In Western art and philosophy, symmetry has long been elevated to an almost moral ideal. From the polished marble faces of Greek statuary to the carefully balanced portraits of the Renaissance, beauty was measured against geometry. Eyes aligned perfectly; features mirrored one another; proportion was order, and order was truth. Any deviation from this; a squint, misaligned gaze, or cockeyed appearance was treated as imperfection, a source of humour, even ridicule. In caricature and theatre, the cockeyed face became shorthand for foolishness or deformity. Western philosophical traditions, rooted in Platonic ideals, equated beauty with mathematical harmony, leaving little space for irregularities to be interpreted as graceful or auspicious.
However, in India, and particularly in Bengal, the gaze is understood differently. Here, beauty is not imprisoned by the tyranny of symmetry. A face may be radiant not because it mirrors itself perfectly, but because it carries subtle signs that link it to divine auspiciousness. One such sign is known as Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা. In Bengali cultural vocabulary, Lakshmi Târa refers to a condition where the eyeballs are not perfectly aligned; one may be slightly higher or lower. Instead of being perceived as a flaw, this feature is admired as beautiful and auspicious, believed to be a visible mark of Goddess Lakshmi’s presence. A woman with such eyes is said to be graced by Lakshmi herself; her face becomes a bearer of fortune.
This belief flows from the goddess’s own mythic temperament. Lakshmi is not a fixed, stern deity; she is a wandering presence, graceful, unpredictable, alighting briefly where purity, harmony, and devotion prevail. Her blessings arrive unexpectedly, her favour cannot be commanded, and her beauty, too, is not of rigid perfection but of radiant charm. In Bengali folklore, when a girl was born with slightly misaligned eyes, elders would softly remark, “She is Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা,” speaking not with pity but with admiration. Such a feature was seen as a sign of prosperity, fertility, and good fortune surrounding the household she belonged to.
Classical Indian aesthetics has always embraced the idea that asymmetry can enhance beauty, not diminish it. The Sanskritic aesthetic language differentiates between śobhā (grace), saundarya (beauty), and maṅgala (auspiciousness), allowing room for features that may not conform to strict proportion but still radiate spiritual or cultural significance. Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা belongs to this world. Just as a small mole in the right place can enhance charm, or an imperfection in temple sculpture, there are many in Hindu architecture, can be considered deliberate and sacred, asymmetrical eyes could signal divine favour rather than defect. In this, Bengal preserved a cultural lens that was strikingly different from the Western one imposed during colonial encounters.
Traditional art forms reflect this aesthetic with quiet fidelity. In folk painting, terracotta sculpture, and early ritual images, Lakshmi herself is sometimes depicted with a gentle asymmetry of the eyes, not through lack of skill, but as a symbolic gesture. This was not considered a deviation from beauty but its enrichment. In portraits and household lore, women with Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা were praised and even sought after, their features folded into the narrative of the goddess’s living presence within domestic spaces. They were believed to carry her fortune with them, like living talismans of grace.
Beneath this aesthetic language lies a subtle Tantric understanding of the ‘dr̥ṣṭi’, the gaze, of the goddess. In Tantric iconography, the eyes are not mere physical features; they are conduits of energy. A straight, frontal gaze, like that of Kali, conveys raw, concentrated shakti; a power that confronts and transforms. An asymmetrical or unfixed gaze belongs to another register of the divine: hidden power, grace, and soft abundance that works indirectly, gently, and without fanfare. Lakshmi’s energy in Tantric thought is kamalatmika, the blossoming, radiant, and nurturing aspect of Shakti. Her gaze does not pierce; it diffuses. It is said to move like moonlight, touching everything without fixation, blessing without demanding recognition. The slight misalignment in Lakshmi Tara is therefore read not merely as physical irregularity, but as an external sign of inward, diffused shakti, a marker that the goddess’s presence moves through the person in subtle ways.
In some esoteric interpretations, the two eyes represent the sun and the moon; pingala and ida, the active and the receptive currents of energy in the human body. Perfect symmetry indicates balance, but gentle asymmetry indicates movement, as if the energy of fortune is not static but flowing. Lakshmi, being a goddess who never stays fixed in one place, is imagined as inhabiting this very movement. The asymmetry of Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা can thus be read Tantrically as a sign of active auspicious energy in circulation, rather than rigid perfection frozen in form.
The idea carries a spiritual dimension as well. Lakshmi’s presence is never forceful or rigid. She does not arrive with the piercing symmetry of the sun’s gaze but with the diffuse, soft luminosity of moonlight. Her glance, her energy, her beauty; all move with lightness, unpredictability, and mystery. Lakshmi Tara, as a physical sign, mirrors this temperament: it breaks the predictable symmetry of the face, introducing a gentle irregularity that draws the eye, much like how fortune arrives unannounced. Where Western aesthetics might demand alignment, Bengal’s spiritual imagination reads this misalignment as Lakshmi’s playful touch.
Even during the colonial era, when Western standards of physical perfection seeped into elite society through education and art, traditional communities in Bengal continued to speak of Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা with reverence. The gaze of the goddess, they insisted, was not bound by Euclidean lines. Beauty was not a mechanical arrangement but a living presence. A non-aligned gaze in the West might provoke laughter; in Bengal, it could silence a room with admiration.
Lakshmi Târa: লক্ষ্মী টেরা reveals, in miniature, the profound difference between two ways of seeing. One exalts perfect proportion and treats deviation as flaw; the other sees in certain deviations a trace of the divine, a hint of auspicious mystery. What the West once ridiculed, Bengal turned into a mark of beauty, fortune, and reverence. It is a reminder that aesthetics are never merely about faces; they are about worldviews. In the slight misalignment of a pair of eyes, one culture sees defect; another sees a god.