00:00They say that the goddess has a period where she's menstruating and that's when the temple closes up.
00:05The Ambubachi Mela has just come to an end.
00:07For three days, the Kamakhya Temple in Assam remained closed because the goddess is believed to be menstruating.
00:13This is the story behind the Ambubachi Mela at Kamakhya Temple.
00:16It's almost seen as that point of Shakti where the goddess gathers her Shakti and then comes forward to create
00:28because this is the start of the monsoon.
00:31She gathers her Shakti so that she can be fertile again.
00:34To understand why the goddess menstruates, you have to go back to one of Hindu mythology's most heartbreaking stories.
00:40The story of Sati.
00:41After Sati's death, a grieving Shiva wandered the universe carrying her body doing the Tandav, the dance of destruction.
00:48To save the universe, Vishnu began severing Sati's body piece by piece.
00:52And one by one, wherever they fall, as we know that, you know, those are the Shakti beats.
00:57It's the very last one, which is the center of her body, which is where her yoni is, her pelvis
01:03is over here.
01:04And that's still on his head.
01:06And he looks up to see what's happening and then that too falls down.
01:10And it goes into this cleft in the mountains and it becomes the Kamakhya Shakti beat.
01:18Unlike most temples, Kamakhya doesn't worship an idol.
01:21The goddess is worshipped through a natural rock cleft, symbolizing the yoni, the creative source of the universe.
01:27There's actually a little cleft in the stone going downwards to represent the yoni.
01:32The yoni which becomes the matrix of the entire universe.
01:35It's to celebrate that.
01:36In a culture where menstruation is often surrounded by shame and silence, Ambubachi offers a strikingly different idea.
01:43Not that menstruation is impure, but that it is sacred because it is the source of life.
01:48People will literally go there to worship the goddess, but anybody who's just a normal woman has to be mistreated.
01:54When we look at the stories of the goddesses, that they too were mistreated at some point.
02:02But the difference is that none of our goddesses are submissive, sweet, silent types.
02:08They were fierce.
02:09They were feisty.
02:10They stood up for things.
02:11They fought back.
02:12And I think maybe we just have to channel our inner goddess now.
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