I will be the first to admit to being a little confused over the specific festival/holiday being celebrated today. The vagaries confound me; the intricacies escape me. Festivals seem to be very regional and every region seems to celebrate slightly different things for different periods of time. All I know is that the village of Brookefields is celebrating both Durga Puja and Dasara today (and all this past week), mostly because the signs and banners tell me so. I only had a chance to snap a couple of non-horrible photos today: one in the afternoon on the way home from the store, and the other at about 10:00pm when a real racket arose outside the apartment. It was a little parade of a Durga statue going from here to there (wherever 'here' and 'there' were). My little camera does not do well at night, so there's not much to see. I know. . .a fairly poor effort on my part. We had the day off work and I was catching up on the rest of the blog entries and some much needed sleep!
from various Wikipedia pages:
The Dasara is a mark of victory of the great Hindu God Rama (Ramachandra, son of Dasharatha the King), for his victory over Ravana in the Ramayana. When Rama had returned to Auyodhya after a very long period, there was a celebration for the victory over Ravana. Also on this day, the Pandavas returned to their home. They had hidden their weapons in trees (which is called Aapta in Marathi). This tree then got famous as the golden tree and on this festival people exchange leaves of this tree as a celebration of happiness and victory over evil. People do pooja/puja of books, gadgets, vehicles and weapons on this day. It is one of the days where every moment is considered auspicious in the Hindu calendar. People usually buy new things and celebrate Dasara with great joy and happiness.
Durga Puja (worship of Durga)
The Great Goddess Durga is said to be exquisitely beautiful. Her form is blindingly bright, with three lotus-like eyes, ten powerful hands, lush hair with beautiful curls, a red-golden glow from her skin and a quarter moon on her forehead. She wears a shiny oceanic blue attire emitting fierce rays. Her ornaments were carved beautifully of gold, with ocean pearls and precious stones embedded in it. Each god also gave her their own most powerful weapons: Rudra's trident, Vishnu's discus, Indra's thunderbolt, Brahma's kamandalu, Kuber's Ratnahar, etc. Himalayas gifted her a fierce white and gold lion. On the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth day of waxing moon, Chanda and Munda came to fight the goddess. She turned blue with anger and the goddess Chamunda leapt out of her third eye. Her form was the most powerful one with three red eyes, blood-filled tongue and dark skin; she finally killed the twin demons with her sword. Finally, on the tenth day of waxing moon, Durga killed Mahishasura with her trident. Hence, Durga Puja is also a festival of the power of Good (Durga) winning out over the evil.
Little brother in yellow. . .still interested in the goings-on. Older sister. . .not so much.
1 comment:
Hello Erik,
A minor correction: The return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya is celebrated as Diwali or Deepavali. The Dussehra is the date Ravan was supposedly killed by Rama. Apparently it took him a while to travel from Lanka to Ayodhya (about a fortnight)..even though he had the luxury of using Ravana's personal aircraft(Pushpak biman).
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