Durga Pooja or Durga Puja is celebrated every year during the months of October or November during the festival of Navratri. Navratri is a 9 or 10 days festival that celebrates the 9 different avatars of Goddess Durga. The observation of the festival is to promote the fact that good always wins over evil. It is believed that during the Navratri festival, Goddess Durga killed the demon Mahishasur after he attacked Earth, Heaven, and Hell, which is called Trilok.
Durga Puja pandals in Delhi and West Bengal
This Navratri festival which is known as Shardiya Navaratri is observed with great amazement all over the nation, particularly in West Bengal, Orissa, Tripura, Assam, and Karnataka. This year, Sharad Navratri will be celebrated on 26 September 2022 and it will end on 5 October with Vijaya Dashami and Durga Visarjan. Durga Puja 2022 in India will begin on
Saturday, 1st of October 2022, and end on Wednesday, 5th October 2022.
In post-Covid ‘Navratri’, teens take to spirituality
Ahead of Durga Puja 2022, Indian Railways has also decided to run special trains to and from Kolkata, Ajmer, and Haridwar. The railway authorities have begun train ticket bookings on September 12. The Indian Railways Eastern Railway will additionally operate train services between Sealdah and New Jalpaiguri.
As Kolkata is mainly hosting major celebrations of Durga Puja, the Kolkata police will be introducing its Utsav app which will come with extra features this year. The app will allow its users to watch over 60 most important Durga Puja pandals and also avail details about different pooja’s related information in the city. Also, app users can get the important details of as many as 350 major pujas on the platform.
Since 2016, the Kolkata Police launch this app with interesting features every year during the festival of Durga Puja. In the 2022 mobile app, there will be live feeds from pandals, location-based searches of adjoining pandals, global search of any puja with a famous name, location, zone, or complex, among others. The 2022 mobile app will be launched on 25th September and it is called “Utsab– Kolkata Police”.
The ritual of Pran Pratistha is done on 25 September, which is Mahalaya by painting the eyes of the idol of Goddess Durga. Sasthi, Saptami, and Ashtami are the other significant days that have their own importance and rituals. The city of joy, which is Kolkata is finally happy to be able to organize the nation’s largest festival in its city after the break of two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kolkata is also set to introduce special buses that would run in major areas of Gariahat, Shyambazar, and Esplanade. Special AC buses will also be introduced between 12 PM and 9 PM all over the city’s commercial areas for the convenience of shopping for the local people. These special buses are meant for shopping for the local people and thus, they will be parked in areas where people can hop on and hop off in retail areas. To avail of these special services, the Bengal transport officials said that they will not charge anything extra. Also, during Durga Puja, similar additional buses would be used.
