Thursday 12 April 2012

K

K is for ‘Kali’.
Kali is a form of Durga, a form of Parvati, from the Hindu mythology. She is said to be pitch black, aggressive, and ugly, terrifying. Her presence signifies death, carnage, and destruction. Even a vision of hers is considered ominous and her devotees worship her to pacify her.
The physical dynamics of the character has been retained in the seond book of the Shiva trilogy (The Secret of the Nagas) by Amish Tripathi. I’m not big on Indian authors; their English is at best halting and their vocabulary is limited. There are, of course, exceptions. But not this one. But that has been compensated for by the absolute hype created around religion and deities.
I’m not religious; but I liked Kali. She is ugly but is portrayed s a nice person. She is a Queen of a clan with a great personality and defined focus. She is deformed and has four hands and is dark; her clan is made of people with such and other deformities. And yet, I was attracted to her magnetic persona. Now the final book of the trilogy hasn’t released so I haven’t a clue if her character will turn out to be twisted. But I sure hope that doesn’t happen…
PS: This is a late post because K was a tough letter to draw out a character with.

Image courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction, that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday...

7 comments:

Teresa Cypher said...

This looks like something I would enjoy reading. What precious little I have read of Hindu mythology has been fascinating. :-)

JoJo said...

I need an extra pair of those arms, like Kali's, so that I can work on 2 crafts at the same time.

Anonymous said...

The books have been surrounded by so much hype, there's a frankly ridiculous YouTube trailer. I'm going to start reading them soon.

Anonymous said...

There's been so much hype surrounding the books! I find Indian Mythology quite fascinating to read. have you read 'Palace of Illusions' ? Also interesting.

Udita Banerjee said...

@Teresa: If you're into mythology, you should
@JoJo: Don't we all wish so?
@Su: Yeah, read 'em; they're good timepass. No I haven't read that one; who's it by?

Anonymous said...

It's by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It's the Mahabharata, written from Draupadi's perspective. I found the writing so-so, but the viewpoint is interesting.

Udita Banerjee said...

That sounds mightily similar to Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar's Sita's Ramayana! I did the interview here http://forbookssake.net/2012/03/05/for-books-sake-talks-to-moyna-chitrakar/