holy place? shocking scam-o-rama?

kalighat temple. notorious for its bloody goat sacrifices and cramming crowds, i had been avoiding it for a while. but yesterday i finally got around to visiting this most important of kolkata temples, the supposed basis for kolkata’s name (of course, no one really knows for sure). it’s just down a lane off of s.p. mukherjee road, lined by stalls selling all the typical wares one might wish for, outside of a temple. in particular, flowers, coconuts, sweets, other paraphernalia of prayer. me and laura went on in, to the narrow footpath between many more of these stalls, and emerged before the temple. small but pretty from what could be seen, mostly because of the painted tiles that covered a good bit of the exterior, in soft natural hues. we are debating whether to join the line winding out of the entrance when we are approached by a brahmin, who offers us a tour which includes the perk of skipping this line altogether. i am not sure, i have heard enough bad about these priests and their schemes to rip off foreigners. but then, a guide is better than no guide, and laura seemed willing, so we went for it.

he pulled us around the line of people waiting to the entrance, going up a narrow second stair case, squeezing in past all the eager visitors. inside, more tiles, a narrow passageway only really, with a few steps up to a low gate over which kali herself could be seen, offerings left, priests talked to. the squishing and squashing at this point were so much, i scarcely got a moment to look at the figure, black stone with red eyes, bigger than i had imagined from all the reproductions i had seen round town (where it is as ubiquitous as images of ramakrishna, vivekananda, and sarada devi, the holy trinity of the ramakrishna mission). no opportunity to dilly dally, i could not compete with the fervence and ferocity of the crowd pressed up against the gate, and so i came out and the priest led us down the steps onto the mud spattered floor outside.

from here we were led to a pavilion where prayers and offerings were made, coconuts sacrificed there within that space and animals, goats, just outside of it. a goat had just been beheaded, blood was everywhere out there, and its body was still moving a little, a jerk wrenching through its body every couple seconds. it was one of those cute little ones, the black ones with the delicate feet, prone to trotting about the scenery in rural bengal. of course i couldn’t look, focusing instead on the people who sat there, with their offerings and their prayers, so calm after all the jostling and jockeying for space inside.

and now came the fun part. this guy, i mean priest, led us out of the temple and down the lane from which we entered, past all these stalls selling their wares, and beggar women with their hands up and and reaching, out to a pool of water meant for cleaning before puja (prayer). and here, one by one (they would not let us do it together), this priest had us do puja randomly to a statue of shiva, right there by the pool. no one else was praying there. there were only a bunch of boys jumping about naked in the water. this was no place of prayer. then, he demanded money, hundreds of rupees, from each of us. of course, he separated us first so that there could be no consultation or anything. i had no money with me anyway, i hadn’t thought we’d get one of these guys, so laura paid for both of us. five hundred. we had been talking earlier about how one hundred should definitely be enough, but laura later said, "i couldn’t say no to a priest!"
i was too in shock and confused to even put up a fight to all this anyway. i kept thinking, did this just happen? did he just make a joke and a mockery out of his own religion to cheat some foreigners? i mean, i have heard stories about the corruption of hindu priests, but going to the extent of inventing entire ceremonies for the sole purpose of fleecing the ignorant? i couldn’t believe it, to see someone treating their own religion this way, not to mention while other co-religionists looked on. did this not offend hindus? it sure offended me.

and when i went home, i discovered numerous other foreigners at the mission had had the same experience, been put through the same rigmarole. it wasn’t just me being the sucker, it was all of us. the same silly shiva statue as bathers look on, the same separation of people to prevent communication or conferencing, everything. slowly my anger melted away into plain incredulity at the ridiculousness of the thing. me and a friend laughed that all these lifetimes of good behavior that have added up to make him a proud brahmin, he is just wasting them away. and if i know my hinduism (which i don’t at all but i like to think he will get this punishment) i think it is pretty well assured he will be born next as an insect. a creepy crawly smushy one. hmph!