Being a Bengali I miss the Durga puja a lot here in the United States. The "kash phool" , "dhaker awaz" , new dresses and "pujobarshiki"......I miss every bit of it. Being surrounded by all non Bengali people, it is really hard to make them understand the craze of this five day long celebration. Long before the puja days, all my friends from West Bengal started to post puja related status in their Facebook pages and that made me more sad. I was remembering all the old good memories of puja. And then suddenly I came to know about the Houston Durga Bari Society. A temple of Goddess Durga. The location is quiet good, its not in a crowded area. The private road that leads to the temple has ample greenery and a lake. This lake is used for the "bisorjon" (immersion of the idol). The Society is a decade old one and many people are associated with it. This year they celebrated the Durga puja for public for four days from 25th October to 28th. I was there for two days over the weekend. They did "sandhya arati", "dhaki", "balidaan", "puspanjali" ...everything!! The "balidaan" was a surprise for me as they cut five different vegetables instead of an animal. It was a really nice idea. And who can forget the delicious "bhog". The "khichudi" with "beguni" was the attraction on Saturday while the final day's menu was fried rice with mutton. In the auditorium section they had some cultural activities. To have a look at these programs and to eat the dinner/lunch you need some passes which you can buy online. The registration fee was around $250 for family which increased by $50 during the puja days.
After the Dashami puja all the married women played with "sindur" there. And then the "bisarjan" happened. Since it is USA we can not immerse the idol in the lake (it will cause water pollution), hence they immersed only a banana plant along with an earthen pot. Thus the Durga puja came to an end this year with a hope in our heart "Asche bochor abar hobe"!!
