Who is Mahishasura? A tyrant demon or an outcast shaped by centuries of suppression, rising with rage?

And when Durga came forth, was the trident the only resort and annihilation the only answer? Was there a possibility or even an exploration of a reform before that? Does justice always have to arrive as destruction?

But then, what after his fall? And what of Durga herself? Does she vanish after victory, retreating into myth? Will she only come when summoned and when matters are completely out of hand?

Perhaps the story is not of a demon slain, nor of a goddess triumphant, but of us ever circling between oppression and resistance, between arrogance and humility, between the illusion of peace and the reality of violence.

So then, what do we celebrate truly? When genocides rage and wars multiply across the globe; when international regulations bend to the tyranny of the powerful; when the numbers of refugees and migrants are higher than ever recorded in human history; when peace proclaiming activists are charged with draconian laws; when the spirit of sportsmanship is mutilated by the spectacle of politics; when dowry deaths, honour killings and rape news continue to stream on our screens….what exactly are we celebrating? Do our festivals become rituals of forgetting the inconvenient truths of our own times?

Can we even identify, with clarity, who the Mahishasura is in these moments and who is Durga? Perhaps the truth is this that we do not always know who the demon is and who the goddess is in our own times, for both are alive. 

And maybe the real celebration lies not in proclaiming victory, but in refusing complacency and in daring to see that the battle is here – very much still raging, in the very world we inhabit. The very world you inhabit. The very world I inhabit.

~

Pic – Dusshera 2025 memory with my daughter

Pages – In the midst of the book ‘The Undying Light’ by Gopalkrishna Gandhi and these excerpts have a deep meaning in them that we should reflect on.