माँ काली आरती

The Hindi arati that opens Ambe, you are Jagadambe Kali — victory to Durga, bearer of the skull-bowl — and which is among the most widely sung of all the household aratis to the Goddess. Its refrain has the singers doing the very thing the song is: your qualities are what Bharati herself sings, and we all turn the lamps before you, Mother. The verses are short and paired, and their subject is her mercy rather than her terror; one calls her the one who shows compassion upon everybody and rains nectar down. It reads as what it is, a domestic text — no viniyoga, no meditation verse, no promise of fruit at the close, only the lamps and the naming.