Shitala is a goddess of smallpox and fevers worshipped widely across northern India, Bengal and Nepal, shown riding a donkey and carrying a winnowing fan, a broom and a pot of cool water. Her name means the cool one, and the logic of her cult is distinctive: the disease is understood as her presence, even her grace, rather than an attack to be fought, so the sufferer is not battled over but cooled, kept quiet, given her foods, and the pustules are spoken of as the goddess herself.
When smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, her worship did not end with it; she has taken on measles, chickenpox and childhood fever more generally, and her festivals continue. Her cult crosses the usual line between village and Puranic religion, and her temples are often served by non-brahmin priests, a reminder that Hindu practice on the ground is far broader than the Sanskrit textual tradition alone. She illustrates a common pattern in which what is most feared is approached as a deity to be honoured and appeased.