Festival in Calcutta -- incoming cyclone edition (pics and videos)

[Recursion]

Last edited Sat Oct 12, 2013, 07:40 PM - Edit history (1)

Durga ji ki jai ho. Durga ma shakti de. Durga ma shanti de.

So, first off, obviously my thoughts are with everybody south of here in Odissa, and everybody closer to the coast (which is where the poor people end up for the most part).

That said, as eastern India faces a huge cylone, I wanted to share some of the beauty of the region from the puja (festival) we went to today in honor of Durga (the mother goddess).

We were worried about the weather, but we caught a break at about 3 pm, which allowed us to go to my mother in law's friend's house for the puja they were holding on their roof.

Calcutta is a city of rooftops; most apartment buildings are 3 or 4 stories tall with decks and gardens on the roof:





As you can see, we still have a break in the weather, though those clouds are from Phailin.

They string up lights during the puja -- not a great idea with a typhoon coming, but certainly beautiful:



It works better when you can see them blinking:

and here's the ambiance of the city in general (you can hear other pujas on other rooftops going on in the background):

The centerpiece of any Durga puja is the shrine showing Durga defeating Mahishasura (literally, "water buffalo monster" in Sanskrit, but sounds a lot like "water buffalo mother-in-law" in Bengali, which caused some humor tonight when I misunderstood). Here's what ours looked like:



If you're familiar with how Mardi Gras works in New Orleans, it's kind of like that: civic associations that have existed for centuries make these every year. Some are quite elaborate.



Here's a green coconut and a frond over a vase of some sort:



That's actually a swastika on it, but it was in the rain. This represents something but my Bengali did not keep up.

Here's the ceremony itself. The two men are priests (sort of; there's less of a professional religious class here, and any Brahmin male can perform the puja)



The women bind lotus flowers, betel leaf, and some sort of grass together as offerings:



In theory there should be 107 lamps (or 108, depending on the sect; no doubt wars were fought over this back in the day), but there's not always room, so we had 64. They are filled with sweet oil and use banana leaf fiber as wicks, and are placed on a mat of banana leaves.



We all get to take part in lighting them:



Static, silent photos don't give you a clear idea of the level of activity involved, so here's a video:

(Sorry for the focus) This lamp is the sacred flame Agni, and each of us takes some of its warmth on our hands and blesses our neighbors foreheads with it.



After sunset as the rain started to come in we went home and saw some of the lights of Calcutta (hopefully they make it through the weather OK). Sorry for the out of focus-ness, some of these were through glass, and my phone doesn't take pictures of lights at night well:

























Anyways, like I said my thoughts are really with all the homeless people in Kolkata and points south tonight. Durga ma shakti de.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. DU Rec

thanks for sharing these

[antiquie]

2. I enjoy your photos and these were extra special, thank you.

Thinking good thoughts .

[Blue_In_AK]

3. Thank you.

I've always wanted to visit India, and, in fact, we had money saved to do it, but we decided to do some much-needed remodeling to our house instead. Maybe we can still make it some year before we're too old to enjoy it.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Fascinating pictures - thanks for sharing them.