Page 12 - THE CHANGING WORLD OF RAY

dess, for instance in the form public worship, songs, and

of Uma: ‘Shiva’s gentle wife decorations, before it is

and the daughter of Mena- thrown in the Ganges at the

ka and Himala-

ya, who, standing

in for the missed

daughters of youth,
evokes real longing’

(McDermott 2011:

76), and/or in the

form of the ascend-

ing Parvati, who

‘went to the moun-
tain and laid aside

her ornaments and

put on garments

made of the bark of

trees’ (O’Flaherty

1975: 256).
Furthermore, Doya’s final end of the festivities. This

exit is identical with the ethnographically abstract

closing ceremonies of Durga/ portrayal of the rite of pas-

Kali’s celebration, which are sage of the persona of the

depicted in a documenta- Ma, a masculine archetyp-

ry style in the opening se- al symbol of Motherhood,

quence of the film. Creation and Destruction,
portrays the evolution of the

The opening credits abstract faceless form of the

of Devi begin with a close-up symbol into a ritual mask

of a faceless white statue of and then into a social perso-

Ma, evolving into a sacred na becoming alive through

mask, and finally to a statue ritual. It echoes Mauss’s

of Kali on a tableau, becom- essay on ‘the notion of the
ing alive in a temple though person’ and the ‘notion of