Durga Pooja at home
I asked my friend about festival and he started talking about Deepawali and Holi. If you ask me the best festivals I ever celebrated, my answer would be, Durga Pooja.
I have always been away from home during festivals so I realize the importance of celebrating festivals at home with family. When someone hears the festival Durga Pooja, the person will answer that only Bengalis celebrate this festival. Though my family is not a Bengali family, still we celebrate this festival with full exuberance, thanks to my grand maa as she has a great faith on goddess Durga. Fortunately, this Durga Pooja I was at home with my family. I had a vague picture of this festival because I used to celebrate this festival with full enthusiasm when I was a kid and it’s been 12 years since I celebrated this festival with my family so I was very much excited and so was my family.
As we all know that Durga Pooja is celebrated for 10 days and on 10th day the idol of Durga is immersed into river. Instead of idol we kept picture of goddess Durga and kept a Kalasha draped in red cloth shown in picture below and we immersed that Kalasha on day 10. We had to do a lot of preparation for the pooja and especially for day 1 of pooja as it was the 1st day of pooja. The pundit came daily at my home to perform pooja for 10 days. My mom fasted for 10 days and ate once a day for 10 days. I wonder how could somebody work whole day and still ate once a day. If you ask me to fast then my answer will be a big NO. The groovy thing I like about this festival is that everyday we got sweets to eat for 10 days. My mother kept telling me the deeds I used to do when I was kid at the time of pooja. We used to have holidays for 10 days in school and used to enjoy the vacation with my cousins and friends. I used to call everybody at my home for the aarti after pooja and used to enjoy sweets with them. I did not forget this habit and mesmerized my good old days and this time called everybody from our neighborhood, kids and elders for the pooja.
I would not say that I am praising my parents but I could hear Sanskrit Vachanam rarely heard from their mouth. I wondered that what I read from the book during pooja, they remembered it by heart. I was so much fascinated. We performed the pooja everyday till Day 9 and that day after pooja we went to temples to see the goddess idol. One must be in West Bengal to see and enjoy this festival. Oh my god, what lovely pandals and idols people create. On day 10, hawana took place at my home. It is said that hawana performed at home, cleans up the environment. But that day it was cleaning everybody’s eyes. After hawana took place whole bunch of people had lunch together at my home and finally the festival was ended and later that Kalasha was immersed in the river.
Those 10 days passed so soon that I did not even realise. It was really peachy to be at home on this festival. Hope to spend this festival every year at home.
