What our birds and beasts tell us about our Gods

If you cross Delhi's Yamuna river, you will find a little colony of artists. On the fringes of Delhi's Geeta Colony, artists use clay, straw and wood to craft the Goddesses Kali and Lakshmi for worship during Diwali.

Kali is an avatar who is angry and also ashamed, she is beautiful but also grotesque. Looking at her pratima is like a celebration of excess: her skin is painted a deep, royal black, her protruding tongue is the most startling of reds, and blood stains embroider the asuras she slays and carries on her body. For our home puja, I was in Geeta Colony to pick up the idol. Kali stands on Shiv, who lay himself at her feet to stop her from killing, and his holy cobra coils around her. The iconography is rich and luscious, and follows closely on the heels of the Durga Puja.

As a child, Durga Puja was overwhelming, and a cultural champion. An enormous, sumptuous feast for the eyes. The idol of Durga towers above the mortal, and she is worshipped almost as a pantheon, with her children, Kartik, Lakshmi, Saraswati and Ganesh tucked close to her. As a child looking at this enormous, crowded frame, I could see the vahanas peeking out, the beasts and birds who were consorts to the Devas and Devis. Goddess Durga had her roaring, snapping Asiatic Lion, resplendent with a golden mane. Durga's son, Kartik had his teal peacock, with its long tail sashaying near his feet, or sometimes spread out like a fan. The Goddess Lakshmi had a serious looking, bemused owl, and her sister, Saraswati, had a snowy swan.

The portrayal of Durga slaying Mahisasura is like a hunt: her simha attacks Mahisasura's buffalo, and she holds his human form down with her spear. Watching the idol arrive each year was watching the venue of the puja transform with colour, ideas, and possibilities. It was a scene of battle, of triumph, of a giddy invasion of tales. We worshipped all of it at once, looking at colours, brocade, weapons and three eyes in one head.

But one question remained: we don't encounter Gods in real life, but we do encounter their steeds. What are their stories?

Lakshmi's unassuming owl has the saddest of stories. Each year this time on Diwali, owls - particularly white owls that look closest to Lakshmi's iconography - are trapped, caught, and sacrificed. The altar is one of black magic, the raision de etre is pleasing the Gods, and netting prosperity. Wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC has found that the scale of owl sacrifice for black magic is growing and is largely unchecked. Lakshmi's owl is wise and a statue, but real owls are nocturnal. Detecting fluctuations in their populations is a difficult task. Prosperity for the owls themselves is not an arbitrator in devotion.Durga's simha, her lion, raises basic questions of geography. Was the lion, now found only in the neck of Gujarat, once so common that it graced many of Durga's idols, in several dynasties of India that shaped her idols? Can we hope for a resurgence of the threatened lions in other states as well, or will Gujarat continue to monopolise lions, refusing to grant a few to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh? Will the lion ever return to other states of India?

Kartik's peacock perhaps comes closest to being omnipresent. Our national bird graces the lawns of Rashtrapati Bhawan and a farmer's fields alike, and is always in the public eye. But its holiness is a source of death. So holy is the peacock feather that the bird is hunted and poisoned for its plumes, so much so that the Ministry of Environment and Forests considered banning any sale of peacock feathers in India. Godowns of peacock feathers, full from floor to ceiling, have been found in Agra. This is bolstered by an illegal trade that hunts down the bird for its beauty - and its sacredness.

Sarawasti's swan is a mystery. Swans are not that common in India, yet several references to "hans" find themselves in our texts. Perhaps the reference is to a goose? Wild geese, their necks arched and their long wings open in a yawn, fly from other countries to visit India each migratory season. Some of them cross the Himalayas, the mountains favoured by many Gods. Each year, they transform the wetlands they land in. Each year, more and more wetlands shrink, and migratory ducks, geese and swan visit smaller and smaller islands.

Sacredness is a death knell. Sadly, sacredness is leading to profanity. To indiscriminate poaching and slaying, and sometimes to lame excuses for status quo. Cobras defanged and starved for Naga Panchami, peacocks killed for "blessed" artefacts, owls slayed to please the Gods (and Goddesses) are the death of what we actually deem divine.

While the Gods remain elusive, the twin-headed dogmas of laziness and indifference are hounding their consorts. The sumptuous tales their worship brings masks diametrical contrasts in reality.Meanwhile, Ganesha's rat becomes fatter, subsisting well on decadence and an excess of garbage.