…For significant Hindu festivals. Over the past thirty days there have been
three major Hindi festivals celebrated in our region: Durga Puja, Diwali Puja,
and Chhath Puja. These festivals are
each up to ten days long and include extravagant decorations, rituals, and
customs. I by no means fully understand
what we have witnessed here but I am going to try to explain a little about
what each festival means. The word puja
means worship. During each puja, gifts
of food and sweets are offered to the gods and then they are often given away
to family and friends.
Durga Puja is a ten day festival to honor the Goddess Durga,
also called the Mother Goddess or the goddess of power. She has ten arms which represent her power
and she is celebrated for defeating a buffalo demon. She is worshipped by the building of huge,
elaborate, temporary structures called pandals.
Each structure houses a Durga Goddess idol that has been made out of
clay, preferably from the Ganges River.
In our town there is a huge competition to see who can build the most
amazing pandal. It is believed that
worshippers can invoke the presence of the Durga Goddess on their statues and
then after the festival, she returns to the heavens. This is symbolized by immersing the idols in
the river at the end of the festival.
Durga Puja is followed by a four day Diwali Festival, which
means Festival of Lights. It is a
celebration of the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. Thus, Diwali is celebrated with many
luminaries in homes. Many houses and
businesses are decked out in lights as well.
It looked a lot like Christmas around here during Diwali! And, everyone sets off fireworks…for days and
days. We literally thought we were going
to die in Delhi last year because the air was so bad! Another tradition of
Diwali is decorating your home with a rangoli, which is artwork made of chalk
and flowers. This artwork is supposed to
welcome the Goddess Lakshmi, who is the goddess of wealth and prosperity.
After Diwali comes Chhath Puja. This celebration is the most complicated in
my understanding. It lasts four days and
the focus is on worshipping the Dala Chhath or Lord Sun. River banks are adorned with bamboo and
banana tree structures where worshippers will offer their sacrifices in the
form of food and sweets to the Lord Sun.
There is so much ritual and symbolism involved in this puja, it would
take me days to explain it all. For one,
this puja involves a significant amount of fasting and bathing by at least one
appointed member of the household for the four days. One thing that we witnessed during this
festival, but do not yet understand the significance of was this…Many people
proceeded from their homes to the river by lying flat on the ground, marking
the ground above their head with a stick, standing up and walking to the stick
mark and then lying back down again.
They repeated this process the entire way to the river as family members
walked alongside them.
