The Greatest Bengali Festival - Durga Puja

Durga Puja is one of the largest celebrated festivals in the world. Let me begin with a brief description of the festival.

Durga Puja (‘Worship of Durga’), also referred to as Durgotsava(‘Festival of Durga’) or Sharadotsav is an annual Hindu festival in South Asia that celebrates worship of the Hindu goddess Durga. It refers to all the six days observed as Mahalaya, Shashthi, Maha Saptami, Maha Ashtami, Maha Navami and Vijayadashami. 
Durga Puja festival marks the victory of Goddess Durga over the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura. Thus, Durga Puja festival epitomises the victory of Good over Evil.
Durga Puja is widely celebrated in the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal, where it is a five-day annual holiday. In West Bengal and Tripura, which has a majority of Bengali Hindus, it is the biggest festival of the year. Not only is it the biggest Hindu festival celebrated throughout the state, it is also the most significant socio-cultural event in Bengali Hindu society. Apart from eastern India, Durga Puja is also celebrated in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. 
Durga Puja is also celebrated as a major festival in Nepal and in Bangladesh all over the places of Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Bogra and other major places and all the villages of Bangladesh where the 20% population is Hindu.
Nowadays, many diaspora Bengali cultural organizations arrange for Durgotsab in countries such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Singapore and Kuwait, among others.
Durga Puja also includes the worship of Shiva, who is Durga's consort (Durga is an aspect of Goddess Parvati), in addition to Lakshmi, Saraswati with Ganesha and Kartikeya, who are considered to be Durga's children. Worship of mother nature is done, through nine types of plant (called "Kala Bou"), including a plantain (banana) tree, which represent nine divine forms of Goddess Durga. Modern traditions have come to include the display of decorated pandals and artistically depicted idols (murti) of Durga, exchange of Vijaya greetings and publication of Puja Annuals.

  
The entire process of creation of the idols (murti) from the collection of clay to the ornamentation is a holy process, supervised by rites and other rituals. On the Hindu date of Akshaya Tritiya when the Ratha Yatra is held, clay for the idols is collected from the banks of a river, preferably the Ganges. 
 There is age-old custom of collecting a handful of soil (punya mati) from the nishiddho pallis of Calcutta, literally 'forbidden territories', where sex workers live, and adding it to the clay mixture which goes into the making of the Durga idol. After the required rites, the clay is transported from which the idols are fashioned. 

  Many Pujas in and around Kolkata buy their idols from Kumartuli (also Kumortuli), an artisans' town in north Calcutta.
As usual, we, with our hungry camera  lenses, had reached to Kumartuli to catch some glimpses of the idol making in process. Here we present some of our captures, hope you like it.

Here we are seeing an artisan is busy in the process of cutting bamboos to make the structure of the idol

 Here we can see the idol structure prepared at a very initial stage

 After applying one coat of clay on the initial structure

In the below two pictures, we can see an artist is brushing clay coat to the idol structure with his adept hands...

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Just after the clay brushing to the idols' hands...

At last, with the 1st coat of the color to the idol

 Devi Durga's hands attract me a lot...couldn't help but taking this snap too..

The idol heads are being dried up to fix them with the bamboo structures

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An artist is giving shape to the idol's hair

Now the demon Mahishashur is getting it's shape with the lion...on which Devi Durga stands in a fearless pose of "Abhay Mudra", signifying assurance of freedom from fear....The lion represents power, will and determination. Mother Durga riding the lion symbolises her mastery over all these qualities. This suggests to the devotee that one has to possess all these qualities to get over the demon of ego.

Goddess Durga killed King of demons Mahishasura using all her feminine powers described with Durga. The word ‘Mahish’ mean a king (also buffalo) and ‘asura’ means the one who has conquered negative qualities. Mahishasura’s father Rambha was king of the asuras, and he once fell in love with a water buffalo (Princess Shyamala, cursed to be a buffalo); Mahishasura was born out of this union. He is, therefore, able to change between human and buffalo form at will (mahisha is Sanskrit word for buffalo).

As per mythology after nine days of fierce fighting Durga finally manages to kill the powerful Mahishasura on the tenth day of the waxing moon. Durga is, therefore, called Mahishasuramardini (literally the slayer of the buffalo demon), the destroyer of Mahishasura.

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Durga is depicted as having eight or ten hands. These represent eight quadrants or ten directions in Hinduism. This suggests that she protects the devotees from all directions.

The full idol of Devi Durga with Mahisashur and Durga's Vahan Lion....

An artist is seen decorating a different Durga Idol made of thermocol ...

This is just the start of bengali's biggest festival...hope to bring the whole festival to you with my captures...so stay tuned to this....:)



Though it is late, but as promised, I am here again with glimpses of idol painting before the festival begins.....

This time when I entered Kumortuli, it was adorned with a completely different look...as if all the nooks and corners of it was telling loudly that...yes finally it is time to give life to idols with diverse colors....

So here it is....

Making of Mahishasura on the way....

The Mahishasura looks more lively after applying just a few strokes of colors on it....

I just get a heavenly feeling whenever I look at this snap...I feel it says time has come to banish all the evil spirits and spread out the rays of light all over, evacuating all the darkness of people's mind and strengthening peace.....

On the auspicious occasion of Mahalaya, the idol artists start painting eyes of Maa Durga's idol which is called Chakkhudaan....We had the chance to capture the frame by frame moments of this atheistic beauty...and here we brought this celestial moment captured through our lens to you....and with this we can officially declare the beginning of bengali's greatest festival....

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