The Kali Temple and the "Brahmin Priest"

One of the things I find most stressful is to be cheated, to be taken advantage of.  Which puts me in a difficult position here in India, because there are so many people looking to take advantage of any westerner...I find myself on the defense a lot, and distrusting of strangers who approach me in public places. So when a man claiming to be a Brahmin Priest began showing us around the Kalighat temple in Calcutta, I was on my guard.

 

Calcutta is named after the Goddess Kali, and this temple is a very sacred--and an extremely busy--place.  It would have taken atleast 30 minutes to wait in line to get into the inner sanctum, where we could see Kali herself (she is a black stone with three large eyes on it).

 I was willing to have this "priest" take us around, but I made it very clear that we didn't want to be asked a large sum of money for the tour (he yelled at me, accusing me of being too much of a business woman...an act I later realized was another one of his manipulations).  Anyway, he took us the back way in to the inner sanctum, and wow oh wow what an experience!  People were crowded in this throbbing mass of bodies, pushing their way to the front to glimpse their goddess and ask for a favor from her.  IT was so crowded, in fact, that two men were hanging on two ropes with one arm and controlling the masses with another arm. 

 

Katherine and I and our two friends managed to glimpse the goddess, and then our guide took us to a sacred cactus tree in another part of the compound, where we could make some wishes and place them on the tree in the form of a red ring.  He then proceeded to request we make a donation to the cause of feeding the hungry, and showed us a notebook that catalogued the very generous monetary gifts of other visitors.  I was sooooooooo mad at him for this, because it was clear that this was a scam, and that he had the gall to try this after yelling at me earlier for being a "business woman"!  Since Kali is a goddess created, in part, by the light of anger...I wish I'd channelled her energy more to really tell him off...but I am grateful to have seen Kali close up and personal (and no, we didn't give him any money).