Durga Puja

. . . is a Hindu/Bengali festival celebrated in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and some parts of India. And, of course, by many of our students!

Durga is the name of an important, beautiful 10-armed goddess, who is married to Shiva. Puja means "worship".

A few of us teachers and a busload of students went to visit a bunch of "pandals" -- temporary statues of the goddess set up around Chittagong. There were Christmas lights hanging all over town, making for a carnival-like atmosphere!

Lots of lights!

Decorations at the front of our bus:

We stopped for a snack:

I have no idea what the food was...there were definitely some potatoes and lentils in there, but that is about all I could identify. Tasty!

Some student/Miss Cindy pictures:

Suba, Me, Silojah

On the far left is Tomoko (a staff woman here from Boston to help us get organized for an upcoming big event . . .), Chelvi, Me, Kumary, and Thusha

Me and Kumary

Durga Puja lasts for nine days. On the final day, our students invited us to a celebration in the morning. Apparently, the final day of Durga Puja involves blessings from parents, religious leaders, and sometimes teachers, too (who are third down the totem pole). Since the girls are away from home, they asked us teachers-- they actually called us gurus!-- to give them to blessing.

Each teacher crushed beetlenuts on the forehead of all the Nepali students, and touched their heads:



And then all of the Sri Lankan and many of the Indian students came up to us, one by one, and kissed our feet. That was a new experience for me. They also gave us a blessing:


At the end of Durga Puja, the idols are cast into the water-- symbolic of Durga's return home to her husband Shiva in the Himalayas. They take all of the idols down to the harbor, and send her out to sea! (Wrong direction from Chittagong but hey, minor detail).

This is another one of those holidays that involves goat-slaughtering. We saw these mountain goats on our trek in Nepal (where there is also a large Hindu population). The goats were raised in Tibet, and were being walked (herded?) by shepherds through the mountains down into Kathmandu for the slaughter. We tried to warn them, to no avail!