All set for Maa Durga to slay ‘COVID-asur’ this year!
Many of this year’s Durga Puja pandals will be sans the usual glitz and glamour of themed pujas, having chosen to depict COVID-19 and coronavirus and their effects
This will be the second consecutive year that Bengalis will be celebrating their greatest festival, Durga Puja under the cloud of COVID-19 and its attendant restrictions.
Keeping in mind the current scenario of the world as a whole, many Puja committees of Kolkata and its adjoining areas have decided to model their pandals along the lines of the pandemic. Last year, the committees concentrated on the infection; this year, with the vaccination project on in a big way, they are emphasising on the remedies, vaccination and how the world could usher in a new dawn.
The pandal at Mohammed Ali Park, a renowned site, will be themed on a COVID vaccination centre. Baghajatin Vivekananda Milan Sangha is focusing on the ill-effects the lockdown has had on our mental health, and ways to overcome those.
A pandal in Kasba is decorating its pandal, and making the demon Mahishasur, to look like one giant coronavirus. Maniktala’s Uttar Kolkata Sanhati is focusing its efforts on depicting the locked-up lives of children, and how learning has been reduced to staring at screens of computers and mobile phones.
Another club in Kasba, Rabindra Memorial Sporting Club will be designing the head of its Mahishasur like the virus that causes COVID-19, novel coronavirus.
The Durga idol of Baguiati’s Ashwininagar Bandhu Mahal Club will be wearing a golden mask.
Many other clubs, like the celebrated Samajsebi Sangha, Bhawanipore 75 Pally and Janakalyan Sangha in Beleghata will be helping different sections of the society who have been directly or indirectly affected by the pandemic.
Samajsebi Sangha, for example, will take up the responsibility of ten children who have been orphaned due to COVID-19.
