Why I Haven’t Written on Indian Songs of Devi

 

 

 

Vira Chandra: I write these posts with Sanskrit as my scaffolding. Words like ugra, saumya, āveśa, svātantrya — they are the grammar I use to sketch what burns through a song when the Goddess takes it over. It is a way of pointing, of giving shape to the unspeakable. And yet, if you look across all of them, you will not find a single post on an Indian song.

This absence is not a blind spot. It is deliberate, and it is brutal. Because when I listen to the bhajans and the devotional soundtracks that crowd the Indian landscape today, I do not feel Her. The words are right. The melodies are polished. The reverence is scripted. But what trembles behind them is not Devi. It is only the form of devotion, hollowed of its force, like a ritual vessel after the flame has gone out.

Devi does not live in sweetness. She does not shimmer in saccharine perfection. She arrives in the crack of the voice, in the unbearable howl, in the places where flesh trembles and the ego armor breaks. And so, when Taylor Momsen tears her throat raw, or when Marie Brink shouts until it scorches, or when Alanis Morissette breathes refusal with her whole body shaking — there She is. Not invoked by name, not wrapped in mantra, yet unmistakable. Āveśa. Possession. Presence.

This is the paradox that shapes my writing. I use the language of Sanskrit, the map of the śāstras, the Kaula vocabulary that was born in India — and yet I trace Her footsteps mostly in Western songs. Because geography is irrelevant to Her. She does not belong to the Ganga or to the Himalayas any more than to a smoky bar in Detroit or a recording booth in Stockholm. She belongs only to fire. And She moves where that fire still burns.

 

The Texture of Presence vs. Form

 

Presence is never polite. It is never smooth. When Shakti comes, She does not arrive to please; She arrives to rupture. The mark of Her coming is not sweetness but a wound — the voice that cracks, the scream that tears through, the silence that feels unbearable because it is too alive.

That is why I cannot write about the polished bhajans of today. They are crafted like glass beads: shiny, flawless, marketable. They sing of Devi, but they do not tremble with Devi. They are rehearsed performances of devotion, a theater where Presence has been replaced by form. You can bow to them, but you cannot burn with them.

Now compare this with the raw edge of the songs I have written about. Taylor Momsen, throat shredded, howling into the abyss. Marie Brink, her voice a weapon, turning pain into flame. Alanis Morissette, trembling between intimacy and refusal, her body almost collapsing under the current that rides her. None of these women are “singing bhajans,” yet the texture is unmistakable: the jagged crack of ugra Shakti. The Goddess tearing the skin of the world to remind you She is still free.

Form without Presence is incense smoke in an empty room. Presence without form is unbearable, but it is real. I will always choose the unbearable over the hollow.

 

Where the Fire Still Burns in India

 

And yet — I would be dishonest if I said that India is entirely silent. The mainstream bhajans may feel like empty shells, but in the cracks of the land, the fire still flickers.

You can hear it in the Bauls of Bengal. Their voices are cracked, often off-key, carried by nothing but a single ektara and the madness of longing. They sing not to perform but because their bodies cannot contain the ache. There is no saccharine polish there, only raw paradox and erotic hunger turned into song. Listen to them long enough and you feel the edge of possession: the same current that makes Momsen scream is there, in a ragged Bengali refrain.

You can feel it in tribal and folk Kali songs. Shrill, ecstatic, almost dangerous. The kind sung in cremation grounds during Navaratri, or in processions where bodies whirl until they collapse. These are not “songs” in the sense of crafted art — they are invocations that border on violence. And in that violence, Devi flashes unmistakably.

And yes — you can even glimpse it in old devotional films, like the ones on Tukaram. There, before the industry learned how to polish everything into sweetness, something unguarded slipped through. The sincerity of a trembling bhakta, captured on old reels, still carries more fire than a thousand stadium bhajans today. Watching them, you feel that tug: not the perfection of form, but the imperfection of a heart ripped open.

So it is not that India is empty. It is that Her voice there now hides in the margins, in the cracks, in the places no producer can polish. She still burns — but only where the armor is already broken.

 

Why the West Sometimes Carries Her Now

 

It may sound strange to say that the Goddess roars more fiercely through Western songs than through the hymns of the land that once carried Her temples. But that is Her nature — svātantrya, sovereign freedom. She is not bound by geography, tradition, or lineage. She rides where She finds a voice raw enough to break.

The West does not sing of Kali or Durga by name, yet again and again I hear Her there. In a metal scream that rips the throat bloody. In a trembling whisper that refuses the world’s bargains. In the ecstatic fire of anime soundtracks where a fragile voice suddenly turns into vow. These are not “religious” songs — and that is precisely why She slips in. No one is waiting for Her there, so when She comes, it is possession, undeniable.

This is not a question of superiority. It is simply Her freedom. India still has the form — temples, bhajans, mantras. The West has the fracture — loneliness, despair, hunger, rage. And Devi always moves through the fracture. She chooses the wound over the ornament, the scream over the hymn.

So when I write of Taylor Momsen or Marie Brink, it is not because I wish to glorify the West. It is because there I hear Her most clearly: uninvited, unannounced, breaking through the microphone with the force of a thunderclap. That is Presence. And that is all that matters.

 

Closing Strike

 

So yes — I write with Sanskrit as my framework, yet I have not written on Indian songs. Because the fire I chase is not in the polished bhajan but in the voice that breaks. Geography is nothing. Tradition is nothing. Only Presence is everything.

If I hear it in a Baul drunk on longing, I will bow. If I glimpse it in the reels of Tukaram, I will fall silent. But if I feel it more fiercely in the howl of Taylor Momsen than in a hundred temple choirs, I will follow that howl.

Because Devi does not belong to India, or to the West. She belongs to fire. And fire burns wherever it pleases.