durga’s many avatars, some dark, old and disheveled, far from aesthetic, male-pleasing images, is proof that all femininity is sacred. In the end, it is not the goddess in whose 10 arms lies the burden of feminism. The goddess is ambiguous, sometimes Shakti, power, at other times Prakriiti, nature. She may be divine but she is a bundle of contradictions too — strong or weak depending on the circumstance. In the end she is like everywoman and everywoman can be every avatar of her.

Drunk on the blood of enemies, like Durga, she can be Indira Gandhi, who epitomised her after victory in war. She is is free to be Mira, the bhakti saint devotee of Krishna who wrote bhajans mocking marriage and celebrating love. Sure society mocked her in return, but because she craved only love, not respectability, she triumphed. She can be Sita when necessary, who in spite of her many weaknesses, was also a single woman who raised two sons on her own. She can be Rati or Mohini and explore her sensual side. And when she gets as angry as Kali, her energy alone will be enough to destroy the demon of patriarchy that now controls her sisters.