The festive season in India is on in
full swing. Goddess Durga is on her 5-day visit to Mother Earth. This festival
symbolizes the triumph of good over evil. Most parts of India are agog
with the puja spirit.
The most well-known
festivities and puja pandals are at Kolkata. Next to Kolkata are the celebrations
and puja pundals of Cuttack,
the erstwhile capital of Odisha. My city Bhubaneswar,
the post-independence capital of Odisha, is fast catching up, and perhaps has
overtaken Cuttack
in this aspect.
The silver city of Cuttack, famous for its
silver filigree works, is known for its Durga idols donning gold ornaments
against the backdrop of silver tableaux. This year there are 155 puja pandals
decorated with gold and silver worth crores of rupees. One puja pandal has a
silver backdrop made of 3.5 quintals of this precious metal.
Bhubaneswar, with its 170 puja pandals, does not wish to lag
behind in the use of precious metals in Durga Puja. One Puja Committee has used
160 Kgs of silver in tableaux in the background and the Deity in this pandal
has a crown of gold weighing 750 grams. The gold crown adorning the deity at
one puja mandap at Cuttack weighs a little less than 4 Kgs. More
and more mandaps are shifting to
crowns made of gold.
Durga Puja at Alam Chand
Bazar, Cuttack
was started by Netaji Subas Chandra Bose in his younger days. (The ancestral
house of Netaji at Cuttack,
where he was born is still standing. He had his school and college education at
Cuttack. Later,
he shifted to Kolkata and joined the freedom movement.)
The former and the present
capital cities of Odisha have become twin-cities. Earlier, people of Bhubaneswar used to visit Cuttack to watch the splendour of Durga Puja
there. The flow has started in the reverse direction; residents of Cuttack have started visiting Bhubaneswar to see the gorgeous puja pandals
in the capital-city..
However, curiously, none of
the pandals has been insured. The Puja Committes feel that insurance cover is
not needed as they have taken enough precautions in the form of private
security personnel, CCTV cameras and police arrangements.
One additional attraction of
Puja celebrations at Bhubaneswar
this year has been the 5-day Dandiya Dance Festival in the evenings. Anyone can
participate or watch this by purchasing a ticket.
One question which arises in
my mind when I visit these pandals is that in almost all cases, the image of
Goddess Durga has a third eye. I know that Lord Shiva has a third eye by
opening which He burnt down Madan, the god of love, when the latter tried to
break Shiva’s meditation, but does Goddess Durga has a third eye? And in many cases, the image of Lord Ganesh
also has a third eye. In all cases, the third eye is positioned vertically (to
give the face a better look?), not horizontally like the other two normally
positioned eyes. Is this as it should be?
Or, is the concept of the
vertically-positioned third eye meant to provide a view from a different
dimension or a different angle, not reached by the horizontally-positioned
eyes?
By the way, images of
Kartikeya, the other son of Lord Shiva, are perhaps not given this third eye.
Talking of the third eye takes to me to another story. A man used to find defects in everything including the creations of God. His wife derisively said, "You have indeed become a wise man; you can faults in God's creation." Proudly, he said, "If God gives me another eye, I can find more mistakes in His work." Immediately, God appeared, told that his wish would be fulfilled and then He disappeared. A third seemed to appear on his forehead but it remained like a bulge only and did not open. His wife became worried. However, he became calm and said, "Don't worry, it has opened inside and now I can see all my faults and these are numerous.From now onwards, I shall stop finding faults with others." He became really a wise man.
Talking of the third eye takes to me to another story. A man used to find defects in everything including the creations of God. His wife derisively said, "You have indeed become a wise man; you can faults in God's creation." Proudly, he said, "If God gives me another eye, I can find more mistakes in His work." Immediately, God appeared, told that his wish would be fulfilled and then He disappeared. A third seemed to appear on his forehead but it remained like a bulge only and did not open. His wife became worried. However, he became calm and said, "Don't worry, it has opened inside and now I can see all my faults and these are numerous.From now onwards, I shall stop finding faults with others." He became really a wise man.
To End With
The West Bengal Government
has declared a 10-day holiday from the 20th to the 29th
October for its offices for Durga Puja and Kumar Poornima. In the original
Notification, the 26th was a working day but it was declared as a
holiday just before the Puja. So, the Govt.-machinery has to stop working for
continuous 10 days! Add to this the fact that the decision of the newspaper
hawkers’ Union not to deliver the papers from
the 22nd to the 25th has forced the suspension of
publication of newspapers for 4 days.
No news is good news!
Happy Dusshera!
Sometimes I wonder, what the consequences of using all that money and gold put on deities used for people who find it hard to eat 3 meals a days :
ReplyDeleteAnd lakhs of rupees are spent in making the idols and decorating the pandals using non-biodegradable materials. After the puja,these are immersed in rivers polluting the water and the environment.
ReplyDelete