Rimple Sanchla's Blog, page 19

Taarein hai baarati – Peru Folklore

We all have list of favorite songs. I am sure Taarein hai baarati is in the favorite list of almost everyone. Originally it is an Andean folk music.

Andean music is a group of styles of music from the Andes region in South America.

Original chants and melodies come from the general area inhabited by Quechuas, Aymaras and other peoples who lived roughly in the area of the Inca Empire prior to European contact. This early music then was fused with Spanish music elements. It includes folklore music of parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. Andean music is popular to different degrees across Latin America, having its core public in rural areas and among indigenous populations. The Nueva Canción movement of the 1970s revived the genre across Latin America and brought it to places where it was unknown or forgotten.

Here’s the original folk version and then the 1916 version, then 1970 version, the hindi music version.

The folk music

The 1916 version

The 1970 version

1997 Bollywood music version with Indian musical instruments

El condor pasa is an 18th century Peruvian folk melody. Around 1916, Peruvian composer Daniel Alomias Robles notated this popular traditional melody and used it as the basis for an instrumental suite. The ‘My choice’ words are by Paul Simon!

El Cóndor Pasa (The Condor Goes by or Flies by) is a song from the zarzuela El Cóndor Pasa by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles written in 1913 and based on traditional Andean folk tunes.

It is possibly the best-known Peruvian song worldwide due to a cover version by Simon & Garfunkel in 1970 on their Bridge Over Troubled Water album. This cover version is called El Condor Pasa (If I Could).

Mumbai Story 2 – Dabbawalas: Lifeline of Mumbaikars Daily Lunch

About 125 years ago, a Parsi banker wanted to have home-cooked food in his office and hired someone to collect it from his home and bring it to him at work. He was the first ever Dabbawala or tiffin carrier. Many people liked the idea and the demand for Dabba delivery soared.

In the beginning the deliveries were informal, with arrangements being made between workers and Dabbas. But one day an Indian entrepreneur Mahadeo Havaji Bachche saw the opportunity and started the lunch delivery service. He started with a team of 100 Dabbawalas.

As the city grew, the demand for Dabba delivery grew too.

The system has developed and from the original 100 Dabbawalas in 1890 there is today a Mumbai Army of 5,000 Dabbawalas fulfilling the hunger of almost 200,000 workers with home-cooked food brought from their home to their office and back each day and on time.

The people who use the service tend to be middle-class citizens who, for reasons of economy, hygiene, caste and dietary restrictions or simply because they prefer whole-some food from their kitchen, rely on the dabbawala to deliver a home cooked mid-day meal.

Most of them reach work by train, which means they leave home early and may be boarding chaotically packed carriages, making carrying their own tiffin a challenge. The Dabbawalla system provides a welcome solution by collecting meals prepared at home, then getting them to the office and back.

Today let’s see the life of a dabbawala who live in slums and have a just in time delivery record be in summer, winter, floods, rains, etc. 

“People Living in Slums are the one who actually runs the city of MUMBAI”

Life of Dabbawala Vitthalbhai

Life of Shankar

See a day in the life of Shankar — one of 5,000 Dabbawalas in Mumbai responsible for delivering 200,000 fresh home-cooked lunches to Mumbai’s office workers each day. Each day, with 60kg on his head, a Dabbawala travels some 65km. This home-cooked network makes less than 1 mistake per 6 million deliveries.

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Life of Dabbawalas

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Singapore’s public housing has led to creation of jobs, safer living conditions for residents

From an economically and socially under-developed country to one of the world’s best nations, Singapore has come a long way. Lacking in natural minerals and resources, it drew its strength from being a “stable and progressive economy” to drive more foreign direct investments and private investments. The country and everything that it is today reflects public-private sector partnerships and investment in innovation and security, among other things. During its transformative journey, one of the many challenges that the city-state faced was housing for its people — this was when the government decided to step in. Government housing served two purposes: it gave Singaporeans a sense of ownership towards their country, where their family and friends lived, and also a reason for them to stay in their country and serve it.

