The Power of the Goddess
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

My father was involved in outsourcing work in India. He was in discussions with a large business in the South of that country – in a place called Kollam.

Kollam is a big city on the west coast of the sub-continent. It is a major trading hub but it also has nice beaches and attractions that makes it a nice place to visit. My father suggested to my mother that the whole family should go. Including me and my older brother Liam and my sister Megan. That way he could stay there for the 3 months he needed to set up the work systems, and we could do school by pre-planned studies.

It also gave us the chance to get out of Chicago in the winter. We left late in January and expected to be back before the end of April.

Accommodation had been arranged for us by my father’s Rajesh Datt. Mr. Datt was very wealthy and had a huge house on the coast overlooking the sea with coconut palms and a view of the sunset. He also owned the high-quality properties on either side of his home and rented them out. One of them was made available to us.

Mr. Dutt had a large extended family, but only one child – his son Karam aged 13, only a little younger than me. Karam had been educated in English so we quickly became friends. He and his friend Devan were our guides in this strange country.

And the truth is, that India is strange. In many Kollam is a modern city, but it is also in the heart of old India, which is full of weird traditions. Modern people like Rajesh Datt can wear a suit and tie in the morning and yet tear a live chicken apart in a temple in the afternoon. Sometimes follows of the Hindu religion believe in things and do things, that seem very odd. That is India.

And yet I was to become involved in the strangest thing ever, and that is the Kottankulangara Chamayavilakku ceremony which takes place at the Kottankulangara Devi Temple in the heart of the city.

We walked past the temple once, soon after we arrived, and it was clear that something was amiss. There were people walking in and out but and included in the crowds were many men dressed as women. I mean, I was only 14 at the time but I knew that these were not real women, although may looked quite close to it.

“This is in honor of the goddess Bhagavathy,” Karam explained. “This temple is built on the stone of Kottan, which has great power. The stone can bleed. The stone has been getting bigger every year for hundreds of years. How is that possible? Science cannot explain it. Everybody wants the power from the stone, but to get the power you must be like a woman. You must come to the stone as a woman.”

“Do you believe this stuff?” Liam asked him.

“My parents do,” said Karam. “But we do not come here with everybody else. Because we have money we have our own private ritual next month. Maybe you would like to be part of it?”

Liam just laughed, but I said: “I would.”

It turns out that if you are rich in India you do not have to go to the temple with the crowds – you can buy you time with the goddess and do the job in style. Karam had been getting ready for it for almost a year.

When were learned more details, I guess I could have pulled out, but instead my sister Megan got pulled in, together with several girls in the wider Datt family, close to her in age. She thought the whole idea was hilarious, and potentially huge fun. She insisted that I go ahead and do it, along with Karam and his friend Devan.

What we were expected to do was to dress appropriately and be a part of an elaborate ceremony carrying a lamp to the temple. “Appropriate dress” was that we would be girls. We would not just dress as girls, but we would live and act like girls for the whole day of the ceremony, and maybe a bit before just to get ready.

Karam’s family were deadly serious about this. It is all very well to laugh, but for them this was a serious as holy communion, and with the added possibility that Karam might acquire special powers, for real, or so they believed.

Mr Datt explained that in Kollam, and the province of Kerala in general, people are conservative. Sexual abnormality including dressing as a woman for sexual purposes, was regarded as improper, but dressing and acting like this was wholly permissible for religious purposes.

And the principle is that you need to go all out. The more feminine you are in presenting yourself to the goddess, the more likely it is that you will receive the potent blessing from the stone. Members of the public would pay one of the many beauty shops outside the temple a 1,000 rupees for a makeover, but the Dutt family was rich enough to pay for Karam to be much better than that. Devan too, had a family with wealth. And, if I was going to do this, my family would be expected to do the same for me.

Karam had been growing his hair for a while – lots of boys in Kollam were doing the same thing in advance of the festival. I had some catching up to do, but if anybody knows how to grow long hair, it is the Indians. Most Indian women traditionally grow their hair long – some very long. There are all sorts of mystical compounds that allow hair to grow even longer. The women of Karam’s family took charge of my hair too.

Indian women also have long standing traditions of beauty treatments. Kohl has been used for centuries, threading is an Indian skill, and skin treatments have been practiced over generations. These are all things that are for women, except for the period in advance of the presentation to the goddess, when boys are subjects too.

There are also movements that needed to be studied. There is a ritual of carrying a lamp around the stone, but in all the actions in the temple, the supplicants needed to be as feminine as possible. We were instructed in these and exercised by doing special dances which are only traditionally performed by women in India – dances that are intended to show the grace of feminine movement.

I suppose the fact that I was doing everything with my new friends Karam and Devan made it easier. That and the fact that nobody back home need ever see me looking and behaving so girly. My family were curious more than anything, but they were happy that I was becoming more involved in a foreign, and very exotic, culture. Mr. Datt also approved, which helped my father with their business relationship. So he approved too.

