Kali
The year was 2021, and Kali had been asleep for a couple of decades. After spending eons fighting against the demons and evil beings of the world, she had decided she needed a break. There were plenty of other Gods and Goddesses that could uphold her responsibilities while she took a brief nap. After all, twenty years was hardly a blip on the radar of an immortal’s life.
On December 31, 2001, Kali rested in her divine bed, shutting down and deciding that she would wake in half a century or so. She believed she had passed her prime anyways. Not as many people were praying to her as they had in the past.
Although, her plan didn’t seem to work out as well as she had hoped. In January of 2021, there were so many people praying to her that their voices—though they still sounded like whispers from where Kali was in the Heavens—woke her up less than two-fifths of the way through her preferred nap.
“AHHH!” Kali sat up, plugging her ears and wishing there was a volume button for the prayers of humans. “What could possibly be happening that this many people need help?”
Kali got out of her bed, the one she only used once every two or three millennia, and headed towards her Godly calendar. It listed all of the events for the next five hundred years, but every so often, there was an emergency that popped up without notice. Events like these, where demons and devils overran the Earth, were ones when Kali and the other eternal beings were needed to intervene.
The dates listed showed that there had been such an emergency for months, and Kali had completely missed it. A demon, going by the name of Covid, had reached earth and infected millions. How could she possibly have missed all the cries of help from the innocent? Kali felt guilty for ignoring the pleas, and hastily grabbed her battle uniform from her closet.
Once prepared for battle, she headed towards the gates of the Heavens, where she ran into a few other Gods and Goddesses, including Indra and Vishnu.
“Ah, you’re finally awake!” Indra said, rolling his eyes. He’d never much cared for humans, and certainly wouldn’t pick up where Kali had left off while napping.
“Finally going to go deal with the Covid situation?” Vishnu asked, to which Kali nodded her head, disappointed in herself for sleeping so long.
Kali raced across the world, going from country to country to see all the death and destruction that Covid had caused. She didn’t even know where to start with finding this horrible demon. Even if she went to the origin of Covid, she knew that he wouldn’t be there anymore. Demons never stayed in one spot for long, especially if it was a pestilence demon such as this one. They tried to infect and kill as many people as possible, and it was rare that humans could combat their rampage, no matter what they tried.
She interviewed a few citizens on the street, ones in countries where Covid had already passed. She also met with humans who had survived the disease and come out of the other side stronger. Kali visited the graves of the people that she had been too late to save, sorrow scraping at her heart. Finally, after days of searching, she stumbled across the demon in America, where he had been residing for the past few months.
When she approached Covid in his nest of filth, residing in an overpopulated city, Kali took him by surprise. “It’s over,” she said, preparing her weapon.
Although Covid was strong, he was nothing like some of the other demons she had fought in the past, and she was able to take him down easily. People began recovering quickly after that, never quite knowing what had healed them.
Despite the fact that she had saved millions of people, Kali could never forget the ones she had lost. Needless to say, she never took a nap again; the demons always seemed to sneak up on Earth whenever she least expected it.
Author's Note: For this section, I decided to use the story of Kali and take it a step further by adding a modern spin. I read an article about how people would pray to the Goddess of medicine and healing to come and "slay the COVID-19 demon." In this article, which is the second one listed in my bibliography, it never explicitly said that the Goddess was Kali. I decided that I could easily make it her since they called COVID-19 a "demon." Kali is a demon slayer in the Hindu culture, and she first appears in the stories to be a slayer of evil forces. One of the main attributes that I learned Kali has is that although she exists to bring about justice, she also wants to protect the innocent. After reading the article, I thought this could easily be applied to the COVID-19 situation, especially if I personified the virus as a demon. Kali is often seen as a divine protector, who would be very helpful in this day and age. Since COVID-19 affects everyone and doesn't discriminate between the innocent and the guilty, it would definitely be a situation that Kali would fight for, as it seems to be one of the "evil forces" that dominate our lives in 2020.
Banner: Kali 19th Century from Wikipedia.
Image: The Time of Coronavirus from Marketing Week.