In land-scarce Singapore, it can be hard to strike a balance between heritage preservation and necessary urban development. However, the city-state has undertaken long-term strategic planning to optimise depleting resources like land, manpower and energy. What they’ve also achieved by this means, is eradicating homeslessness.

When one hears of public housing, one imagines grimy stairwells, peeling, seepage-infested walls, unloved and uncared for public spaces — but these do not hold true when it comes to Singapore. For over 50 years now, Singapore has been transforming public housing — from basic concrete blocks to shiny and slick high-rises. Singapore started its mass public housing project in the 1940s, led by the Singapore Improvement Trust, which by 1959 had built more than 20,000 flats. When the former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew rose to power towards the end of the 1950s, he built 30,000 more flats in less than three years. And today, the authorities say there are a more than a million.

In 1964, the government introduced the Home Ownership for the People Scheme to give citizens a tangible asset in the country and a stake in nation-building. This push for home ownership also improved the country’s overall economic, social, and political stability. In 1968, to help more citizens become home owners, the government allowed the use of Central Provident Fund (CPF; the equivalent of India’s Employer’s Provident Fund) savings for the down payment, and to service the monthly mortgage loan installments. This, together with other schemes and grants introduced over the years, has made home ownership highly affordable, say officials at the Housing and Development Board in Singapore.

Singapore before Public Housing Project

The government, which owns 90 percent of the land, promoted widespread home ownership to knit together an island-nation populated by ethnic Chinese, Indians and Malays. The vast housing system shocks visitors from every nation — it is clean, peaceful, crime-free and every three to five years undergoes a redesigning drive and at times, re-modelling. The public homes of Singapore use the technology and innovation at their service to build lives around them and remind some of the homes built across the US and Europe in the ’60s.

The Housing and Development Board of Singapore conceptualise towns: an example of this is Toa Payoh. A “mature” residential town located in the northern part of Singapore, Toa Payoh is the granddaddy of the towns in Singapore. Home to at least 1,07,100 residents in 37,358 flats, the Toa Payoh town got Singapore’s first Mass Rapid Transit. “These aren’t just neighbourhoods, they are their own little cities, you see,” said a resident on condition of anonymity. “Super markets, restaurants, banks, drinking holes, schools, gardens, lakes… you name it, you have it. All of that is just a short bus ride away. So, it doesn’t matter how far you live from the Central business district. And there is no crime.”

Singapore After Public Housing Project

Going further north on the Tanjong Punggol peninsula in the North East Region of Singapore, is Punggol, a quiet, green suburb lined with lakes which is now HDB’s newest township. It’s is also touted to be Singapore’s mini Silicon Valley. Punggol will become the heart of digital and cyber-security industries and is set to create 28,000 new jobs in tech and Information Technology.

As of 2018, there are about a million public homes in Singapore largely concentrated in two dozen new towns which helm the city’s coastal zone. All the homes come with a 99-year lease which are sold at lower-than-market prices. Applicants must wait three or four years for the construction to be completed.

Singapore has no homelessness and compared to other rich cities — London, New York, Hong Kong — HDB homes are more affordable, cleaner and safer. The deal works for the state too. According to reports, in 2015-16 the treasury put aside S$1.8 billion, or 2.4 percent of the national budget, for housing, which was enough to cover HDB’s annual deficit. HDB’s budget was $17 billion and it benefits from government loans but also borrows from banks and the bond market. People’s Action Party, which has been running the country for over five decades, has its housing scheme to thank for its political longevity.

Every Singaporean feels the need to play a social role, a resident shopping at the Waterway Point, an upcoming shopping centre in Punggol said. Owning a home, being part of the nation that they help build, supports the government’s agenda of nation built by their own, a great deal. However, strict rules about who can buy a house and government’s use of control to decide how an average Singaporean lives their life, raises several questions. Married couples are granted priority to own a home, a clause justified to raise country’s low birth rate. Those who are single can apply for their own flats but only if they are still unmarried by the age of 35.

