India is known as land of festival, with many cultural fest to celebrate. Rightly so, today, Sunday 22 Oct'23 is the 8th day of 9 days festival of Goddess Durga. The 9 days festival is known as Navratra and mark worshipping of Goddess Shakti (ma durga).
an incarnation of “Goddess Durga” is worshipped to celebrate the day of her victory over Mahishasura, and the ultimate victory of 'Good over Evil.”
As the festival is ongoing in India, every one is busy in celebrating in their own way and I have not done anything different. Ask any person what they have done on weekend and everyone would have a common answer of worshipping lord Durga or visiting a temple to pay their respect. And I did so visiting the temple to offer my respect and prayers.
We refer Goddess Durga as Ma Durga, Ma is referring to mother. Goddess Durga is mother of all.
our village temple
Visiting a temple is common practice but during these special occasion it worth more than anything. Last three have special significance and extreme rush any Indian temple is very common. During Navratra many people observe fasting for entire 9 days. They abstain themselves from any cereals and relies only on fruits and juices and milk. (I am one of them). It is the time when shops in the market sees a high demand and gets over crowded. Everyone like to do shopping for their famely to celebrate the festival.
There were many other customs and rituals at every other place. At my home, we have our own worshipping. Apart from visiting temple, it is important to offer prayer at home too. So we have our worshipping at our ancient worship place. With kalash and diyas and praying for thr well being of everyone.
While the priest perform all the rituals there is some one from the family sits along with him for entire 9 days. As we are getting to end of the festival, last few days are quite chaotic with many things to complete. Gents and ladies all were busy in their own way to offer prayers to the Goddess. The main worshipping starts on the 7th day called saptami. That was on Saturday and we had some special peasadam
Today is very busy, still I am managing to make post thanks to the rush in the temple. We still have lot of preparation for the day. And evening prayer around 7 PM. So looking at everything you might have observed how much we are occupied. After long our weekend are so meaning full.
