In Bengaluru's 400-year-old Patalamma Temple resides a Durga incarnation

It takes a while to locate the Patalamma Temple in the South End Circle area (former Lalbagh Tank region) despite it being on a road named after the temple. Eventually , one is led to a busy crossroad in the middle of public buildings and residences.
An open field surrounded by a wall contains three main structures shadowed by towering trees. On one side, there are snake stones (nagakallu) and the navagraha and on the other is a Ganesha temple.

Inside the main building, the entrance of the sanctum is guarded by two trishuls, each decorated with bright green bangles and lemons.Wicks placed inside sliced lemons are lit to seek favours from the goddess. Says priest Ramakrishna: "Amma means mother and patala means underworld or netherworld. The goddess is a swayambhu (meaning self-manifested) who appeared in this place from under the ground.One night, she appeared in my forefather's dream and asked him to find and take care of her."

For over 400 years of its existence, his family has been serving and guarding the temple.

Ramakrishna's son will be the sixth generation of his family to serve the temple. The family originally belongs to the oil-presser (ganiga) community .

The last renovation of the temple was 40 years ago, says the priest.

Goddess Patalamma, an incarnation of Goddess Durga, was the prime deity for 20 villages, which are now reduced to Yediyur, Siddapura, Kanakanapalya and Nagasandra. She is one of the seven formidable sisters -the others being Mutyalamma, Bangaramma, Poleramma, Ankamma, Dilli Polasi and Matamma -who are wor shipped by Dravidians.

Patalamma is also part of the Quadrilateral Goddess Pattern that is centred around four local goddesses (Annamma, Patalamma, Gadagamma and Mutyalamma) whose temples are located within the vicinity of the erstwhile tanks in the area. In the book `Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in India's High-Tech City', author Smriti Srinivas talks about how the goddess temples of today have a heterogenous patronage drawn from different castes and religious groupings.

"Various chieftains, warlords, traders and upwardly mobile groups selected goddesses as chief deities of new cults or newly patronised cult centres," she writes."Further, the goddesses tended to be patronised by groups who were speakers of Telugu, Tamil or Kannada and had a socially diverse following." There came a feeling of protective power by looking up to the goddesses, regarded as forms of Shakti. There are many myths surrounding the temple and its associa tion with the adjoining Ane Bande or Elephant Rock Road. One story goes that Goddess Patalamma was flying on her elephant when she saw a serene spot in the thick of a forest.She came down for a brief rest and went away without the elephant as her savari (mode of conveyance).The elephant merged with the surrounding landscape.

Mansoor Ali, founder, Bengaluru By Foot that holds heritage walks, says, "Today , there is a huge boulder with the painting of an elephant.Old-timers say elephants used to visit the place in large numbers. Up to 30 years ago, there was also an old lady who used to sit atop the boulder and paint an elephant over it."