Pochamma

Pochamma is the best known of the grama devatas, the village goddesses, of the Telugu country, and her small shrines stand at the edge of villages throughout Telangana. She is the goddess of the pox: smallpox and the fevers of the hot season were understood to be her visitation, and she was petitioned both to withhold the disease and to carry it away. With smallpox gone, she remains what she always also was, a protectress of the village body, invoked for health, rain and the safety of children.

Worship

Pochamma's worship belongs to the village rather than to any priestly establishment. Her shrines are modest, often no more than a small structure or a stone beneath a tree, and her rites are conducted without brahmin priests, led instead by village officiants and above all by women. The characteristic offering is the bonam, a pot of rice cooked with milk and jaggery, carried to the shrine on the head, often decorated and crowned with a lamp. In local tradition she is one of a set of goddess sisters who divide the care of the village among themselves, and her festivals are occasions on which the whole village, across caste lines, acknowledges a shared guardian.