Dussehra is one of the grand festival in India and today I am going to show you how it showcases togetherness and brotherhood.
In India, though Dussehra is celebrated at many places, its celebrated as a grand festival in few cities. Kolkata probably tops the list, but we have our own heritage city Cuttack showing its extravagance in gold and silver in the deities and decorations in Dussehra festival. And without brotherhood, its impossible to build and present such grand showcase for almost a week.
There are 167 puja pandals in Cuttack this year, and I am going to present some of them to you for you to feel what it takes to build such grand pandals.
While some of these has only ornaments as silver, majority of them are having the full background of silver ( called Chandi Medha). And almost 200 - 400 kgs of silver are used to build such grand decorations. It takes almost 6-8 months for many rare skilled Tarakasi labour , who start building for next year after 3-4 months from now. And you can imagine, arranging all these, along with managing funds, safety needs absolute coordination of many people in each puja committee. Such coordination is only possible only with togetherness and great brotherhood. Many people together sacrifice some of their daily time and follow up daily for months with the Tarakasi artisans to make it to the final days.
And now I present you the most precious golden grand deity.
As you can see, this has more than 50 kgs of gold and around 200 - 300 kgs of silver , and they are trying to convert them more and more to gold each year. It needs lot of funds, proper planning , coordination, and accurate execution , which showcases the togetherness of people.
While these pandals were so great, the outside decoration is equally grand. I am going to present some of them.
In the above picture, its my Mom who had a long pending wish to visit the Cuttack Dussehra - So I took the opportunity to take her with me. As she is getting older, I am trying to fulfill all of her wish. She also had the wish to go to Cuttack Chandi Temple, because its very special to visit on Dussehra.
I hope this post gives you an impression of how grand Dussehra is and why or how it brings togetherness and brotherhood. To conclude this post, I am going to share one pandal from the capital city of Bhubaneswar.
Wish you all happy Dussehra and may this Dussehra bring happiness and prosperity for all of us.