WRITER, ART HISTORIAN & CURATOR
Alka Pande is an art historian and curator with two post-graduation degrees one in history and the second in history of art. Followed by a PhD in Art History and a Post-Doc in Critical Art Theory, niversity of London. She has authored numerous books and curated many national and international exhibitions. She is Recipient of the Charles Wallace Award, Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by French government, Australian-India Council Special Award, L’Oreal Paris Femina Women award and Amrita Sher-Gil Samman. urrently, Dr. Pande is a consultant art advisor and curator of the Visual Arts llery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
The account of Devi Sati and Lord Shiva finished shockingly with the passing of Sati. A furious and melancholy Shiva took Sati's dormant body and began the 'Rudra Tandava' or the dance of pulverization. To save the world, Lord Vishnu utilized his 'Sudarshan chakra' to cut the assortment of Sati into 51 pieces and each part fell at better places on Earth and each became a worshipped Shakti Peetha.
The Shakti Peethas speak to a solitary philosophical crease, they are a demonstration of the assorted legends of Shakti. Distinctive peethas which turned out to be heavenly at the hint of Sati's body have endured many hundreds of years and have kept alive their nearby old stories of Shakti. Together they bring out the Mother Goddess as both the sustaining and the dangerous power behind the presence of the universe. The 51 Peethas highlighted in the book can never be a flat out portrayal of the Peethas of the Goddess, since the Devil is everywhere and all over the place.