Word: durga
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India's triumph is in large measure a stunning personal one for Mrs. Gandhi. Throughout the crisis Indians have been united behind her as never before, and she is even being compared with the Hindu goddess Durga, who rid the world of the demon Mahasura. Quite apart from the war, India seems to be feeling a new self-assurance. The land that for centuries was synonymous with famine now enjoys a wheat surplus and will soon become self-sufficient in rice, thanks to the Green Revolution. Mrs. Gandhi, backed by an overwhelming mandate in last March's elections...
Indians must have loved the gods: they made so many of them. Shanta Durga is a ten-handed goddess revered by the 400,000 Hindus in the former Portuguese enclave of Goa. Bhaväni is a ten-handed goddess considered to be the source of all power in the neighboring Indian state of Maharashtra. Last week Bhaväni and Shanta Durgá tried to join hands. Carried by Hindu nationalists, images of the two goddesses were paraded through the streets of scores of Goan villages, together with posters proclaiming: "After 450 years, Bhaväni wills...
...Jawaharlal Nehru's home state of Uttar Pradesh, the legislative assembly was in turmoil. A member had just reported that a religious ascetic had performed a temple rite to the Hindu goddess of destruction, Durga, in order to take Nehru's life by magic. In New Delhi, a Socialist deputy was hooted down in the Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) by angry Congress Party members for asking: "Is it democratic for an ailing Prime Minister with a shaky, inaudible voice and trembling feet to reply to questions?" Through the uproar, a waxen, drowsy figure sat hunched over...
Left to hold the battered fort, Mother worries--worries that her husband will be gypped in the big city, that daughter Durga is stealing necklaces from the neighbors, that son Apu is getting neither enough to eat nor enough to read. Rounding out the family is Old Auntie, who must be at least an octogenarian...
Satyajit Ray also turns his rented camera on pastoral symbolism, but it seems unconscious symbolism--a tribute to his art. Water flies darting on a pond, water lilies lifting wildly in a sudden gale, warm monsoon rain spattering on the attractive face of young Durga--these are scenes of compelling subtlety and beauty...