The ending of Maa revolved around Ambika's efforts to save her daughter, Shweta, from the clutches of Amshaja. How did it come to that? Well, thousands of years ago, Maa Kali beheaded the "asur" called Raktabeej. When a drop of blood fell in Chandrapur, Amshaja was born, and he began sexually harassing the village girls. Unable to bear this cascade of atrocities, a "bhakt" of Maa Kali prayed to the goddess to give him the power to fight Amshaja.
When the goddess granted the devotee's request, Amshaja disappeared into the shadows and waited for her nemesis's daughter to come of age. Once this happened, Amshaja impregnated the devotee's daughter, thus giving him two options: allow his daughter to give birth to Amshaja's child and bring about the destruction of the world, or kill her. Since the devotee chose the second option, everyone in his family tree continued to do the same over the centuries. Shubhankar moved from Chandrapur to Calcutta and broke the chain. But since the village sarpanch, Joydeep, wanted to fulfill the mission Amshaja had initiated, he lured Shubhankar and his family back to Chandrapur and kidnapped Shweta.
Director: Vishal Furia
Writers: Ajit Jagtap, Aamil Keeyan Khan, Chaitanya Mohan
Stars: Yaaneea Bharadwaj, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Roopkatha Chakraborty
There is much confusion about Maa, starting with the link between Joydeep and Amshaja. So, initially, Amshaja was a demon living in the Chandrapur forest, and Joydeep, son of the then village headman, was just a flesh-and-blood human being. After killing Shubhankar's twin, Amshaja visited him and became his slave. But, I suppose, after serving Amshaja for four decades, he became Amshaja himself. I don't know how that worked, but Joydeep considered Amshaja and Raktabeej his gods, but he also possessed Amshaja's powers.
The film doesn't offer a completely convincing explanation for that transition, so we're left to accept that through his servitude to Amshaja—which involved watching over Shubhankar's son, killing Shubhankar and his father, and possessing the girls of Chandrapur—Joydeep became Amshaja. Now, just as the original Amshaja had discovered that the only way to advance in his lineage and become all-powerful was to impregnate the daughter of Maa Kali's devotee, Joydeep also realized that he had to rape Shweta, the last descendant of that devotee, to become a god. Now, I don't know why Joydeep waited for Ambika to perform the ceremonial worship of Maa Kali and gain the goddess's power, for that gave him the advantage in his inevitable fight against Joydeep.
I guess he wanted the mother to witness her daughter being sexually abused, and that demented mindset ended up being the cause of her downfall. Thanks to the "preparation time" he gave Ambika, she managed to channel Maa Kali's power and not only free all the girls Joydeep had possessed, but also turned Amshaja and its forest of darkness into ash. However, that didn't stop Joydeep from planting his seed in Shweta's womb. Therefore, even though Amshaja was dead, Ambika faced the same dilemma that Maa Kali devotee had faced eons ago: allow Shweta to give birth to Amshaja's child, which would potentially destroy the world, or kill Shweta and save the world from eternal damnation. During Maa's final moments, we saw Ambika free the minds of the girls possessed by Joydeep.
Then, she beat her brutally and literally ripped her heart out of her chest—likely a reference to Mola Ram from Temple of Doom—just to make sure Joydeep was dead. Afterward, Ambika led all the girls back to the village and placed Shweta’s unconscious body on the pall where girls had been sacrificed for centuries. The priestess—who had refused to kill Shubhankar’s twin and was therefore raped by Joydeep and branded a witch—touched Shweta’s womb and said that the seed of Amshaja was growing in the girl’s belly. Ambika was about to kill her own daughter to save the village and the rest of the world, but that was when the souls of all the previously murdered girls emerged from the earth and ascended to heaven, where Maa Kali stood, overlooking Chandrapur. The priestess touched Shweta's womb again and said that Amshaja's seed had been destroyed because Ambika had correctly interpreted the doctrine of Maa Kali, something that the men of Shubhankar's family had intentionally misinterpreted as instructions to commit femicide.
So, as I understand it, Maa Kali never ordered her devotee to kill his daughter just because she was pregnant with Amshaja. Amshaja forced that decision on him. He never went to Maa Kali for a solution. Instead, he simply decided to kill his daughter, who was not guilty of any crime. Perhaps if he had gone to Maa Kali, she would have helped him abort. Now, since that devotee chose to kill his daughter, his descendants claimed that he did so because Maa Kali had ordered him to. Therefore, they established a law that all members of his family must sacrifice their daughters as soon as they were born to keep Amshaja at bay.
These men never attempted to fight for their daughters or ask their beloved goddess (whom they call mother) for advice, as they knew that doing so would jeopardize patriarchal control over the village. Therefore, Maa Kali stopped appearing in anyone's visions. If anyone tried to save her daughter by venturing into the forest, Amshaja would kill them. When Ambika set foot in Chandrapur, I suppose Maa Kali identified her potential and blessed her with her powers. Yes, Ambika was ready to kill with the "kharga," but hesitated after proving herself willing to do anything to save Shweta. Perhaps that's why Maa Kali granted Shweta a free (magical) abortion, which freed the girl and the villagers (both alive and dead) from Amshaja's clutches. Did that undo all the damage Amshaja had caused? Well, as seen in the mid-credits scene, Vanraj of Shaitaan discovered that Amshaja's ashes were immensely potent, thus implying that while the combined powers of Maa Kali and Ambika had ended the battle against Amshaja, the war against evil was far from over.
Maa offered a lot of exposition, but few philosophical insights. It was very blunt with its themes, but not entirely explicit with what it meant. Therefore, I'm not entirely sure what Vishal Furia and his team were trying to convey. I can only offer my interpretation. The first and most obvious theme the film tackled was patriarchy (upper-caste patriarchy, to be precise). Despite praying to a goddess, the men in Shubhankar's family purposefully misinterpreted Maa Kali's doctrine so that only males would be born into the family. And that mentality likely infected the minds of the villagers as well.
While Shubhankar's father had no problem with a priestess performing ceremonial worship of the goddess, Joydeep couldn't even tolerate it. He despised her for being Maa Kali's favorite, yet he still raped her because he knew the social stigma surrounding that heinous act. Which brings us to rape culture. I'm not the first person to say this, and I certainly won't be the last, but rape isn't about sexual pleasure; it's about exercising power. So to say that Joydeep's actions were a case of unrequited love would be wrong.
He envied her because she was Maa Kali's favorite, not him. Since there was no way around it, he decided to force himself on the priestess to prove that she wasn't all-powerful; he was. The same could be said of Amshaja. He didn't sexually abuse girls just because he enjoyed it. He liked the atmosphere of fear it created, and he enjoyed the fact that humans chose to kill their own kind rather than gang up on him. The victims and potential victims of his crimes suffered more than he did for a long time because patriarchy teaches us to hold women more responsible than men.
And that brings us to the topic of abortion. Look, I'm openly pro-choice, not anti-choice. So, I'm glad to see a film centered on patriarchy, rape culture, women, and goddesses all saying the same thing (at least from my perspective). It's basically reimagining a deity, misunderstood by everyone except Bengalis, to talk about victim-shaming and blaming, femicide, and abortion. The film shows us that even if we start now, it will take a long time to eradicate rape culture in West Bengal and the rest of India. I mean, as you read this sentence, the aforementioned state is facing yet another incident of sexual violence that has shaken the nation to its core. Sexual abusers won't disappear overnight, especially when the system backs them up. So, at the very least, we can support women, give them the support they need, and normalize abortion (especially from a legal standpoint) so that no girl or woman is forced to give birth to a rapist's child. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Maa.
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