Where Your Birthday Marks Your Fate
For centuries, an astrology has affected the lives of millions of Indian women. Explore the complicated idea of Mangal Dosha.
Words by Eliot Stein
Portfolio by Julia Sellmann
ARTIST JULIA SELLMANN has always been fascinated by the fringes of spirituality and society. She’s ventured to Siberia to photograph a former policeman who claims to be the Messiah and traveled to South Korea to shoot a 6,000-person mass wedding. Last November, Sellmann visited Kolkata, India, to bring a complicated and controversial system of beliefs into focus.
Sellmann had been inspired by a documentary that followed a group of Indian couples as they prepared for their wedding day. To please their families, each pair had consulted an astrologer to confirm that their birth charts aligned and, above all, that the bride wasn’t “manglik.”
Indian astrologers determine a person’s birth chart by mapping the date, time, and location of one’s birth against the position of the planets and constellations. If Mars is in a particular position at birth, an astrological condition called Mangal Dosha, that person is considered manglik. These men and women are believed to share the fiery, aggressive traits of the planet’s namesake, the Roman god of war. But whereas for men this is considered a virtue, in women it is more akin to an affliction. Marrying a manglik woman is often believed to negatively impact a man’s career, happiness, even health.
In 2006, India’s tabloid press was transfixed when it was reported that Indian actress, model, and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai ritually married a tree in order to protect her fiancé, Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan, from her manglik status — an allegation his family has since denied.
“The idea of Mangal Dosha seemed dreamlike to me,” Sellmann says. “Had I not seen it myself, I wouldn’t have been sure if it was reality or fiction. I wanted to awaken the same thought in viewers’ minds when looking at my work.”
After a Kolkata colleague put Sellmann in touch with several local astrologers and manglik women, she embarked on solo trips to Jaipur, Tarapith, and the sprawling West Bengal capital to capture how this ancient belief mixes myth and reality in modern Indian society.
“I became interested in capturing this abstract idea in a photographic way,” Sellmann says. “I found that it’s not something you ever talk about in public, yet everyone has an opinion on it. It’s both everywhere and invisible.”
After meeting many manglik women and photographing ten, varying in age from a newborn to a 90-year-old, Sellmann realized that while the idea of Mangal Dosha is unique to Indian culture, the underlying impulse to make sense of our lives is universal.
1) Uma, a divorced manglik mother, poses in a field near Naihati. Sellmann asked a friend to cover one of her eyes, a reference to the way astronomers peer through telescopes. Though her marriage had problems, Uma believes she is solely responsible for her divorce.
2) Beside a Hindu temple, Sellmann met six women performing a prayer ritual around a bodhi tree. Since manglik women are often advised to ritually marry a bodhi tree before wedding their spouses (it is thought that the negative impact of being manglik affects only one’s first husband), Sellmann saw a parallel and asked if she could photograph them.
3) Sellmann photographed Chaitali in front of the Howrah Bridge as birds swarmed overhead. “She’s convinced that if she doesn’t do her prayers, the energy of Mars will affect her married life,” says Sellmann. Chaitali fasts every Tuesday and wears red coral to ward off Mars’s energy. “I found that women who really believe in Mangal Dosha will connect their problems to the fact that they’re manglik,” she says. “It is another way for human beings to explain bad luck. It’s a combination of science, belief, and love, and that makes it so very interesting.”
4) Sellmann met a boy, dressed as the god Shiva, begging on a train to the Tarapith Temple. Shiva is the Hindu god of creation and destruction, and manglik women are advised to pray to him to calm Mars’s energy. Shiva is typically depicted as tall and muscular. “Seeing this little boy reminded me of a child dressed as Superman,” says Sellmann.
5) A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world’s largest sundial, Jantar Mantar is a collection of 19 astronomical structures built in the 18th century to observe the stars and planets. Instead of photographing the real thing, Sellmann found this small model at the site more compelling. “Often, an abstract structure is more interesting than what you see in real life,” she says. “It gives a more mysterious layer to the story.”
6) “For believers, an astrologer is a combination of a doctor and a psychotherapist,” says Sellmann. Before telescopes, astrologers, such as Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, meditated for hours on end and performed hand movements called mudras, thought to encourage energy flow and to help them visualize the stars and planets.
7) In addition to Shiva, manglik women are advised to pray to Hanuman, the monkey god, to calm Mars’s aggressive energy. After observing that families throughout Kolkata lived with monkeys, Sellmann asked one if she could photograph theirs. “Their hut was too personal to include, so we found a photo studio and asked if we could bring the monkey. I was convinced the owner would say no, but I really like the simplicity of the backdrop.”
8) Sanjukta, a young manglik woman, gets made up on her wedding day. According to astrologers Sellmann interviewed, many young women no longer believe in Mangal Dosha but agree to consult with astrologers before their marriage to appease their families. “This is when many women discover that they’re manglik,” Sellmann says. “If it’s an arranged marriage, some families will call it off.”
9) When her husband lost his job because of health issues, Madhuchchanda was convinced it was her fault that he could no longer work. It struck Sellmann that her husband doesn’t believe in Mangal Dosha and in no way blames her for his health.
10) Sellmann sees a parallel between crows, a negative omen in her native Germany, and Mangal Dosha. While wandering through an area of Kolkata where effigies of deities are fashioned out of straw, she spotted this crow seated on the unfinished arm of a statue.
11) The more Sellmann spoke to astrologers and manglik women, the more she appreciated the complexity of Mangal Dosha. This photograph of friends playing cat’s cradle represents her view that manglik women are entangled in a web of astrology, religion, and modern society. “It remains held together by those who believe in it,” Sellmann says.
12) When Avishmita, here cradling her newborn, and her husband consulted an astrologer, he only gave them four out of ten compatibility points and advised them not to marry. “They had to perform a set of rituals,” Sellmann says. “They did it to please their families.”
About the authors: Eliot Stein is a contributing editor and columnist for BBC Travel who also writes for The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Julia Sellmann is a visual storyteller from Cologne, Germany. She divides her time between assigned work for magazines and newspapers such as SZ Magazine, Die Zeit, The Guardian, Stern, Spiegel, Geo, and personal long-term projects.
