Pictures and stories of Durga Puja
- from Kolkata, a city that lights up like a glittering palace
Navaratri or Dussehra or Durga Puja just ended. Did you do anything exciting? I had a lot of fun visiting friends and relatives. Even better, I managed to eat a lot of really tasty treats. Hope you had a good time too!
In this week’s edition of ‘The Lighter Side’, I thought I’d write about one of the most extraordinary places in the world - where Navratri brings an entire city alive. This is the city of Kolkata! In Bengal, they call this festival - Durga Puja (or Pujo, I can’t pronounce these words correctly). This festival is not just a religious festival where people pray to a Goddess. Instead, this festival brings really talented artists from far away lands to West Bengal. Every year, they think of unique themes and spend several months creating huge structures called the Durga pandals. Here’s a sample of an extravagant pandal that shows golden leaves over its roof!
How did Durga Puja become this grand in West Bengal?
400 years ago…...
It all started with a man named Lakshmikanta Gangopadhyay. His father, Jiya Gangopadhyay, was a wise man, but he was very sad after losing his wife. He left his home in Kolkata and went to Varanasi, leaving young Lakshmikanta in the care of a priest.
The father - Jiya Gangopadhyay became a saint and his name changed to Kamdev Brahmachari. Raja Man Singh, a king who lived far away heard, about great things about this saint. So the Raja traveled to Varanasi and became Kamdev Brahmachari’s disciple. The Raja was so happy with the teachings of this saint, that he wanted to help him in some way. So he asked the Mughal emperor Jahangir (who was Raja Man Singh’s friend) to give a large piece of land to the young boy Lakshmikanta (who was growing up in Kolkata).
Lakshmikanta grew up to be a very skilled young man. He managed his lands very well and the people in his village respected him. A few years later, Lakshmikanta and his wife, Bhagwati Devi, wanted to bring together people who prayed to different gods and goddesses. So they decided to introduce a special way of celebrating Durga Puja. They included not just Durga, but also 4 gods / godesses - Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesh and Karthik. So, this brought loads of people who prayed to different Gods together. It became the first grand Durga Puja Pandal in West Bengal!
Look carefully below and notice 4 gods around Durga in this picture below
300 years later……the British too joined the celebrations
As the years went by, Durga Puja found new admirers. Another small king in Bengal, Raja Nabakrishna Dev, invited the British home. When one of the British soldiers called Robert Clive visited the Durga Puja at the Raja’s home, there was a golden sofa in the courtyard. The British soldiers sat on it, watched the puja, and participated in the music and the dance! The Durga Puja started becoming grander, as outsiders also started to come and participate in this festival. The family home of the Raja (in a place called Shobhabazar), celebrates the Puja to this day. The picture below shows the Durga Puja in this Raja’s home this year (2023).
100 years ago….
India’s freedom fighters too loved the Durga Puja. Earlier, the puja was a way to celebrate a religious festival. But now, freedom fighters got together and decided to use the Puja to get people together, as part of their freedom movement. So, India’s freedom fighters built one of the first Durga Puja pandals that had a theme. This Puja was in Balram Bose Ghat Road. The pandal showed the Goddess Durga as someone fighting for independence. The pandal also hosted children and adults doing yoga, drills and martial arts’ performances. The Bengalis call this Sarbajanin, meaning universal, where the entire community comes together.
Today…..
One of this year’s puja’s themes was ‘Don’t use plastic’. Another important theme was to ‘protect the rickshaw-pullers in Kolkata, and pay them well’. The pic below shows Durga being pulled by a rickshaw-wallah.
Some pandals look like ancient temples or modern offices. For example, a couple of years ago, one of the pandals looked like the White House (the home of the President of the United States!). This year one of the puja pandals looked like the Somnath Temple in Gujarat (in pic below).
Trivia time: The story of Durga
Once upon a time, in the colorful land of Bengal, there lived a fierce demon named Mahishasura. He was causing a lot of trouble in the world, and the gods were very worried. To stop him, the gods created a powerful warrior girl named Durga. Durga had ten strong arms, and in each hand, she held a mighty weapon. She and Mahishasura had a tremendous battle, and guess what? Durga won! She saved the world from the evil demon. Now, this heroic victory was celebrated every year during a special time in Bengal, as Durga Puja.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of the ‘Lighter Side’. Did you do anything new or interesting this Navratri? Tell me about it, by clicking comments. See you next week!