Kali: My Chemical Hurricane

Hindus have revered the goddess Kali for many centuries and in many ways throughout larger India.  My friend Calvin sent this card to us recently which displays her in a traditional form.

A dazzling array of devotional practices surround Kali, and the iconography representing her is equally lavish in displaying her common attributes: red rage-intoxicated eyes, lolling tongue, fangs, disheveled hair, dark blue or black skin, 4 or 10 arms, sometimes many faces, wearing a garland of human skulls, holding a severed head and a skull drinking bowl of blood on one side, and a sword and trident on the other.  She is accompanied by jackals and snakes, and often dances in triumph over her submissive consort Shiva.

She represents death, time, energy, the battlefield, change, ultimate reality . . . . . and disease.

I read an article years ago that focused on the ways in which Kali's famous powers of destruction and death are fused with her role as a protective mother in certain parts of India, especially with regard to disease.  The author pointed out that while that "big three" Hindu deities Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva dominate the major urban temples, Kali and other such fierce goddesses reign supreme throughout the smaller towns and rural areas.  People with little or no access to other kinds of medical care apparently need goddesses like these in times of disease.

It takes something more toxic than the disease to fight the disease.  Enter Kali.

This is my first week of chemotherapy for the malignant lemon-sized tumor in my chest.  I am being infused with 4 powerful drugs whose job is to find and kill the cancer cells.  Of course, they'll kill some healthy cells, too, which will push down my red blood cell counts and push out the hair on my head.  But, if they kill the loose tentacles of the malignant lemon and cut it down to size so the surgeon can cut it out permanently, I'm happy to endure the toxic storm of chemicals in my bloodstream for two months or so.

I'm not a very religious person.  I don't pray, meditate or chant.  I don't even do secularized yoga.  When pushed to label myself, I say I'm a pious agnostic.  I don't know what god or gods may or may not exist.  I don't claim to know what any deity wants or needs or demands.  All I know is that I and my world are a small part of an infinitely larger reality that precedes all of us, and will be here when we and our kind are gone.  I revere that even though I don't know what it is.  Mostly, that just means I'm silent in the face of it.

The image of Kali came to me this week, however, and at the same time that I began to use the term "hurricane" to refer to the toxic chemicals being infused into my system.  So, in a particularly "religious" way, I've concocted a sort of mythology that combines all this together into an empowering context for me to forge ahead in the weeks to come.

A hurricane of death and destruction is raging through my bloodstream.  It is combining and swirling and penetrating into every nook, membrane and cell of my system.  Seeking and destroying cancer cells.  Severing their heads, drinking their blood from their own skull bowls.  Drunkenly piercing them with fangs, intoxicated with rage.  Decorated in triumphal dance with a garland of skulls.  The jackals are crying and laughing, ready to eat the spoils.  The snakes are coiled to strike - no one gets away.

My chemical hurricane has begun.  She is coursing through my veins.  She is more toxic than the cancer, and will kill the cancer so that I alone remain.  My chemical hurricane is a category 5 and has been officially named.

Her name is Kali.