Sanitised sindoor khela with masks: Bidding adieu to Maa with new normal

BHOPAL: Bijoya or Dussehra festivities were celebrated on Monday by most of the Bengalis across the country. As a part of these celebrations, Bengali women essentially play sindoor khela with Goddess Durga and then smear each other with vermilion. This ritual adds a lot of colour, gaiety and grandeur to the grand finale of Pujo festival, but this year Bhopali women played a highly sanitised sindoor khela while ensuring that merriment quotient of the ritual didn’t diminish a bit.
General secretary of Bengali Association TT Nagar, Salil Chatterjee, said, “Only a few committee members were a part of sindoor khela this time because one has to be cautious during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.Since we only did ghat sthapana this year, they did parikrama of the ghat in place of Durga’s idol. And mirror ritual, where Goddess’ feet are seen in a mirror, was also replicated with the ghat. Later, they applied sindoor on the ghat before the symbolic visarjan in a thali.”
Kalibari Kolar, however, saw women enjoying sindoor khela with Ma Durga’s idol, before they played cautiously with their friends and family members. Founder member of Kalibari, Kolar, Niloy Ghosh said, “We used several bottles of sanitisers to ensure that surroundings and revellers were totally safe. And women played only with their close friends and family members and not with unknown people, like earlier times. So, it was a sanitised khela for sure.”
“After months of staying indoors, it was such a relief to be able to meet some close friends and enjoy some adda with them. The cherry on the cake for me was playing sindoor khela with Ma. Now that She has departed symbolically, I’m already waiting for Her to return next year,” said Madhureeta Das, a homemaker.