We don’t say her name like we’re calling on a distant deity. We say it like we’re whispering to our own mother in the next room—Chhathi Maa. Not the Brahmanical Shashthi with her polished Sanskrit prayers and golden robes, but our own Maa—raw, earthy, and close to the soil. The one who lives by the riverbanks, under neem trees, and in the stories our grandmothers told in hushed tones during dusk. Where I come from—in the tribal belts of north Bengal and its red-earth neighbors—you won’t find Chhathi Maa in temples. She lives in sacred mounds of earth, in straw huts, in bamboo groves behind the house. Sometimes, she’s just a terracotta lump shaped with care by someone’s old fingers. Sometimes, she’s drawn in rice flour on the wall—six dots, six arms, holding life, holding us.
The First Whisper of Her
She is the guardian of the womb, the midwife of the forest, the fierce protector of newborns. Every child born in our community is her gift, and every woman who conceives walks under her gaze—sometimes comforting, sometimes terrifying.
I must’ve first heard her name when my baby sister was born. My mother was weak, the baby cried all night, and the midwife had gone. My grandmother stood outside the hut, offering wild flowers, cooked rice, and water in a broken clay pot under a neem tree. She whispered, “O Chhathi Maa, don’t be angry. Let the baby live. Let my daughter live.”
No mantra. No priest. Just a woman begging another woman—older, fiercer, invisible—for mercy.
That’s Chhathi Maa.
We don’t talk about her like we talk about gods. We talk about her like we talk about the forest - Mysterious, beautiful, unforgiving if disrespected and always watching.
Not Quite a Goddess, Not Quite a Spirit
In our Bhumij and Rajbanshi villages, she’s more than a fertility goddess—she’s a force of nature. She’s the one who ties the soul to the body when a child is born. She’s the one who guards infants from evil eyes, fevers, and strange midnight cries. She’s the one who rides a wild cat—not the soft, purring kind, but a lean, fierce jungle cat that lurks near the edge of the fields.
She holds things in her six hands—some say fruits and rice, others say tools of healing and punishment. One hand always holds a child, I’ve been told. Another a branch of neem or sal. The rest? Depends who you ask. In tribal belief, the goddess’s form isn’t fixed—it changes with the land, with the dream of the one who sees her.
To us, she’s not a distant icon but a presence. You sense her when a child suddenly falls sick for no reason. You feel her when a woman dreams of a jungle and wakes up with blood in her thighs. You call her when a baby’s breath falters in sleep. And sometimes, you don’t call her—she calls you.
A Mother to the Forgotten
She especially watches over the forgotten—the babies born under thatched roofs, the women who miscarry alone, the children who play barefoot and fall sick from dust and hunger. She doesn’t care for rituals. But she cares deeply for love, respect, and intention.
Once, a Santhal friend told me how his grandmother would leave offerings at a termite mound every sixth day after a child’s birth. “Maa likes the red earth,” she’d say, placing turmeric rice, some mustard oil, and a thread. Not once did she say a mantra. But she would whisper promises—“I’ll raise this child well. I’ll protect her. Let her stay, Maa.”
This intimate, one-on-one pact with Chhathi Maa is what makes her different. She doesn’t belong to priests. She belongs to people, especially women. More so, those without power.
A Ritual Without a Name
We have no big festival for her like the Chhath Puja in Bihar. But on the sixth day after a child is born, something sacred happens. The house goes quiet. The baby is given a new cloth. A banana leaf is spread with rice, jaggery, maybe a boiled egg if the family can afford it. And someone—usually the eldest woman—sits alone near the eastern corner of the house and offers it all to her. No one calls it a ritual. But it is. An old, quiet one, passed from womb to womb.
I once asked my aunt why we don’t have a temple for Chhathi Maa. She laughed and said, “Why put a wild goddess in a box? She won’t stay.” And that’s true. She’s too wild for walls. Too fierce for hymns. Too real to be made divine.
She Still Walks Among Us
Even today, in villages along the Teesta and the Ajay rivers, I’ve seen her worshipped—not as a statue, but as a presence. Sometimes as a painted cat on a wall. Sometimes as a dream in the night where a woman is told what herbs to gather. Sometimes as a sudden intuition in a mother’s heart: “Don’t let the baby sleep alone tonight.”
In cities, maybe she’s forgotten. But in forests and fields, she’s still very much alive.
I believe she walks barefoot, wearing a red sari frayed at the ends, her hands smelling of turmeric and ash. She doesn’t speak in Sanskrit but in whispers of wind, in cries of babies, in the laughter of women by the river.
Why She Still Matters
In a world where motherhood is burdened and women still struggle to own their bodies, Chhathi Maa stands tall as a tribal declaration: birth is sacred, wild, and powerful. That women are not just givers of life—they are protectors, healers, and fierce negotiators with death.
She doesn’t ask us to pray. She asks us to remember.
Remember the forest.
Remember the body.
Remember the children who never cried, and the mothers who still wait.
Remember that the wild has a mother too—and her name is Chhathi Maa.