This visit was facilitated by The Singapore International Foundation

Original Post link: Firstpost World News

Catch-22 Book Review

Catch-22 is a tragicomic novel specifying the efforts of a man named Yossarian, a captain in the US Army Air Force, to avoid flying any more combat missions. The novel takes place on Pianosa, a small Italian island, during the Second World War.

At first he tries to get medically grounded on the basis of insanity, but Doc Daneeka, the group’s medic, argues that Yossarian cannot be insane if he wants to avoid death by getting out of having to fly. This is termed a Catch-22. Yossarian spends the remainder of the novel trying to combat the Catch-22 and convince the military brass that he should be sent home. Every time a soldier meets his target of flying the number of missions, colonel would increase the target and it becomes a never-ending scenario for each soldier.

Highlight of the novel is its dark comedy. Many characters in Catch-22 undergo moral crises, wherein they must decide between self-interest (a concern for their own safety and wellbeing) or altruism (a concern for the wellbeing of others).

But it is Yossarian’s personal development, his progression from self-interest to altruism that defines the moral arc of Catch-22. In the beginning, Yossarian is content to forge the chaplain’s signature, resist his bombing runs, and otherwise either plan tricks to avoid responsibility or “go with the flow” in his time with the Army. But as his friends—including Clevinger, Orr, Nately, and Dunbar—either die or disappear, Yossarian’s attitude changes. He loses Luciana and Nurse Duckett; he learns that Aarfy has committed rape and murder; he sees scenes of total destruction in Rome, and of great human suffering. He realizes, like Dunbar, that he can no longer bomb innocent civilians for no reason, just to please his superiors.

Yossarian’s personal development reaches a climax in his full recollection of Snowden’s death. The destruction he had seen in Rome – disturbing scenes like including animal abuse, child abuse, rape, and murder, he decides that he doesn’t want anything to do with all these terrible people.  Snowden’s death and Rome make him present to frailty of human beings.

It begins with humor but as the story moves we come across bureaucracy of the Army heads, fears, weaknesses, morality, immoralities, confusion of soldiers.

Characters are really very interesting and they will live in your memories forever – Major Major, Orr, Doc Daneeka and other characters are Milo Minderbinder, Chaplain Tappman, Chief White Halfoat, Flume, Aarfy, Nately, Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn, General Dreedle and Peckem, General Dreedle’s son-in-law, Dunar, Soldier in white, Snowden, Major Danby, Clevinger, Havermeyer, Hungry Joe, McWatt, Nately, Scheisskopf (his craze for parades), Wintergreen, Major ______ de Coverley, Captain Black, Kid Sampson, Piltchard and Wren, Nurses Duckett and Cramer, Corporal Whitcomb, Dobbs (his part is small but very funny), Major Sanderson.

Novel is so brilliant that I can write separate articles for each characters / sub-plots/ humor / morality / human grounds / emotions, etc. But I will not write so much.

MY TAKE: The theme of the novel is to not live by anyone’s laws but your own.

Spoiler ahead: (don’t read next part if you don’t want any spoilers)

At the end of the novel, Yossarian has had a change of heart. He now sees that he can’t be concerned merely with savings himself from war if the means of doing so saves only him. He sees that he has a duty to the other soldiers who are also being killed by the war, and he implicitly condemns all the selfish actions of those in the war—whether Milo’s profiteering or Cathcart’s careerism. He comes to his most important realization. Orr understood it all the whole time: the only way to escape the catch-22 of the military is to run away to neutral territory, to a place where the military can no longer control one’s decisions—can no longer continue trying to kill him by forcing him to fly missions. Yossarian at first hesitated to run, because he felt it would make him a coward, but now he realizes it would be cowardice simply to accept the new orders he is given by Cathcart and Korn, to fly more missions without objection, or to accept their deal and go home.

