The Chhinnamastika idol in Cuttack. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Cuttack, Nov. 9: The icon of goddess Kali at Bakhrabad has no resemblance with the 65-odd idols that are worshipped across the city today.

The idol at Bakhrabad holds her severed head in one hand while three springs of blood spurt out of her neck. One streams into her mouth and the other two streams into the mouths of her two female aides. Her left leg is not over Lord Shiv, but over a couple embracing each other on a lotus.

“We have been worshipping the goddess in this form for more than 50 years now. Nothing has changed over the years,” said Rama Ballav Dwivedi, the secretary of Bakhrabad Puja Committee.

The committee worships the goddess not as Kali but as Chhinnamastika — goddess who chopped her own head.

Old timers of the area say Bharat Singh, Mukunda Behera and Rama Dalei introduced this form of worship in the 1950s.

But nobody knows for sure how and under what circumstances Chhinnamastika form of worshipping the goddess began at Bakhrabad.

“We don’t know the exact reason. We fear any deviation may bring bad luck for us. So we have not made any change in the tradition,” said Gopal Pal, the president of the puja committee.

What jolts a devotee is the stark contrast in the iconographic setting: — gruesome decapitation, copulating couple, drinking of fresh blood — all arranged in a delicate harmonious pattern.

“It’s a starkly portrayed cycle — life (couple, making love), death (beheaded goddess), and sustenance (female consorts drinking her blood),” explained 70-year-old Narayan Behera, an old timer of the area.

“In fact, Chhinnamastika is a composite form conveying reality as an amalgamation of sex, death, creation, destruction and regeneration,” Behera added.

The most common interpretation is Chhinnamastika signifies self-control, courage and discernment.

According to experts, Chhinnamastika or the goddess with a severed head is the sixth of the 10 mahavidyas or great wisdom goddesses.

According to tantric tradition, the spectrum of 10 forms of the goddess are — Tara, Tripura, Sundari, Bhuvaneshvari, Chhinnamastika, Bhairavi, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, Matangi, Kamalatmika.