Clay Images of West BengalCalcutta Notes 21st October 1980 Pandal pujas immersed. I watched the Nafar Kundu sarvajanin being taken. final ceremonies were being done @ 7pm. To drumming and dhup women getting up on stage and doing puja. This consisted of putting sindhur on the forehead of Durga, feeding Durga, one woman-a widow-went up to each image (starting Durga then Ganesh then Lakshmi then Kartik) and touched their feet and then folded hands. In front of Lakshmi she must have offered a special prayer since she stood before the image for quite a while. A boy came and picked a few flowers off the malas of some of the images. Women put sindhur on each other's foreheads. One popular thing to do once the images had been loaded onto the lorries seems to have been dancing done by the young men in front of the lorry to the frenzied beat of drums, firecrackers went off. Then the procession could start. Apparently there were a few hours in the day when according to the punjikas bisarjan could take place. A lot of images remain unimmersed today apparently because of the lack of coordination. The punjikas are the calendrical almanacs and different systems of Durga puja work on different punjikas. A lot of the sarvajanin pujas round here were immersed in Babu Ghat.  22nd October 1980 - Kumartuli and Kalighat 27th October 1980 - Kalighat and Patuapara 29th October 1980 - Asu Datta's house 30th October 1980 - Tarakeswara, Radhanagar, Gopalnagar, Krishnanagar 31st October 1980 - Tarakeshwara and Kolimbar village |