The novel has many instances of extended metaphors, such as Doc Daneeka. Doc Daneeka is in charge of medical officers, and is reported to be dead, because he was signed up to be flying in a plane that crashed. He actually wasn’t, and was alive, but the Army stopped paying him and no one listened to him because he was “dead”. The whole situation is a metaphor on how the Army wrote the laws back then, and even something as obvious as a man being alive or dead was complicated through the official reports.

Another metaphor is the Soldier in White. The Soldier in White is a soldier who was graphically wounded, and put in a full body cast. He never moved or talked, and eventually dies. Another man in the same condition arrives, and he is regarded as the same person. No one cares. This was criticism to the Army for treating people like commodities and goods instead of people. Nobody cared whether the man lived or died because he was of no use anymore to them.

Mumbai Story 1 – Rani and Wahida

The story of Rani and Wahida

Textile workers in slums

Rani’s family lived in one of the peripheral slums of the Basti called Prem Nagar Slums, one of the most deprived precincts and also the most crowded. The average monthly income of a family there barely exceeds 3000 Rupees. Rani lived with her mother, two unmarried sisters and a married sister and her family in their two rooms arranged one on top of the other. The married sister occupied the top room. Half of the bottom room was occupied by a bed and the remaining floor space at the back was used for cooking, storage and for sitting around. The room had windowless walls on three sides and only opened onto the street in front. Rani’s mother had carved out a small shop selling cigarettes in the front of the room. There was no attached toilet or any piped water supply in this house.

When she was 11 years old, Rani kept a journal for me for a week, recording her day before she went to sleep. This account of her life provides some valuable glimpses about the multiple roles a girl child plays in this community. Rani was responsible for fetching milk for tea for her family every morning from Hasan Bhai’s tea stall. She would meet and chat with friends and neighbours here. In poor families such as hers, food is purchased on a daily basis, as there are no refrigerators for storing groceries.

Rani was a good practising Muslim. She washed herself in the morning and routinely offered all five prayers, or namaz, throughout the day. She called on her friend Meher, who lived around the corner, every morning and walked with her to non-formal school for adolescent girls. Rani performed daily household chores and shopping for the family, fetching cigarettes, snacks and groceries both for her mother’s shop and for home. Rani acted as guardian to her little niece, playing with her, feeding her, looking after her. She was a part-time shopkeeper, and sat in their small house-front shop to relieve her mother of her shopkeeping duties for some time every day.

Rani was a good student; other girls came to her for homework help. She bought sweets with small change, liked to play with domestic pets and with friends in the street in front of her house, in the nearby open spaces including the yard of the public toilet across from her house, in Meher’s back yard, and in the city park that was just outside the wall that separated her street from the park. Rani’s two older unmarried sisters took care of the cooking, cleaning and washing.

Rani had a friend called Wahida – unlike her, an orphan who had grown up in many households. Wahida split her time between the houses of her older siblings, her grandmother and her friend Rani’s family. Her days were filled with household chores, besides attending the non-formal Hope school and evening religious studies. Wahida also attended a vocational training course in tailoring and sewing every afternoon.

Both Rani and Wahida had grown up in severe poverty. Rani’s father had died of a drug overdose after reducing the family to penury. Rani’s mother barely earned a dollar a day from her shop and found it difficult to pay even the two rupees that would have bought Rani a hot lunch at school. Wahida had no one to watch over her and depended on charity for meals and a roof for the night. Yet both girls not only survived but thrived in this slum which represents one of the best examples of social capital in an urban neighborhood. Seven years later, Rani and Wahida have both successfully completed school and are undergoing training as nursery teachers. Wahida is also working as an assistant to a city physiotherapist.

People like Rani and Wahida take vocational training in tailoring, etc and are actually the source workers for your designer clothes.

