Durga Puja

Durga is a Hindu goddess who is the reincarnation of Shiva’s wife and as far as gods go in Hinduism she is pretty important. She is the one that has ten arms and a weapon in each hand. She destroyed the evil that was going to take over the earth by receiving power from three other gods. Durga is the goddess of strength and power and she cleanses or “purifies” the evil from human hearts. Her puja lasts from October 2^nd -6^th; it’s a pretty big deal to say the least. I would describe it as a mixture of Christmas, the carnival, a circus, and idol worship. From a certain perspective it is a beautiful holiday, there are beautiful lights everywhere and each community spends and enormous amount of time and money to construct an elaborate tent with scenes from Durga’s life, the most popular is her defeating the evil (that looks a lot like how Satan is often portrayed).

Durga killing the monster 

There were over 1,000 tents put up in our city and there is a competition to see which community constructed the best tent. The 5^th of October is the day where families wear their new clothes and finery and go out to see all the different tents around the city.

One of the tents from the outside

Lights!

Cute little boy in his new clothes at one of the tents 

On October 5th I went with my friend Nirmali to meet her auntie aka sister-in-laws family, and it was just one of those days that nothing went the way I thought it would, but it turned out to be a very insightful day into south Asian culture. There were lots of random family member’s at the auntie’s house that had come for Durga puja and I just joined in. They were really sweet, and really excited that I had never seen a puja before. They decided to take me to one of the biggest temples in the neighborhood where thousands of people were lined up to give an offering to the God and/or receive a blessing. There was evidence of water buffalo sacrifices earlier in the day and just so many people around me, there to worship Durga…I have never experienced anything like that I just wanted to cry. A priest interrupted my thoughts. He asked me where I was from and invited one of the cousins I don’t know and I upstairs to his house leaving Nirmali behind. In my head I was a little panicked with the sudden turn of events but it turned out to be fine. The priest’s family fed me my third huge serving of rice and local dishes for the day. It was around this time I was supposed to meet up with some of the people from our NGO but I realized there was no way I was going to be able to leave the priests house in time so I called and told them to go on with out me.

Puja

incense offerings

When we finally left the priests house and headed back to the sister-in-laws house I explained that my friends had went already. After that there was a huge discussion in the local language that I am not nearly fluent enough to follow but I understood that they were trying to figure out what to do with me. At first I felt bad like I had inconvenienced them, but I think that was just my American mindset, they were so happy I had decided to stay with them, they just wanted to make sure I was back home early for safety reasons. So once it was decided I would stay with Nirmali we headed out to see some puja tents. The first one was amazing. In a huge field area there were these paper-mache giants that were carrying a wedding tent and the crowd was going through the tent to look at Durga dressed in her wedding attire for Shiva on the inside. Families are out dressed in their finest, there are vendors throughout the field selling cotton candy, balloons, and other various toys that I you might see at an American carnival, it is just a beautiful picture, to an eye that is not aware of the truth. To an eye that is it is a heart-breaking image; it is the reality of the stronghold that is here.

Durga

After that Nirmali and I headed home stopping at a few other tents on the way home. One was animated and showed Durga actually destroying the devil; it’s a weird feeling you get when you have heard that story told a different way. Durga Puja is many people’s favorite celebration here and it shows. There are 3 million people in our city and on October 5^th everyone that lives here invited all their aunties and cousins from surrounding towns and go out to look at all the tents. I’m not kidding, I’d never seen so many people in my life.

As strange as it all seemed to me I realized it was all perfectly normal to everyone else there, this is what they all expect to happen every October 5^th, probably the strangest thing to them was that a white girl was there. We finally made it safely back to her home exhausted from our day. It was a good cultural experience for me, and it really seemed to secure Nirmali and I’s friendship even to the point where we could discuss some of the things that I had seen that night in a new light for her.