During this celebration, huge beautifully crafted statues of Goddess Durga are being installed in grand podiums in India (and now all across the world, wherever the Indian diaspora is). As a mark of respect and send-off, the Goddess idols/statues are immersed in water at the end of festival.
This year a group of IT professionals and their families organised the Durga Utsav (festival) in Melbourne’s Wyndham city with much fanfare and aplomb. One of the organiser of the festival Anindya Ghosh states, “Our motto is ‘Everybody’s festival, everybody’s fun’. This is not just Bengal’s Puja or Indian Puja but we wanted to do multicultural Puja here where anyone from any religion or nationality could come and enjoy.”
Another organiser Saurajit Sinha Roy points out, “We are very far from our country. Our children are born and brought up here. So, we kind of want to make sure that they know what our culture is.” He further adds that it is a great feeling to see a tremendous growth of Indians in Melbourne over the last decade, earlier, it was hard to see any of these festivities, but now all the Indian festivals are being celebrated in a big way by the community.
Source: Vikrant Kishore
One of the highlight of the festival was the Sindur-Khela (Vermilion smearing), in which married women took part enthusiastically and danced to the traditional music. The ritual of Sindur Khela comes from the legend, that Goddess Durga visits her maternal home during these five days with her family. All married women welcome her, feasts are prepared and the ritual of Sindur-Khela is among many other rituals that are done to bid farewell to Goddess Durga.
Arpita Nandi proudly states, “Durga Puja is the biggest festival for Bengalis. So, when we meet here, it feels like a big family get-together. Definitely, it is out of the world feeling and it bring back memories of home and we feel like we are at home.”
Source: Vikrant Kishore
Another volunteer Deepshikha Sen Gupta finds Durga Puja celebration in Australia is slightly different as it is not celebrated over the marked five days. “Therefore, we have to squeeze and celebrate it in two days. We are celebrating it over the weekend but thankfully, being a long weekend, we got three days this time and we are all trying to enjoy this as much as possible”, says, Sen Gupta.
The Durga festival very well demonstrates how the Indian diaspora keep themselves connected with their tradition and roots and make sure that their children also understand and respect their invaluable culture, rituals and traditions.
Source: Vikrant Kishore
