C T Online Desk: The immersion ritual is the final act of the festival, symbolising the return of Durga to her celestial abode.
Durga Puja, the most significant religious festival for the Bengali Hindu community, is set to end today with the immersion of the idols of Goddess Durga and her children in water bodies across the country amid festivity.
According to Hindu mythology, the goddess Durga has returned to her husband’s house at Kailash in Devaloy (heaven) through immersion.
In Dhaka, thousands of devotees will gather along the banks of the Buriganga River today to observe the final phase of the festival — immersion of the goddess.
Hindu devotees from different parts of the city will visit the ghat in trucks carrying idols while singing hymns to Durga with the sounds of musical instruments such as “Shankha”, “Khol”, and “Dhak”.
Devotees will bid farewell to the mother deity and her children — Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartik, and Ganesh — through the immersion of their idols, wishing for Durga’s return next year.
As part of the main rituals of Dashami Puja celebrations, female devotees will offer vermilion at the feet of Durga at mandaps and temples across the city, which is part of the traditional “Shidur Khela”. The ritual follows Hindu women putting vermilion on each other, wishing for prosperity in their lives, as a tribute to the power of Goddess Durga.
In Bangladesh this year, the religious festival is being celebrated at some 31,566 mandaps across the country, including 254 in the capital Dhaka.
The five-day festival started on September 28 with invocation of Goddess Durga on the day of Maha Shasthi.
Durga Puja, the annual Hindu festival also known as Sharadiya (autumnal) Durgotshob, is the worship of “Shakti” [divine force] embodied in Goddess Durga.
It symbolises the battle between good and evil where the dark forces eventually succumb to the divine.
