The city takes its name from Kalighat, the ghat of Kali, and the temple there is counted among the shakta pithas, the sites where a part of the body of Sati is held to have fallen when it was carried across the land by her grieving husband. The portion assigned to this place is the toes of the right foot. The present temple dates from the early nineteenth century, and the image inside is unusual, a black stone face with large silver eyes and a gold tongue rather than a conventional figure.
Bengali devotion to the goddess has a distinctive tone that is easier to show than to define. Ramprasad Sen, writing in the eighteenth century, addresses Kali as a mother who neglects her child, argues with her, scolds her and refuses to be put off, and his songs are still sung. The imagery is uncompromising: a naked black figure garlanded with heads, standing on the body of her husband, who is simultaneously terrifying and the most intimate object of love in the tradition.
Goat sacrifice is performed at Kalighat, which is one of the few major urban temples in India where it continues openly, and it is defended by its practitioners as the offering the goddess herself is understood to receive. Kalighat also gave its name to a school of bold, cheap watercolour painting sold to pilgrims in the nineteenth century, which later influenced modern Indian art and is now collected in museums.