Durga Puja

The month of October is marked by what seems to be a never-ending succession of Hindu festivals. In early October it was pitri paksha, which resembles in a way the Christian All Souls Day on 1 November. The rites performed are dedicated to loved ones who met with an untimely or accidental death, and are considered pishāchas or goblins. The rite, called Pishāchamochana - “Where the Goblins are Liberated”, releases them from this restless state and so finally become pitris or ancestors.  On our way home from Bodhgaya  (upcoming post) we shared a cramped cabin with a few men – heads shaved for the occasion –  who were travelling to Varanasi to fulfill their ritual duties. One of them, a very friendly middle-aged businessman whose English was just barely comprehensible, explained the holiday to us. Varanasi, he said, is a good place for benefiting the dead, and he was going there because his father had died. It was however, a way for him to remember and honor not only his father but also his father’s father and so on…  generation after generation people have come together in this way at the Ganges in Varanasi to remember and honor their descendants.

Last weekend Hindus (and non) celebrated the final three days of a nine day festivity dedicated to Devi Durga  who is the warrior manifestation of the Divine Mother. Durga’s feminine powers is the accumulation of the energies of many other gods, and thus the eight arms, each one holding a weapon that had been given to her by a god. The myth tells the story of Maishashura, a demon that had fasted and prayed in order to gain eternal life, but when Brahma disappointed him with the news that all things must pass away, he very cleverly – or so he thought – made Brahma promise that he would only die at the hands of a woman. Maishashura was certain that no woman could defeat him, and so he waged war and brought chaos to the earth, the heavens and the nether world. This is when the gods came together to give Durga their powers and she destroyed Maishashura’s armies, and when he transformed himself into a bull, she cut his head off. Great feminist stuff!

Durga Puja at the Sri Ramakrishna Association Ashram

As the weekend was the culmination of the festivities we decided to stay Friday and Saturday in Varanasi to soak up the atmosphere. Friday morning, along with Moreno and 5 other Kiran volunteers, we went to the Ashram of the Sri Ramakrishna Association, which was founded 100 years ago in Kolkata by a group of medical doctors who were also monks at the Ashram. The Association has since spread widely to many areas of India, and their mission is to serve the poorest of the population, giving them not only good medical care but also nursing homes and institutions of higher education for medical students. It is a Hindu organization, and that morning there was a large crowd gathered at their temple to take part in a very particular Durga Puja (puja=adoration). A little 8-year-old girl was chosen to be the incarnation of Durga’s spirit – in effect the young child would be worshiped as the goddess herself. This is not uncommon in India; there are the theyyam dancers in Kerala, who for 3 months a year are worshiped as gods even though they are low caste Dalits, or the artisans of the murtis (idols),  essential to Hindu worship, whose artwork actually bring the gods into being. (A great book about this sort of thing is William Dalrymple’s “Nine Lives –In search of the sacred in modern India”).

The director of the Ashram, who is a close friend of Moreno’s, welcomed all of us, explaining the work that was being done at the Ashram and then showed us into the temple. The mood was anything but meditative; we’ve seen that Hindu religious functions are quite lively affairs. At the main altar there was the elaborately decorated scene of the well-armed Durga statue and the fatally wounded Maishashura at her feet. People were moving about looking for a strategic place to sit, while to one side there were huge bushels of rice, lentils, potatoes, onions and other vegetables that were being prepared right there in the temple by several cooks for the meal that would be offered – absolutely free – to all the worshippers gathered there. 

After a while the young girl was carried out on a chair and placed in front of the Durga statue. She was gorgeously dressed in a brightly coloured, bejeweled costume and headdress, and she sat there almost completely motionless and expressionless – like an idol – during the whole ceremony. After a period of prayers and chants the excitement began; a small group of percussionists kept a constant loud metallic rhythm going while the head of the ceremony adored and blessed the child Durga with various symbols: a conch, a flower, a plume of long white feathers, and a sacred flame. As I watched all this there was a mix of feeling quite alien – what’s going on? what does it mean? – while at the same time a feeling of awe at witnessing a ceremony which had been done in exactly the same way for thousands of years.

After enjoying the meal that had been offered to us along with hundreds of other visitors at the Ashram we went to the guesthouse at Asi Ghāt to get a little rest before heading out into the city. Later we met up with Sybille and we all made our way by rickshaw to the incredibly busy Godaulia. What countless years ago was but a small stream that ran to the Ganges, today Godaulia is a torrent of commercial activity. It’s the main intersection of the north-south Madanpurā Road running parallel to the Ganges and the east-west Luxa Road leading to the popular Dashāshvamedha Ghāt. There was no need for maps or guides, we just let ourselves be carried away by the massive flow of people moving towards the next Durga Puja. 

The pujas were not only in temples but set up in various places along the streets. There was always a mesmerizing light display for a couple hundred meters before and after each puja along with stomach pounding Hindu rhythms booming from loudspeakers, so we always  knew when we were coming to one. Every puja had its own style: some were very large, one required us to enter through the mouth of a dragon, and late in the evening we came across a very small one in the narrowest of Varanasi’s serpentine alleyways. It stood next to the open doorway of the family who had made it, and what proud smiles shone when we stopped to take pictures!

The processions in search of the next Durga Puja reminded me of the visits to the nativity scenes at Christmas time in Italy; the one big difference being the destiny of these meticulously handcrafted scenes of the Durga. While in Italy most nativity scenes are carefully disassembled and packed away for the next Christmas season, these Durga statues would be thrown into the Ganges, giving the Hindus yet another good reason to get together and celebrate! In the Hindu tradition the idols that are created for the various celebrations manifest the divine presence of the god or goddess they represent for a predetermined time – it could be days, months or even years – but at some point the idol loses its divine quality and when that happens it’s given back to the spirit world. To hold on to it would be idolatry. So on the Monday after the nine-day Durga Puja festival there is an endless parade of tractors and other vehicles, accompanied by loud music and banging drums, all pouring towards the Ganges with the once divine Durgas in tow.

The Durga sculptures had all been made from bamboo sticks, straw, mud and silt taken from the Ganges riverbed and finally painted and dressed up for the festival. So what was born of the Mother Ganga is now consumed in her sacred currents.

Paul