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Of the many festivals that India has through the year, perhaps none is so beautifully
Indian in all the contradictions it easily manages than the Durga Puja - the worship
of the goddess Durga.
To begin with, the festival is traditionally and mythically all wrong. The Gods
of the Hindu pantheon are in divine hibernation according to the popular belief,
between autumn to spring. Hence the preponderance of festivals between late February
to November, that is the time the gods are awake!
The Durga Puja comes smack in the middle of autumn and even has a term for it -
akal bodhan - or the untimely puja. This break with tradition was initiated
by the great Hero-god Rama however, and it provided a great deal of justification.
Rama was having trouble finishing off the demon-king Ravana and he performed an
out of tradition special puja, to get the Power of the Mahadevi on his side. (See
our section on the gods and goddesses for more on the Mahadevi)
Secondly the Puja-festival was a private affair of the martial and landowning classes
for a very long time indeed. However it has now become the most community-participant
event you can ever hope to see. The sheer scale of energy, organization and exuberance
that is let loose all across the Indian State of West Bengal can be matched only
by the Mardi Gras. In terms of numbers however, the Mardi Gras will come a poor
second. In fact, it is not too much to say that it is the highlight of the social
year in Bengal and especially Calcutta, three and a half days of sheer joy, where
a drab and declining city is suddenly transformed into Wonderland.
This is fundamentally because of a multitude of Clubs and committees who exist only
for the purpose of the four days of the festival. They are in hibernation too for
the rest of the year, like the gods apparently. These organizations collect funds,
organize the necessary municipal permissions and outsource everything. Traditionally
the Puja was a little community affair and the expenses could be managed by donations
from local area residents. Nowadays however everything has gone the sponsorship
route, as there is just too much to be spent on things that have become customary
even if they are not traditional.
Three expenses are major here. Illumination, which is a Calcutta art that deserves
more attention. Using tiny light bulbs set up in outline form, the electricians
manage to convey the illusion of a cricket match being played, or of a plane taking
off, or a fountain spurting. The bulbs are turned off and on in sequence to give
the illusion of movement and they were doing it long before there was any computer
programming to do so. In fact they still do not use any software that I am aware
of. These illuminations also trace out the local buildings in outline.
The second is the pandal which houses the entire set of divine images and provides
a space for devotees. It is essentially a bamboo-framework with cloth stretched
over it, a tent of sorts. However they have enormous creativity in constructing
these structures. The artisans can reproduce a facsimile of any building you care
to name in the world with bamboo and clothing - a sort of Cristo the wrapper in
reverse. The Taj Mahal, famous temples of India and last year even the Titanic as
seen in Cameron's film have been created. Finally there are the images themselves
which are nothing but dried clay on a straw and wood skeleton and then painted over
to look human. This is a great art form in itself and the real tragedy is that every
year all of them are immersed into the waters of the Ganga, when the puja is over.
It is the dissolution into the Universe of the Mother, "She Vanishes" as the Devi
Mahatmayam says. This ceremony recreates that divine act of transcendence, as well
as delivers a valuable lesson on the impermanence of all things no matter how beautiful
and dear to ones heart.
But we anticipate ourselves. The images are of the goddess herself, slaying the
demon Mahisha, or sometimes depicting the reason for this puja, granting power to
Rama. She is usually accompanied by what Bengal hold is her family, the gods Ganesha
and Kartikeya who are her sons and the goddesses Laxmi and Saraswati who are supposed
to be her daughters - a tradition unique only to Bengal. The reason for the family
album ambience is that Durga does not come to Bengal as the Great Mother, but as
a daughter visiting her parent's home along with her children. She is regarded as
living a hard life all year long in the Himalayan snows and therefore a great deal
of fuss about her comfort is made when she comes a-visiting. This sort of intense
personal relationship to god is a rather endearing aspect of the religion though
in fairness, it does become a bit mawkish at times.
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