By IANS,
New Delhi : They descended on the Yamuna banks to bid farewell to the mother goddess, shouting “Bolo Bolo Durga Mai Ki, Jai!” On the final day of puja festivities Monday, thousands of Bengali devotees here could not contain their emotions as giant idols of goddess Durga were immersed in the river.
Since morning, the Durga Puja venue at the sprawling Mela Ground in south Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park saw women and children touching the feet of the goddess with vermilion, sweets, flowers, incense and books. They all hoped that Durga – the goddess of strength – would shower her blessings on them.
Despite the distinct tinge of sadness on the last day of five-day festivities, the air echoed with laughter, sweets, goodwill – and also a riot of red vermilion as married women observed “sindoor khela” this day known as Bijoya Dashami.
The final ‘arti’ or fire ritual was performed around 11 a.m. following which the idols of the goddess and her four children were brought down from the podium – where they were worshipped for four days – and loaded on to waiting trucks for immersion in the Yamuna.
Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) are believed to have played host to nearly 500 Durga Puja venues, as Bengalis here leave no stone unturned to celebrate the festival with gusto. Idols from most of these places were ferried to the river on trucks even as devotees danced to the beat of drums.
Police ensured that the riverbank along Delhi and Noida was well managed despite crowds of revellers and the roads were relatively free of traffic.
Despite the economic downturn, which scaled down several puja budgets, most Durga Puja organisers managed to keep the festive spirit afloat.
“There was enthusiasm in the air despite the resource crunch that many Durga Pujas faced. We emerged with flying colours,” a senior functionary of the Shipra Sun City Durga Puja Samiti in Ghaziabad said.
Ameeta Chatterjee, a budding novelist who had been camping at her friend’s residence in Chittaranjan Park for 10 days to get a feel of the Durga Puja, said she was feeling a “wee wistful”.
“It always happens on the last day when you suddenly realise that the goddess is leaving and the festivities are over,” the young writer, who is writing her first work of fiction around the capital’s Durga Puja, told IANS at the Mela Ground in Chittaranjan Park.
This year, most of the organisers of the Durga Puja kept environmental concerns in mind while immersing the idols following sustained campaigns by several green NGOs to keep the river free of pollutants.
Nearly 90 percent of the bigger idols, said artisan Manik Pal, were made of clay that would immediately dissolve in water and natural dyes that would not leave traces of colour in the clogged river.
The 100-year-old Durga Puja at Kashmere Gate has donated all the used flowers to a local non-profit organisation for recycling.
“The flowers will be crushed and their essence extracted for making perfumes. We did not want to dump the flowers in the river,” said Dipayan Mazumdar, vice-president of the Kashmere Gate Durga Puja Samiti.