Kolkata, September 27: Showers failed to dampen the festive spirit as people took part in community feasts and poured out on the streets in their thousands to visit the marquees (pandals) on Mahanavami, the fourth day of the Durga Puja celebrations, across West Bengal Sunday.
The city received 15 minutes of rain Sunday evening, forcing people to look for shelter. But once the downpour stopped, the huge crowd of pandal-hoppers got back into the celebratory mode, as the streets were chock-a-block with people.
Traffic moved at a snail’s pace and vehicles got stranded every now and then due to traffic snarls, but nobody complained. “Only a few more hours are left before the immersion day arrives. So we must celebrate as much as we can,” said Amar Mukherjee of Bhowanipur, one of the revellers.
On Sunday morning, after an entire night of revelry on Mahashtami Saturday, many chose to wake up late, but soon got into their best attire to hit the road again and savour every moment of the puja spirit, in the metropolis and in towns and villages.
Other than the community pujas held in almost every locality, a large number of modern housing complexes – big and small – which have mushroomed in and around the city also organised their own worship of the mother goddess.
With the festival giving people the opportunity to let their hair down, many also visited friends and relatives and indulged in light-hearted chat, before partaking bhog (community feasts of food items offered to the Goddess first), which comprised a wide range from luchis (poori bread) and khichuri, vegetable items, to fish and even mutton.
“We hardly get to interact with each other through the year. We are all busy with high-pressure jobs. The Durga Puja holidays give us time to spend with the neighbour living next to my flat. Sharing the feast also helps in increasing the bonhomie,” said Jayanta Roy, an engineer with a multinational company.
For Dolly Das, who works as a chartered accountant, the puja days provide time to “do things I can’t think of doing any other time of the year”. The middle-aged lady spends her time in a relaxed mood reading the special autumnal numbers brought out by the magazines and calling home and visiting friends.
Mahanavami, or the ninth lunar day, is the concluding day of Durga Puja rituals. The main Mahanavami puja began after the end of Sandhi Puja held at the confluence of Mahashtami (eighth lunar day) and Mahanavami around Saturday midnight.
As per Hindu mythology, Goddess Durga killed Chando and Mundo, two asuras (demons), at the confluence (Sandhi) of Mahashtami and Mahanavami.
Meanwhile, the Bosepukur Talbagan puja in south Kolkata drew large crowds who waited in the queue for hours to see the marquee tracing Bengal’s artistic roots with recreations from patachitras from Kalighat, Midnapore and Bankura.
At Raipur in the city’s southern fringes, a community puja marquee made of 10,000 tablas (percussion instruments) was also a major crowd puller. Some non-Bengali communities also observed the auspicious ‘Mahanavaratri’ Sunday.
Goddess Durga, the slayer of the demon Mahishashur, is lion-borne and wields an array of arms in her 10 hands.
Mythology says that the puja celebrates the annual descent of the goddess, accompanied by her four children Ganesh, Kartik, Lakshmi and Saraswati, on earth to visit her parents. She stays for four days to eradicate all evil from the earth before returning to her husband Lord Shiva at Kailash on Dashami that falls on Monday this year.