There is a very famous Bengali poem called "আমরা" (We the Bengalis) by Satyendranath Dutta, which is also one of my very favorite poems where there's a line - দেবতারে মোরা আত্মীয় জানি, আকাশে প্রদীপ জ্বালি - we consider the gods as our relatives and light lamps for them. The most beloved of them should be our dear Goddess Durga. In a land of 330 million gods and goddesses, every part of India, or rather every household seem to have a favorite god. We worship them, pray to them, celebrate them, but for Durga the difference is that, we love her dearly and treat her like a daughter of the family.
If you know the mythology, it is pretty apparent that Durga was created out of energy to slay the buffalo-demon. This entire span of the puja is nothing but a battle, one of good over evil. Goddess Durga is a tough lady who defeated the demon whom all the other gods could not. She is not a daughter, wife or mother of anyone, she is just a collection of energy. Then how did she become the Bengali daughter?
This was the time when Bengali daughters could visit their home. Coming back to their parents, they would bring their children along. That is why Durga is accompanied by her four children. I used to wonder what are they doing in the battlefield? And if they did end up in the battlefield then why are they not fighting? This is the reason for it - they were added on later as part of a social system, not following the original guideline of the Sanskrit texts.
The only way for us to know the original story is to listen to the radio program of Mahisashuramardini (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahisasuramardini_(radio_programme)). I still don't understand many concepts of it, maybe they were so advanced that it's still very difficult to comprehend. I mean, how could you anyway create a person out of sheer energy? Arnab says they created instances like out of Java classes. Probably they did, who knows? And then what about having 18 arms, 16 arms and 10 arms? I have no clue. I like that story, but that powerful goddess is different from the "girl" that we know of.
Durga, or to be more precise Uma (another name of the goddess) is like I said, the dear Bengali girl who comes to visit her parents for five days every year from her in-laws' house in Kailash. Earlier, rich landlords hosted these festivals and the entire village would come to see it. Those people absolutely treated the goddess as a daughter. Their own daughters would come from their respective in-laws and so would the goddess. In some families they make the deity wear their daughters' golden jewelries. Some others feed the goddess and her kids the same food their own children eat. There have been multitudes of songs written where Durga's mother is heard lamenting how harshly her daughter is being treated at her in-laws and asking Himalaya (yes, the mountain range. He is Durga's father) to go bring her daughter. You might wonder how such a powerful goddess who defeated that demon could be ill treated at her in-laws, but that is where the Bengali society overrides Hindu mythology. Her mother is no one but the regular Bengali woman who eagerly waits for her daughter to come visit and weeps when it is time for her to go back. On the final day of the festival, the deities are given sweets to eat. Well, we actually put sweets in their mouths and also put sindur (the red powder married women put on their foreheads) on Durga and her two daughters, Lakshmi and Saraswati. This is the story of every household and of every married woman. To even the most happily married Bengali woman, coming back to her own house is a heavenly thing.
Of the things that are hard coded in every Indian girl's DNA is the sorrow of leaving home after her marriage. I had left home way before getting married and was totally on my own but have never thought of getting upset. However, on the day after my wedding when I was going to my in-laws I wept. There was practically no reason for that. I knew perfectly well that I was just going there for three days and will be back home and then back to Seattle. But as it was hard coded I could not change it. You can't reason with that either. The same story applies for going home during Durga Puja. I don't live at my in-laws house, I talk to my family almost everyday and I visit them for much longer period than the goddess does. But again the debug point hits the hard coded value... I feel homesick during this time of the year...
If you know the mythology, it is pretty apparent that Durga was created out of energy to slay the buffalo-demon. This entire span of the puja is nothing but a battle, one of good over evil. Goddess Durga is a tough lady who defeated the demon whom all the other gods could not. She is not a daughter, wife or mother of anyone, she is just a collection of energy. Then how did she become the Bengali daughter?
This was the time when Bengali daughters could visit their home. Coming back to their parents, they would bring their children along. That is why Durga is accompanied by her four children. I used to wonder what are they doing in the battlefield? And if they did end up in the battlefield then why are they not fighting? This is the reason for it - they were added on later as part of a social system, not following the original guideline of the Sanskrit texts.
Durga, or to be more precise Uma (another name of the goddess) is like I said, the dear Bengali girl who comes to visit her parents for five days every year from her in-laws' house in Kailash. Earlier, rich landlords hosted these festivals and the entire village would come to see it. Those people absolutely treated the goddess as a daughter. Their own daughters would come from their respective in-laws and so would the goddess. In some families they make the deity wear their daughters' golden jewelries. Some others feed the goddess and her kids the same food their own children eat. There have been multitudes of songs written where Durga's mother is heard lamenting how harshly her daughter is being treated at her in-laws and asking Himalaya (yes, the mountain range. He is Durga's father) to go bring her daughter. You might wonder how such a powerful goddess who defeated that demon could be ill treated at her in-laws, but that is where the Bengali society overrides Hindu mythology. Her mother is no one but the regular Bengali woman who eagerly waits for her daughter to come visit and weeps when it is time for her to go back. On the final day of the festival, the deities are given sweets to eat. Well, we actually put sweets in their mouths and also put sindur (the red powder married women put on their foreheads) on Durga and her two daughters, Lakshmi and Saraswati. This is the story of every household and of every married woman. To even the most happily married Bengali woman, coming back to her own house is a heavenly thing.
Of the things that are hard coded in every Indian girl's DNA is the sorrow of leaving home after her marriage. I had left home way before getting married and was totally on my own but have never thought of getting upset. However, on the day after my wedding when I was going to my in-laws I wept. There was practically no reason for that. I knew perfectly well that I was just going there for three days and will be back home and then back to Seattle. But as it was hard coded I could not change it. You can't reason with that either. The same story applies for going home during Durga Puja. I don't live at my in-laws house, I talk to my family almost everyday and I visit them for much longer period than the goddess does. But again the debug point hits the hard coded value... I feel homesick during this time of the year...