Connect with 0 Slums Mumbai on Facebook / Twitter / Instagram – @0SlumsMumbai

0 Slums Mumbai – Public Housing Awareness

Public Housing

The terms “affordable housing” and “public housing” are frequently used interchangeably, causing a lot of confusion in the process. They are actually two very different.

Affordable housing refers to housing units that are affordable by that section of society whose income is below the median household income. Houses are owned by the households. Families buy the homes at affordable prices.

The concept of Public Housing was introduced by the United States government to provide housing for low-income families, disabled persons, and the elderly. These families or persons must meet certain eligibility requirements to participate in the program and may be required to pay a nominal amount of rent. The units are considered public because they are funded, owned, and administered by government authorities.

How Public Housing Transformed New York City 1935-67

 

 

The Slums of Mumbai

Everywhere on the ground lay sleeping natives– hundreds and hundreds. They lay stretched at full length and tightly wrapped in blankets, heads and all. Their attitude and rigidity counterfeited death.

– Mark Twain, on a nocturnal drive through Bombay in 1896.

The Early History of Slums

Late in the 17th century, Gerald Aungier tried to attract traders and artisans to Bombay. As a result, the population grew six-fold in the fourteen years between 1661 and 1675. Some of the more prosperous traders built houses inside the British fort. The rest lived in crowded “native-towns” around the walls. These were probably the first slums to grow in Bombay.

The problem of overcrowding certainly remained through the 18th century. A count made in 1794 found 1000 houses inside the fort walls and 6500 immediately outside.

All over the world, the 19th century saw the growth of slums give the lie to the idea of progress brought on by large-scale industrialisation and the understanding and control of diseases. Bombay was no exception. The cotton boom, followed by the rapid growth of mills and shipping drew a large population from the rest of the country into a city ill-equipped to deal with them. In the middle of the 19th century slums grew around the mills and other places of employment.

The Birth of Slums

Historically, slums have grown in Bombay as a response to a growth of population far beyond the capacity of existing housing. Migrants are normally drawn to the city by the huge disparity between urban and rural income levels. Usually the residents of these densely populated enclaves live close to their place of work. The residential area itself does not provide employment.

Bombay knows another reason for the formation of slums. As the city grew, it took over land that was traditionally used for other purposes. The Koli fishermen were displaced during the development of the harbour and port. Those driven out of the fishing villages improvised living space that was often far shabbier than before. This process continues even now, at the end of the 20th century.

On the other hand, some villages were encysted by the city growing around them. Dharavi, originally a village with a small tanning industry, has become a slum in this fashion. Many of the older slums in Byculla and Khar were initially separate villages, with their own traditional industries.

 

Partition – Majority of Punjab was allotted to Pakistan

I came across an old map of Punjab and immediately thought of writing this article. How many people know that who drew this border? The answer is Cyril Radcliffe.

Cyril Radcliffe

The information provided to Cyril Radcliffe who drew the borders and divided India and Pakistan once said that the information given to him about the geography, demographics and even the maps were inaccurate and in some cases even false.

He said that the job of drawing borders was very difficult and it was made even more difficult by the inadequate equipment, maps, and information provided to him. There were no large-scale maps and the information about the geography was inadequate and often wrong. About Punjab, he specifically said he noticed that the 5 rivers in Punjab had a tendency to run several miles away from the beds in the maps given to him by the survey department.

He also said that the information about the demographics was also wrong. And that all this information was falsified by both the parties to falsify the opposition’s claims.

The price was however paid by millions of people who lost their lives during partition.

Apart from religion; it was demography, ignorance, and callousness.

As you can see from the map above; undivided Punjab included the princely states of Patiala, Kapurthala, Jind, Bahawalpur, the Hill States(present-day Himachal Pradesh); stretching all the way to Gurugram(Gurgaon, present-day Haryana, NCR). Lahore was the capital of the undived Punjab; where Muslims were in a slight majority(52%) over the Hindus and the Sikhs who controlled most of the commerce.

