The pandemic has ensured that this year’s Durga Puja festivities will be remembered, but sadly for being the most low-key celebration in decades. As Bengalis mourn the scaling down of the largest festival in their year, it’s worth asking how worshipping the Goddess acquired this special place in their hearts. Until as recently as the late 1700s, Durga Puja in Bengal was not a festival of the masses. The puja was restricted to the houses of rajas and zamindars. Some commoners had access to the pujas, but only as visitors, by invitation. Durga Puja was essentially a celebration of the rich and the powerful. The main reason for this was that the Puja was an expensive affair. It ran for four days and involved numerous rituals that were impossible for the common man to sustain financially. It was an incident in a nondescript village in the Hooghly region that turned the tide. Guptipara, about 100 km from Kolkata, is the reason that Durga Puja became democratised. In ...
The Unheard Secrets aims to turn up those pages of the abandoned heritage which was lost somewhere in the shadow of that historical era.. busting the myths and disclosing the unsung stories which somehow failed to prove their existence in the test of time. Lets put our ears into those vanquished voices, which still might want to unbox their hidden treasures.. stories.. which even History failed to hear it.