In those weeks leading up to the ceremony Karam became Kalpana, Devan became Dharma, and I became Tara, which in Hindi means “star”.

On the morning that we were to go to the temple the beauticians went to work on all three of us. Our hair was now long enough for long strands to be woven in to give us waist length tresses. In my case that hair needed to be colored to my natural caramel brown. Our faces were made up expertly, our ears were pierced for earrings and, in the case of Kalpana and Dharma noses were pierced too.

We were dressed in elaborate embroidered saris, with bangles and rings and necklaces, and jeweled sandals on our feet. Our fingernails and our toenails were painted. Everything was a blaze of color. All three of us looked spectacular.

But more importantly, none of looked like the boys we were.

I think that you could call it “spooky”. When I looked at them, and I looked at myself, we were not the people we were before. Those boys were gone. We were girls now. We were ready to face the goddess.

With all that effort expended, the women wanted there to be a photoshoot. They had a professional photographer take hundreds of shots of all of us, and a movie too. We had to strike feminine poses – sometimes even appear a little suggestive. But somehow none of it seemed weird.

When the time came, we were transported by limo to the temple, which had been closed off for a private ceremony for a handful of wealthy families. Once there we were filmed in our procession. We were at the back of some other “girls”, with Kalpana in front of me and Dharma behind.

I felt as if I should be giggling, girlishly of course, but the whole thing was very serious. When we entered the temple, the solemnity of the occasion was palpable.

For some reason my hand shook as I held the candle and approached the stone, with Kalpana walking slowly before me. I think that I already knew that there was something strange going on – something supernatural.

I should say that I was only 14 at the time, so perhaps I was impressionable, but it cannot be argued that something special happened that day – in that moment. And it happened to Kalpana too, but not to Devan. You can call it the Power of the Goddess if you like, but I prefer to think of it as a realization, for obvious reasons.

I saw Kalpana in front of me almost collapse, as if a leg had given out. She might have dropped the candle. But she steadied herself and took the turn around the stone. I could then see her face, and she looked different somehow – at peace.

Then it was my turn to feel it. I am a rational person so I was not expecting anything, but it was not the empowering feeling that I had been assured of. If anything it was the opposite. I felt weaker, but I liked it. Then strangely I felt as if my chest was becoming heavy with breasts, and I felt that my penis and balls were being sucked inside my body, and that felt good too. That was the power of the goddess.

Of course, there were no physical changes. There was just the sensation of change that persisted as we took our turn around that stone. Kalpana and Dharma had exactly the same feeling. But when we left the temple, we three knew without checking that we were still boys. And we all knew that we did not want to be men.

Realization, because magic does not exist. Whatever it was, we three talked about it together in the feast that followed. This was a momentous thing. In India there is a transgender tradition with people known as Hijra or Aravani, but this does not make it acceptable. As I explained, Kerala is fairly conservative, and Kalpana and Dharma’s parents were typical. But none of us wanted to lose our beautiful long hair or go back to being just ordinary. We had to tell our families, so we decided to do it together. We did not want to be boys anymore. We wanted to be girls. Whatever we might have been before, we were now without doubt, transgendered.

And Kalpana wanted to address his family in English. She told me that if you want a statement to sound more reasoned and rational you should use English, and that this was common in bilingual households. Dharma agreed.

It was still a confrontation that none of us were looking forward to, but as it happened an opportunity arose in strange circumstance.

Kalpana’s grandmother was old and frail, but she had still played an active part in getting us all ready for the temple. But maybe she got over excited? She certainly got very emotional when she first met Kalpana as her new granddaughter. Whatever brought it about she appeared to have an attack of some kind. People around her feared the worst.

But Kalpana and I were nearby and Kalpana immediately called upon me to join her in placing own hands on her grandmother’s chest. Kalpana might have offered up some kind of prayer. It was in Hindi so I did not understand it. But it was answered. Her grandmother spluttered and then opened her eyes.

She looked up at Kalpana and said something which had everybody gasping. Then she turned to me to say the same words in English: “The power of the goddess.”

Some people say that I still have it, years after I left India. My husband certainly thinks that I do. But at that time it only served to make our announcement acceptable, at least to the Indian audience. My father did not believe it until I brought him back from his own close encounter with death, the year after we got back.

Somehow it is easier to accept that you son is now your daughter if she carries in her, the power of the goddess.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2019

Author’s Note:
This is a real thing.
“In Kerala some families dress up their sons as girls and present them to the goddess of Bhagavathy in the temple. This is clearly an important celebration, as is seen in the video. Family members have their photos taken with their 13 year old son:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXsAMMnCa6Y]
Apparently, the annual 19 day festival is popular among Indian transwomen and even visitors from overseas attend
At the beginning of this story is an image from the temple of a young man carrying the traditional temple lamp named 'Chamayavilakku'
Below is an image from the video.