Immortal No More: Goddess Retires at Age 11

Shakya, one of Nepal's living goddesses, retires at age 11.

ByABC News
March 3, 2008, 12:42 PM

DELHI, India, March 3, 2008— -- Wanted: 4-year-old girl who is perfect to spend the next six or seven years as a goddess.

Reason for opening: "retirement" of current position occupant, 11-year-old Sajani Shakya, whose eligibility has lapsed since she's been symbolically married off to a fruit.

Shakya was one of Nepal's 12 "kumaris," or living goddesses girls believed to be the manifestation of the Hindu goddess Kali. They are chosen between the ages of 2 and 4 from an elite Buddhist caste and must be, well, perfect.

They have to fulfill exactly 32 perfections, none of them easily ascertained. Among them: perfect skin, the gait "of a swan," a body shaped like a banyan tree, thighs like a deer, cheeks like a lion, not afraid of the dark, and a neck like a conch shell.

"It's a very ancient tradition. Its roots go back to almost the dawn of time," Ishbel Whitaker, the director of the film "Living Goddess," told ABC News.

"It's very beautiful tradition," Whitaker said. She chronicled Nepal's young goddesses for her 2007 film as a revolution took place in Nepal against the monarchy. "It's a tradition where young girls are revered and in many ways this enhances the status of girls within the culture."

The goddess Kali is believed to leave the girls' bodies as they reach puberty, officially when they are married at an elaborate symbolic ceremony. For Shakya, her days as a deity are over.

"We have a tradition to get our girls married to a Bael (Aegle marmelos), a fruit dedicated to Lord Shiva, around the age of 10 or 11," Nhuchhe Shakya, Sajani's father, told AFP from the town of Bhaktapur, nine miles east of Katmandhu. "She knew that she was not going to remain a Kumari all her life, so she is mentally prepared. I think she will handle it well."

The girls are not born divine, and each one goes through a different process once they are identified as having celestial characteristics. Some human rights groups have criticized the Nepalese cities that choose the goddesses and then separate them from their families.