The Bengali community in the city will celebrate this Navaratri worshipping a giant idol of Goddess Durga, which will stand tall at nine feet over a lion demonstrating the killing of a demon with her ten arms holding ten different weapons to establish the victory of good over evil.
The Keral Banga Samskriti Sangha (KBSS), an association of the Bengali community in the city, has kept alive its four-decade-old practice of celebrating Navaratri by setting up a giant idol of Goddess Durga.
For the last one month, a four-member family of idol makers, brought to the city for the purpose, had been engaged in setting up the idol at Rabindra Bhavan, the office of the KBSS, at Gandhinagar.
Finishing touches are being given and the idol will be ready in a couple of days. Ranajit Kanjilal, the president of the KBSS, said the idol was being made in the traditional way this time.
“In the past, we used to make separate idols of Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswathy, Ganesha and Karthikeya. This time, however, we have incorporated all these idols into one. And if the drawing and paintings attached to the idol are to be included, then it will assume an overall height of 11 feet,” he said.
Besides their expertise, the idol makers brought with them from Kolkata the mud from the Ganga, the weapons that the goddess were to wield, and her colourful attire.
The idol had been made with clay, hay and straw, bamboo and wood. Once the structure was completed natural colours were applied to it. “Though we made available clay from the local potteries for the making of the idol, the finishing touches are to be given with the mud brought from Kolkata as it would give the idol a glistening look and smooth finish,” Mr. Kanjilal said.
The celebrations will start with a Puja at 7 p.m. on October 13, which marks Maha Sasthi, the sixth day of the Durga Navaratri Puja. The weapons will be attached to the arms of the idol on the same day.
For the next three mornings, community members will come to Rabindra Bhavan and hold puja and floral offerings. They will then share bhog (food offered to the deity and then partaken). Cultural programmes will be staged during all three evenings from October 14 to 16.
On October 17, the Maha Dashami day, the idol will be taken in a procession to the backwaters near the Naval Base and immersed. The festivities are open to local people as well.
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