Durga Puja is a Hindu celebration in which statues are made and on the last day sunk in the river. As any good festival people dress up in their finest and a lot of food is involved, preferably sweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Puja
We received an invitation from the Kumudini trust. Not exactly knowing what the trust is about or where it was we set off around 13.00. Traffic was terrible as always, we arrived before 16.00 as planned.
We were warmly welcomed, of course with food, by one of the directors.
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| Everyone gets food |
The hospital is completely financed by the Kumudini enterprises. Treatments are free, or almost free. It is also a teaching hospital for girls. The scale is enormous; about hundreds of patients are seen daily, mostly out-patients. Several hundred nurses stay in this boarding school. All have a task in the hospital.
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| The girls dormitory |
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Some wards are more empty than others
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| They look like bricks, but are counterweights to keep limbs in the air |
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After dinner (just three hours after lunch) we headed back for the Durga Puja. It was absolutely packed. As everyone is equal we got seat in the front row. A nice performance of what I think is Durga killing evil and some dancing around that.
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| Tea for the VIPs in the library under the watchful eye of the founder. |
After lunch we headed over for the festivities. Some nice dancing with funny movements of the feet a man ringing bells another drumming. Luckily not too long.
At the end we got blessed in two ways. First you get to catch the smoke of a flame and 'pour' it over yourself, after that a man sprinkled some water over us. We are lucky.
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| God Durga defeating evil and dance around that. |
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| The many arms, one of the signs of Durga |
Some of the beautiful public
After all that we had to drive back home. Traffic was terrible, mostly due to trucks. As Durga Puja almost coincides Eid ul Azha this year we were caught in the cow traffic towards Dhaka. Any self respecting muslim does his very best to get a cow or at least a goat. Even our driver with a modest salary got a third of a cow. We are momentary also the lucky neighbours of a goat.
Last Thursday there was a 70 km traffic jam of people leaving Dhaka for their village the influx of cows is slightly more spread. Hoping to post some photos of the cow 'market' on this medium soon.
In any case, after some over- and undertaking where it is impossible we were glad to set foot on solid soil of our apartment, the blessing must have worked.
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