After the passage of the Indian Independence Act(1947); Clement Attlee’s Labour government was in a hurry to exit its dominion. So; this consequently resulted in some of the most callous acts in global history. Cyril Radcliffe was given the chairmanship of the two boundary committees. He submitted his partition map on 9 August 1947, which split Punjab and Bengal almost in half. The new boundaries were formally announced on 14 August 1947—the day of Pakistan’s independence and the day before India became independent.

Radcliffe’s efforts saw some 14 million people—roughly seven million from each side—flee across the border when they discovered the new boundaries left them in the “wrong” country. Some 500,000 people died in the violence that ensued after independence, and millions more were injured.

The Punjab – the region of the five rivers east of Indus: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — consists of interfluvial doabs or tracts of land lying between two confluent rivers.

Doab (from dō, “two” + āb, “water” or “river”) is a term used in India and Pakistan for the “tongue,” or tract of land lying between two converging, or confluent, rivers.

These are the Sind-Sagar doab (between Indus and Jhelum), the Jech doab (Jhelum/Chenab), the Rechna Doab (Chenab/Ravi), the Bari doab (Ravi/Beas), and the Bist doab (Beas/Sutlej) In early 1947, in the months leading up to the deliberations of the Punjab Boundary Commission, the main disputed areas appeared to be in the Bari and Bist doabs, although some areas in the Rechna doab were claimed by the Congress and Sikhs. In the Bari doab, the districts of Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Lahore, and Montgomery (Sahiwal) were all disputed.

After arriving in India on 8 July 1947, Radcliffe was given just five weeks to decide on a border.Each boundary commission consisted of 5 people – a chairman (Radcliffe), 2 members nominated by the Indian National Congress and 2 members nominated by the Muslim League.

All lawyers by trade, Radcliffe and the other commissioners had all of the polish and none of the specialized knowledge needed for the task. They had no advisers to inform them of the well-established procedures and information needed to draw a boundary. Nor was there time to gather the survey and regional information. The absence of some experts and advisers, such as the United Nations, was deliberate, to avoid delay. Britain’s new Labour government deep in wartime debt, simply couldn’t afford to hold on to its increasingly unstable empire.

The absence of outside participants—for example, from the United Nations—also satisfied the British Government’s urgent desire to save face by avoiding the appearance that it required outside help to govern—or stop governing—its own empire.

Prior to his appointment; Radcliffe had never been to India, and after the partition never came back(partly due to guilt; and he was also a little afraid). Radcliffe justified his casual division with the fact that whatever he would do; people were going to suffer. Before leaving India; he destroyed most of his papers.

To maintain his impartiality; he kept a distance from Mountbatten. As for the fact that India had a larger population to feed; this simply did not figure in the map-makers mindscape. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were evenly spread in the Punjab; and most places witnessed large-scale migrations on both sides of the imaginary Radcliffe line. He initially decided to give Lahore to India but backtracked as Calcutta was going to be part of the republic. Radcliffe wanted to balance out the whole play; regardless of its human quotient. To give India access to Kashmir; Gurdaspur was awarded at the last moment. So; to sum up it was largely a case of cartography deciding history and destiny.

Mass murderers in History

The 20th century witnessed death and slaughter on an unprecedented scale. It was the century of the Holocaust and two World Wars; of communist, Nazi, fascist and military dictators who between them killed more than 100 million people.

The casualties of conflicts involving the U.S., the UK and France in Korea, Algeria, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq are excluded on the grounds that, though many would view these as unjust colonial wars by ‘imperialist’ powers, they weren’t fought by dictators.

Indeed, when the wars proved unpopular or unwinnable, they were brought to an end by the pressure of public opinion.

Most popular name in the list mass murderer is Adolf Hitler. But, you will be shocked to know that his name in the world’s mass murderer comes third on the list. Who are the first two people then?

