see how the fate of the goddess had evolved following the eradication of her raison d’etre. Attendants at the shrine informed me that she continues to function, but as the goddess of chickenpox. In Bengali, the word for smallpox is also used for the spring season—boshonto, pronounced “bawshontaw”—an association that arises from the seasonality of smallpox epidemics in Bengal prior to the eradic...