Durgā Pūjā

When it falls

Five days, ṣaṣṭhī to daśamī of the bright half of Āśvina, in late September or October. The nine nights of Navarātri run alongside it; Durgā Pūjā proper begins on the sixth of them.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Durgā comes home. In Bengal the goddess is a daughter visiting her parents for five days with her four children — Lakṣmī, Sarasvatī, Gaṇeśa and Kārttikeya — and the tenth day is her leaving. That is why the last day is grief rather than triumph.

The image is built new every year on a straw and bamboo frame packed with clay from the river, and by tradition the clay includes a handful taken from outside a prostitute’s door and given by her own hand. The eyes are painted last, before dawn on Mahālayā, and the artist paints them without looking straight at them.

Rāma is said to have woken the goddess out of season to ask her help against Rāvaṇa, which is why the autumn worship is called akāl bodhon, the untimely waking. Kolkata’s Durgā Pūjā was inscribed by UNESCO in 2021, the first festival in India to be listed.

How the day is kept

• Bodhon on ṣaṣṭhī: the goddess is woken and her face uncovered, and the paṇḍāls open. Some are the size of temples, built to a theme that changes every year and taken down within the week.
• Nabapatrikā at dawn on saptamī: nine plants bound together around a banana stem, dressed in a red-bordered sari, carried to the river to be bathed and then stood beside Gaṇeśa — which is why she is called his bride, Kolā Bou.
• Sandhi Pūjā at the joint of aṣṭamī and navamī: 108 lamps and 108 lotuses inside the forty-eight minutes where the two tithis meet, the moment the goddess is held to have killed Cāṇḍa and Muṇḍa. Kumārī Pūjā, a young girl worshipped as the goddess herself, is kept the same morning at Belur Math.
• The dhāk drums play through all five days, and the dhunuchi nāch is danced in front of the image with a burning censer of coconut husk and camphor held in the hands, or in the teeth.
• On daśamī the married women feed the goddess sweets and smear one another with vermilion (Sindūr Khelā), the images go to the river, and the greeting for the days after is Śubho Bijoyā.

At the table

Bhog of khicuṛi, labṛā and chatni served at the paṇḍāl, and five days of eating in the street: kāṭhi rolls, biryani and phuchkā. The sweets of Bijoyā — nāṛu, siṅgāṛā and sandeś — are carried to every house visited afterwards.

More victory and deliverance