“She can move darkness” 

Most important part of the year for a Bengali has arrived. Oh great Mother, we welcome you on this earth whole heartedly. May your arrival destroy all the negativity around us. 

For me, the feeling of Durga Puja is incomparable to any other time of the year. It’s a 10 day long celebration filled with delicious food, new clothes (hello, new saris!), aartis and pujas, and being surrounded by your family and friends. Can’t wait to immerse myself into the Godly embrace 🙏🏻 (Excitement creeping in ❤️😁)

Let’s proceed with the assumption that you know what Durga Puja is about. For those who have no clue, it’s the worship of the Hindu Goddess Durga and her children, whose idols are hosted in the makeshift Pandals for around five days. Let’s proceed..

Article Courtesy: Timesofindia Indiatimes Blogs

It won’t be entirely an exaggeration to say that Bengalis world over spend a significant amount of their time planning and deciding what to do during the Durga Pujas. Most of them wear multiple sets of clothes – mind you, there’s a morning outfit and an evening outfit, plus emergency backup outfits. And of course, there are important decisions to make – like what to eat on which day. From the warm khichudi, papad bhaja as bhog in pandals to the street stalls set up to serve delectable dishes like egg rolls, kobiraji and mughlai parota, you are game to feast on anything and everything.

So prior to the pujas, the air is absolutely thick with a feeling one gets just before the starting, the unravelling of something extremely huge — the feeling you get just before reaching the peak of a much awaited climax.

You will get to see sweaty Bongs, who under the twelve o’clock sun, sits in an auto patiently stuck in a huge traffic jam in the heart of a buzz-filled street, clutching onto innumerable bulging shopping bags of different shapes and sizes. This is called Puja shopping.

It is a reverberating rhythm which amplifies and resounds in the sounds of the dhak. It’s a feeling. You can not only hear it, but feel it — you get goose bumps when the dhakis first begin to play their beat. The city reverberates with the echo of conch shells, which is no less than a divine feeling.

Durga Puja is actually, the celebration of ‘life’ and the joy of ‘living’ more than anything else. Durga Puja becomes an expression of the city itself. It is almost that the city bursts into laughter during these few days.

I look forward to celebrating Durga Puja with you.

Till then, in the words of my great grandmother, Dugga Dugga.