Maa Durga !
24 October - Vijayadashami

S Balakrishnan *

Durga Puja at Port Blair in 1979

The Navarathri (Nine Night) festival, as Durga Puja is known in South India, is dedicated to the female Trinity counterpart - Parvathi (Durgai), Lakshmi and Saraswathi - of the male Trinities of Siva, Vishnu and Brahma respectively. In Tamil the female Trinities are called Malai Magal (One who hails from the Hills) Alai Magal (One who hails from the Milky Ocean) and Kalai Magal (One who bestows Knowledge / Arts).

Durgai or Mahishasuramardhini is always depicted alone in South, fighting a lone battle against Mahishasura, seated on her vaahan (mount), the lion. She is invariably found in a niche on the northern wall of all Siva temples, with devotees thronging her on Tuesdays and Fridays with red flowers.

So I was surprised to see Ma Durga not only with Lakshmi and Saraswathi but also along with her two sons, Ganesh (Pillayaar in Tamil) and Karthik (Murugan in Tamil). It was in 1978 that I first saw the traditional Bengali Durga Puja pandal; in the far off Port Blair, the capital town of Andaman & Nicobar Union Territory, the Bengali devotees had organized the celebrations.

Eagle Club and Bengali Club were competing against each other to organize it in as grand a manner as possible in that remote town with as loud a noise as possible. We Indians are generally a noisy people, right?

Durga puja idols in Orissa (my second place of posting) were truly gorgeous, as Odisha artisans are known for masterly edifices like the Konark Sun Temple. My third experience of Durga Puja was in Darjeeling (while working in Sikkim); the Nepali style of Durga Puja is called Dashain (ten-day festival) which culminates with ‘maar’, the sacrifice of countless buffaloes (mahish).

I could not ‘stomach’ the scene (maybe because I am a vegetarian) and so left it quite soon. With Chennai becoming a cosmopolitan city, associations of people from Bengal, Bihar, Odisha organize Durga Puja pandals at different corners of the city; it gives them a chance to mingle together, enjoy their cuisine, and have fun along with devotion. They get a feeling of being at home at least for ten days.

We were lucky to spot a beautiful wooden statue of Maa Durga in Port Blair during my revisit in 2009, three decades after my transfer from there to Cuttack. What a coincidence, I thought. Ferocious images of gods are generally not kept in the house, but my wife too fell in love with this image, crafted so minutely yet beautifully. So I did not have the trouble of convincing/begging her to buy it.

It is in the customary Bengali style with Ganesh on His mooshika/mice mount, Saraswathi and Lakshmi on lotus and Karthik on His peacock mount. The whole image is 8 inches x 6 inches size but within this size all the figures have been carved out with fine details and emotions.

We bought it at the Cottage Industries Emporium for something like 900 rupees. Well, I am not sure but it really doesn’t matter for such a lovely image. Maa Durga image is both ferocious and gracious which attests for the masterly execution by the artisan.

The Durgai idol reminds me of my happy pandal-hopping days at various places in the good olden days. She is also enticing me to visit Kolkata during Durga Puja festivities.

Oh, Maa, I would go crazy!