Kabbalamma Temple

About Kabbalamma Temple

In the small village of Kabbalu, tucked into Kanakapura taluk of Ramanagara district, stands a temple that means far more to local families than its modest size would suggest. Kabbalamma is worshipped here as the grama devathe, guardian deity of Kabbalu village itself, but her reach goes well beyond the village boundary — she is the kuladevathe, or hereditary family goddess, for households scattered right across Ramanagara district, and plenty of others visit simply because she has become their personally chosen deity, or ishta devathe, over the years.

The Story of Kabbalamma

Long before she was worshipped as a goddess, Kabbali was simply a farmer's wife — married to a poor but devoted man named Rangappanna, in a household that had little money but no shortage of affection. What weighed on Kabbali, though, was that she had no children of her own, and she missed her younger sister Bisilamma and her sister's children more than she let on. One day Rangappanna noticed how low she'd been and asked what was troubling her; when she admitted how long it had been since she'd visited Bisilamma, he readily gave her his blessing to go.

There was just one problem: they had almost nothing to take as a gift, and Kabbali couldn't bear the idea of arriving at her sister's door empty-handed. Searching the house, she scraped together three annas — barely enough to buy anything at all. Half in jest, she handed the coins to her husband and dared him to bring back a cart loaded with goods for that sum. He laughed at the impossibility of it and, testing her right back, said that if she managed it herself, he'd stand outside their house forever after as a Garudagamba — a stone pillar. Neither of them meant it seriously. But Kabbali went to the santhe, the local market, and somehow returned with a cart genuinely full of goods. Delighted, she ran to show her husband — and true to his word, however jokingly it had been given, Rangappanna insisted on keeping his promise. Kabbali begged him not to, insisting it had only been said in fun, but he wouldn't hear of it; he told her people would talk if word got around that he'd gone back on his promise to her, and with that, he turned himself into a stone pillar right outside their home. It was, Kabbali came to understand, simply how fate had decided things should go.

Some days later, gifts and sweets in hand, she finally set off to see her sister. But word of her approach travelled faster than she did. A neighbour spotted Kabbali walking toward the village from a distance and, worried she might feel envious seeing Bisilamma's children, rushed to warn her — so Bisilamma hurriedly hid each of her children under upturned baskets and told them not to make a sound until she called for them. When Kabbali arrived and asked to see her nieces and nephews, Bisilamma claimed they'd all gone out, and that she herself was about to leave to join her husband at the market. Kabbali pressed to see the children just once, but her sister wouldn't budge.

It was the baskets themselves that gave it away. Kabbali noticed them overturned in the yard and asked what was underneath. Without missing a beat, Bisilamma answered: nothing, just stones. The words had barely left her mouth before Kabbali, hurt and furious at being lied to, pronounced a curse — that there would indeed be stones under those baskets. And so there were: her sister's children turned to stone on the spot. Bisilamma ran after Kabbali screaming, falling at her feet and begging forgiveness, but a curse spoken cannot be unspoken, and Kabbali could only tell her, with real grief of her own, that what was done couldn't be undone.

There was one child who'd slipped away before the baskets came down, and he came running up calling out to his doddamma — his aunt. Kabbali held him close and blessed him: from that day on, he would be the only son left to his mother, and in return he was to visit his doddamma Kabbalamma every single year and observe a festival in her honour called Sidi Habba. That festival is still kept today — devotees walk barefoot across smouldering coals as an act of harake, a vow fulfilled, believed to burn away the effect of the evil eye and other misfortunes.

To her grieving sister, Kabbali made one more decree: she would never again set foot in Bisilamma's village — from now on, it would be Bisilamma's place to come to her. That is said to be the origin of Kabbalamma's annual car festival, or jatre, when goddesses from villages all across the region are ceremonially brought to Kabbalu to pay their respects to her, rather than the other way around.