1. MAO ZEDONG

China (1949-76) Regime Communist Victims 60 million

China’s so-called ‘Great Helmsman’ was, in fact, the greatest mass murderer in history. Most of his victims were his fellow Chinese, murdered as ‘landlords’ after the communist takeover, starved in his misnamed ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958-61, or killed and tortured in labour camps in the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties. Mao’s rule, with its economic mismanagement and continual political upheavals, also spelled poverty for most of China’s untold millions. The country embraced capitalism long after his death.

2. JOSEPH STALIN

Soviet Union (1929-53) Regime Communist Victims 40 million

Lenin’s paranoid successor was the runner-up to Mao in the mass-murder stakes. Stalin imposed a deliberate famine on Ukraine, killed millions of the wealthier peasants – or ‘kulaks’ – as he forced them off their land, and purged his own party, shooting thousands and sending millions more to work as slaves and perish in the Gulag.

3. ADOLF HITLER

Germany (1933-45) Regime Nazi dictatorship Victims 30 million

The horror of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship lies in the uniqueness of his most notorious crime, the Holocaust, which stands alone in the annals of inhuman cruelty. It was carried out under the cover of World War II, a conflict Hitler pursued with the goal of obtaining ‘Lebensraum’. The war ended up costing millions of lives, leaving Europe devastated and his Third Reich in ruins.

Ninth Avatar of Goddess Durga – GODDESS SIDDHIDATRI

For destroying the cruelty of evil demons on the earth and for the welfare of the whole of humanity, goddess Durga descended on earth as her ninth form of Sri Siddhidatri. This form of the goddess is the epitome of completeness and prosperity. She is the suppressor of all the demons and giver of desired fruits to her devotees. Goddess Durga had killed all the egoistic demons between the first and the ninth day of the Navratri by taking various forms. As a result, all the auspicious tasks of humans and devatas gets accomplished. Hence this form of the goddess is popularly known as Siddhi-Daatri in the world. For fulfillment of all the desires and efforts of both humans and celestial beings, goddess Siddhidatri had manifested on an auspicious day. She is the giver of liberation and is the most auspicious. Because she is the giver of the highest goal of the human life (salvation) she is considered as Siddhidatri and is worshiped in this form. She if four armed goddess, in the upper right hand she holds a chakra and lower right hand is contained with mace. In the upper left hand she holds a conch and in the lower left hand, she holds a lotus flower. She has a divine garland in her neck. She is seated on a lotus altar. She has accepted the lion as her main vehicle. Goddess is the dispeller of obstacles, pains, diseases, sorrow, and fears. She is the one who readily blesses her devotees with abundance.

Mythological tale of Goddess Siddhidatri

Throughout the Puranic literature, we find many instances related to goddess Sri Siddhidatri. There are some important instances given in Durga Saptashati. Because of the power of this goddess one gets success, wealth, and prosperity in the lift. One is also able to remove the rifts of the family and enhances love and affection in the family. Hence one must understand that she is the omnipresent power of the universe. In one of the stories, the goddess herself reveals to the demon that who else exists in this world except me? All the forms of the goddess are verily me and they enter back in me. Forms of goddesses like Brahmani etc. then merged into the body of goddess Ambika. Then the only one remained was Sri Ambika. It was only me who manifested into many forms with my grandeur and power and they merged back in me. Now I am standing alone on the battlefield, now you also get ready for the battle. Then a great battle started between the goddess and demon Shumbha and also between devas and demons. Sages said that when great demon Shumbha was approaching near the goddess, she took her trident and pierced his chest after which he fell down. With this mighty attack, he was killed. When he fell on the ground he shook all the mountains, islands, oceans, and the entire earth. After the death of this demon, the whole world was happy and stable again, the sky also started to appear clearly than before.  The disastrous events such as rains and meteorite showers were then immediately stopped. After the death of Shumbha, the rivers also started flowing back in their natural course.