In Malathi Jaikumar’s short story “Liberation” (from the anthology Urban Shots, edited by Paritosh Uttam), the housewife Chamundi, regularly beaten by her drunkard husband, one day visits a Mariamman temple on the outskirts of Madras. It is the last day of a three-day festival culminating in the possession of three women by the goddess. Chamundi is intrigued by the power they project and the fear they instill in the most brutish of men in the audience. She decides to throw a possessio