Photo Project : Soundaryalahari - Navarasa of The Durga : Manab Das

In collaboration with photographer Manav Das, Navarasa of the Goddess becomes a meditation on femininity—not as biology, not as motherhood, but as an expansive, political, spiritual force. Through my body in drag, draped in a white saree instead of the customary red, I reimagine Durga not as a distant deity frozen in victory, but as a living embodiment of feminine emotion in a fractured society.

Traditionally, Durga is clothed in red—symbol of shakti, fertility, blood, power, and battle. Red is spectacle. Red is divine authority. But I chose white. White unsettles. White mourns. White resists ornamentation. White disrupts expectation. By placing Durga in white, I wanted to question how faith operates in a society that worships goddesses yet fails living embodiments of femininity.

The project was deeply inspired by the performative intensity of Chapal Bhaduri, whose portrayals of mythological women in traditional jatra and Krishna theatre carried both devotion and subversion. His Durga was never static—she breathed, wept, raged. Drawing from that lineage, this work situates Durga within drag aesthetics, where exaggeration becomes revelation and costume becomes critique.

Using the framework of the Navarasas from the Natya Shastra, I explore femininity as a spectrum of nine emotional intensities. Femininity here is not softness alone. It is complexity. It is contradiction. It is power and vulnerability coexisting.

Adbhuta (Wonder / Awakening)

Femininity is also astonishment—the ability to transform, to reinvent faith, to reclaim space. Adbhuta is the magic of survival, the surprise of solidarity, the beauty of resistance movements that emerge from pain.

Bhayānaka (Fear / Vulnerability)

Femininity exists in a world that constantly produces anxiety. Bhayānaka acknowledges vulnerability—not to romanticize it, but to reveal structural realities. Even divinity navigates danger. Recognizing fear is not surrender; it is awareness.

Śānta (Transcendence / Inner Peace)

Śānta is not passive quietude. It is equilibrium after confrontation. It is centeredness that cannot be destabilized. Durga in white finally becomes still—not defeated, but resolved. Feminine divinity rests in its own completeness.

 Raudra (Fury)

Raudra is sacred anger. It is the fire in the eyes of Durga when injustice prevails. Feminine rage has historically been feared and suppressed; here it is divine. Raudra dismantles the myth that femininity must always be gentle.

Karuṇa (Compassion / Sorrow) Femininity carries the weight of collective grief—of silenced voices, of violated bodies, of societal betrayal. Karuṇa is the tear that refuses invisibility. Durga in white embodies this sorrow—not as weakness, but as acknowledgement of pain that must be witnessed.

Hāsya (Joy / Laughter)

There is radicality in feminine laughter. Hāsya disrupts control. It mocks patriarchy. It refuses solemn obedience. In this rasa, Durga smiles—not submissively, but knowingly. Joy becomes resistance.

Vīra (Courage / Heroism)

Courage is not the absence of fear—it is movement despite it. Vīra transforms rage into action. Feminine heroism is daily survival, protest, articulation, and refusal to shrink. Durga stands armed not just with weapons, but with voice.

Bībhatsa (Disgust / Moral Revolt)

Bībhatsa is the visceral rejection of violence and hypocrisy. How can a culture worship goddesses while dishonouring living embodiments of femininity? In this rasa, Durga recoils—not in fragility, but in ethical clarity.

Śṛṅgāra (Love / Sensuality)

Femininity begins with self-possession. Śṛṅgāra is not merely romantic love—it is the aesthetic of presence, the right to beauty, the assertion of desire. Durga in this mood is adorned not for approval but for autonomy. Femininity here claims pleasure and grace without apology.

Through this project, femininity is not reduced to motherhood, nor confined to softness. It is cosmic architecture. It contains tenderness and terror, laughter and lament, ornament and austerity.

By clothing Durga in white, I attempt to re-invite faith into a deeper conversation—one where religion does not merely celebrate the goddess in temples, but respects femininity in lived reality.

In the end, Navarasa of the Goddess is not about costume. It is about confrontation. It is about asking whether we are ready to see divinity not only in red-clad triumph, but also in white-clad reckoning.