Why is Durga Puja so important for me?

A few days ago it was Janmashtami. Im sure you’ve heard of it, some may have celebrated it with great gusto too. For the uninitiated, it was our revered Lord Krishna’s birthday. Some may still ask, Lord Krishna, who? A quick recap for the last category of people.

Well, Lord Krishna is one of the central deities of the Hindu mythology. He’s widely considered to be an Avatar or a direct descent of the Hindu God Vishnu and is believed to have cohabited with the human race around 3100 BCE.

This story is based on the folklore around his birth. It is said that Krishna was born in captivity in a dungeon to his parents Devaki and Vasudeva. Devaki’s brother, Kansa fearing his life after a prophecy that his death would be in the hands of a male child born to his sister, had imprisoned his sister and brother in law so that he could easily kill every male child born to them.

So when Krishna was born, his parents wept fearing for his life. But as the story goes, a deep sleep pervaded both the palace inmates at Kansa’s home and also the guards at the prison. However Devaki and Vasudeva were sleepless. It was a night when torrential rains had unleashed their fury resulting in flooding in and around Dwarka- Mathura. Despite the inclement weather, Vasudeva managed to carry the newborn infant out in a basket, avoiding the eyes of the sleeping guards, all the while holding the basket on top of his head as he made his way through a flooded land.

And so he walked on, enquiring about babies born that night, until he reached the home of a simple cowherd’s wife Yashoda in Gokul, who was said to have given birth to a baby girl that same night. Exchanging the babies to an exhausted and sleeping mother, Vasudeva quietly placed the newborn Krishna in the cradle next to Yashoda, while he made his way back to Devaki with the baby girl; trembling with fear at the fate of this newborn girl, Mahamaya in the hands of Kansa.  My story today is about Mahamaya.

Mahamaya. She shares a birthday with Krishna. Just born to her cowherd parents, Nand and Yashoda, she was abducted and taken to Mathura by a man who exchanged her at her birth crib with a baby boy, whose life was feared, and precious.

On the following morning, Kansa is informed by his spies of a very strong rumor of a boy being born to Devaki and Vasudeva. Anxious and eager to kill his prophesized murderer right at birth, he upon finding a baby girl instead of a boy flung her in the air in a fit of rage. In a curious mix of incidents and accidents, this baby, Mahamaya, ends up growing into a young woman in the scenic villages of the Vindhya Mountain ranges. And thus Mahamaya is yet again thrust upon a new set of parents.

In the meantime, Krishna has grown to be a cute and mischievous boy. The tales of his antics spread far and wide. Thus his original parents rediscover him and the truth is shared with his foster parents. They are also told of the ‘unfortunate’ Mahamaya. Krishna is thus ‘returned’ to his original set of parents while enjoying the love of his foster parents too. Over his whole life Krishna has two set of parents, many girlfriends, many loves and wives, friends and children too.

And Mahamaya, you ask? Well, her birth parents did not go looking for her. After all, how could they have taken back a girl who was stolen, replaced and perhaps even sold. She too possibly had a set of guardians whom she called parents, a husband, a child or a few possibly and may have even gotten lucky in having some wealth in her name. But her real purpose in life was to safeguard a male child from the hands of a monster king. That was her moment of fame.  Mahamaya.

Im often asked this question… there are so many religious festivals in India. Why only Durga Puja? Why do I write only about this one festival? What is so special? Because, it took a race to evolve until it was in the 16th century to understand the relevance and importance of women.

Because, Durga Puja is about the supreme celebration of the female incarnate of the divine.

Because, Durga Puja made the little girl in me feel important too.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *