This year, the ritual had seen no exception and the celebration went on full swing like the previous years at Dhaka University’s Jagannath Hall puja temple.
Out of a total of 31,398 mandaps across the country and 237 in the capital Dhaka, the Jagannath Hall of Dhaka University is known for arranging the Durja Puja celebration every year amid pomp and grandeur.
Photo: Abu Sufian Juwel
While most of the attendees are generally the students of DU and their family members as the celebration is arranged in their own campus, a huge number of outsiders also come to observe and celebrate puja every year.
The puja celebration at the Jagannath Hall temple draws attention to one of the largest crowds of devotees every year. Notable temples including Dhakeshwari National Temple, Ramkrishna Mission, Kalabagan, Banani and Shakhari Bazar also attracts lots of devotees.
Started with the Saraswati Puja on Friday, this year’s five-day long traditional programmes ‘Sharadiyo (autumnal) Durgotsabh’ celebration continued with Maha Saptami puja on Saturday, Maha Ashtami, Kumari Puja and Sandhi Puja on Sunday, Maha Nabami Puja on Monday and Bijoya Dashami on Tuesday.
As said earlier, Jagannath Hall is known for arranging one of the biggest and majestic puja celebrations in numerous ways and manners. Although the festivities are much grandeur in the season of Sarwaswati Puja, the autumnal celebration has been organized in decent manners to serve the devotees. The statues of the deities got more majestic than last year, and the overall atmosphere can be labeled as magical, with people from all ages and walks of life gathering to pray and enjoy the festivities.
Devotees from several places in the city had been thronging in this mandap to celebrate, with rituals and activities such as reciting the ‘mantras’, offering flowers to the goddess Durga (pushpanjali) and offering prayer seeking her blessings.
The Bijoya Dashami in this puja venue saw the finale of prayers within afternoon and the statues of the deities were soon devotedly taken off to the journey towards BurigangaRiver in Sadarghat for the holy immersion in the water at around 8 pm on Tuesday- following the instruction of the Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad that the countrywide immersion must be completed within 10 pm at the Dashami, this year.
Meanwhile, a grand celebration with songs and dance was attended by people from all ages and classes in the temple who waited for the final holy prayer of the night after the immersion.
Several stalls of foods and drinks, sweets, toys, bangles, ornaments and devotional books-goodies had been seen in the venue premise, and garnered attention from the devotees. In addition to those stalls, there had been traditional play rides for kids such as ‘Nagordola’.
The whole venue was 24/7 monitored by the law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders to prevent unwanted occurrences during the festivity. As a result, the devotees had been very muchpleased to attend festivities in the Jagannath Hall venue.
The most noticeable aspect of the celebration of Durga Puja at this venue had always been the crowd, consisting members from almost every social classes in the society. Forgetting the barriers of class distinction and social discriminations, devotees from everywhere joined and mixed up in this venue and this represented the true harmony of the feeling- “the land is for all”.
With the hope to welcome the holy deities in next year again with much more unique and vibrant celebrations, the ceremony of Jagannath Hall temple in DU concluded through the Bijoya Dashami’s true colors- reviving the age-old heritage of its own.