Page:Mother India.pdf/22

RV 6 “He,” said Mr. Haldar, “is reading to the worshipers from our Hindu mythology. The history of Kali.”

Of a sudden, a piercing outburst of shrill bleating. We turn the corner of the edifice to reach the open courtyard at the end opposite the shrine. Here stand two priests, one with a cutlass in his hand, the other holding a young goat. The goat shrieks, for in the air is that smell that all beasts fear. A crash of sound, as before the goddess drums thunder. The priest who holds the goat swings it up and drops it, stretched by the legs, its screaming head held fast in a cleft post. The second priest with a single blow of his cutlass decapitates the little creature. The blood gushes forth on the pavement, the drums and the gongs before the goddess burst out wildly. “Kali! Kali! Kali!” shout all the priests and the suppliants together, some flinging themselves face downward on the temple floor. Meantime, and instantly, a woman who waited behind the killers of the goat has rushed forward and fallen on all fours to lap up the blood with her tongue—“in the hope of having a child.” And now a second woman, stooping, sops at the blood with a cloth, and thrusts the cloth into her bosom, while half a dozen sick, sore dogs, horribly misshapen by nameless diseases, stick their hungry muzzles into the lengthening pool of gore.

“In this manner we kill here from one hundred and fifty to two hundred kids each day,” says Mr. Haldar with some pride. “The worshipers supply the kids.”

Now he leads us among the chapels of minor deities