Why Navaratri and Durga Puja Delayed in 2020!

The 11-day Ganesh Festival, celebrated all over Maharashtra and other parts of the country, ushers in the festive season in India, it normally falls during August-September every year as per the calculations of the lunisolar Hindu Calendar. After the immersion on the 14^th day of the bright phase or the waxing moon phase or Shukla Paksha of the lunar month, full moon or Purnima occurs the next day, and the following fortnight of the darkening phase or the waning phase or Krishna Paksha is observed as Pitru Paksha when people pay homage to their ancestors and perform the main shradh or funeral rituals on the culminating day of the new moon or Amavasya, that is Mahalaya. Next day, the brightening phase of the moon starts again which is called Devi Paksha and during this divine fortnight of the Goddess awakening, Navaratri and Durga Puja are celebrated. Hymns of Goddess Durga resonate the air on the auspicious day of Mahalaya, and people of India, energized by the sweet tinge of the Autumn season, immerse themselves in worshiping their favorite Goddesses along with the festivities that effectively break all religious and other barriers. However, this year 2020, after Mahalaya on the 17^th of September, Navaratri is not going to start from the next day and Durga Puja not going to start six days later. You’ll have to wait exactly a month for Navaratri and 35 days for Durga Puja. Most of us already know this when both almanacs of the Hindu calendar agreed on this and announced the delay during Durga Puja celebrations last year, that is 2019.

The basic reason for this delay is the fact that the month of Ashwin that starts on September 17 happens to be mala maas or unholy month as two new moons (Amavasya) occur during the 30 days, the first Amavasya is the Mahalaya day on 17 September and the second one on 16^th October. As per the holy scriptures, a month is considered unholy if two new moons occur and all auspicious rituals except for funeral rites are avoided. This phenomenon repeats itself approximately every 32.5 months as a result of the intricate additions/omissions process of leap days and leap months in the Hindu calendar, and a mala maas can be applicable to any of the 12 months. On earlier occasions, Ashwin had been the unholy month in 1982 and in 2001. Therefore in 2020, the nine-day Navaratri festivities are going to start from October 17 and the Mahashasthi, the start of the five-day Durga Puja, would  be on the 22^nd October; both festivals falling in the month of Kartik. Vijay Dashami or Dussehrais to be observed on October 26. The rest of the Indian festival calendar will not be affected.

The Indian festive season began this year on a subdued and sober note due to the raging COVID-19 pandemic. The government of Maharashtra had appealed to all the devotees to avoid the usual festivities and the idols were set to not exceed four feet in height. The most visited and the famous Lalbaughchya Raja celebrations in Mumbai were cancelled well in advance with the organizers announcing medical camps instead during the days. Excellent arrangements were made on the immersion day with the state government providing artificial ponds and water tankers at every nook and corner of Mumbai and the state, most of the idols being eco-friendly. Indeed, idol makers bore the brunt of the scaled-down festivities.

The scale of festivities during the upcoming Navaratri and Durga Puja festivals is also caught in the agony of uncertainty with the pandemic surge refusing to cooperate. This is also yet to be seen if the mala maas delay would eventually help the organizers and the public participate in the festivities more freely and wholeheartedly. The idol makers continue to suffer though, with the usual flurry of activities and orders totally missing so far.

Goddess Durga is believed to be a demon-killer and a destroyer of all evil forces on earth. The mother-shakti forms of the Goddess descend on earth every year with this very objective and the mortals on earth intone and evoke the Devi’s wrath on the wrong-doers. People of India in 2020, caught up in the throes of one of the worst years in history, would hope fervently that the Goddess shower mercy on them and deliver them of the misery, sufferings and deaths. However, the people must also observe the sacred duties on their part as the challenging times demand. The wait goes on…

Tales, Telltales And Tailspin!

He is facing an existential crisis: should he stop watching news television forthwith or continue watching at his own peril! He is not able to decide the best course of action. Some of his friends, why his own wife too on many occasions, have been advising him to strictly not watch news channels. Because, they opine, it’s been very negative with everything, and, essentially, why should one go on being a mute witness to the reports of how many millions had been infected with the virus and how many thousands had succumbed to it. It affects you in the wrong way, makes you despondent and depressed, they add most emphatically. But, how can he just give up on news? He has to keep up with the local, national and the world scenario for his information, understanding and possibly analysis, particularly in this pandemic situation. And what are the alternatives? He does not still get his newspapers, and he quickly gets tired of reading e-papers. His mind goes into a spin.

Some friends even have put up social media posts, proudly informing others that they have stopped watching news channels. He gets disturbed. He reasons: all of the channels are not that loud and that bad, and for a change, they do show some extremely important content; he is intellectually smart enough to decipher the news from the views inherent in it; and like in a buffet party he can choose and pick the items he needs. Yes, he had already discarded the channels with the towering lunatics with their even more demonic companions. He has been sticking to this new normal, with a self-conscious pride of sorts, till those tales surfaced with their telltale signs, and left him flabbergasted, gasping for a breath of clarity or solace.

He is perplexed, veritably, genuinely. Why have the news channels suddenly switched on to the tales of two lovely ladies, at a time when the virus has been surging and spiking record highs of infections and deaths all across his miserable country? Perhaps, he reasons, they too wanted a change from the depressing scenario, and perhaps, wanted to earn a few bucks more, by arranging delicious on-sale dishes on the buffet. He is still perplexed as well as angry: all the lessons, tips and insights he has learnt from the channels have almost gone waste, because the same preaching channels have shown how desperate they are for the two lovely ladies, negating themselves in the observance of all norms of social distancing in their mad rush to take in those ladies, in full glory and in exhaustively breaking details. He, an honest person basically, is disgusted with the near media-riots that kept on being created day after day as the tales and telltales of the lovely ladies unfolded.

His depth of perplexity increases further, trying to make his personal stands clear as to the intricate stories of the two actors. He respects and adores them both: the first one as the caring girlfriend of the dead actor, a rising star, whom he loved too on the big screen; the second one he always loved to watch on the big screens, particularly for her portrayals in her off-beat movies. Now, in their real-life acts, he cannot decide, whom to support or oppose or hate.

The first case confounds him. He fails to understand why at all the dead actor’s family in his source state decided to complain against the girlfriend after nearly a month of his tragic but apparent suicide in the target state. However, what follows interests him more. The ruling dispensation of the source state has thrown itself overwhelmingly in support of the family, making it, arguably, the most powerful on earth, apart from perhaps the dynastic one. The news channels, discarded by him, also came in with servile cacophonous support, and the accuser-in-chief and the towering lunatic of a particular channel started his investigations, and convicted the poor girl before anybody, with his derisive followers clapping in hyena-like ecstasy. After a series of confrontation, cross accusations and court verdicts three main investigating agencies started their operations, displaying an unprecedented hurry. Her final arrest was hailed as vindication by all in support and condemned as vindictive by all opposed. Problem for him is that he respects the investigating agencies too, from his experience of all his years of existence in his miserable country, and he is unable to decide who is guilty, actually.

Before the news channels got a breather from the first case, the second lady burst into the scene, without much foreplay. She willfully accused the people and government of the target state, where she herself lives and earns, of unspeakable things, even comparing it to an eternal enemy-nation. The abominable things she uttered should have, ideally, hurt the feelings of both the ruling dispensation of the target state and the other stakeholders across his miserable country; however, while the ruling dispensation of the target state reacted vehemently, coming out, as expected by the main stakeholders, with its knee-jerk ‘punishment’ measures, the main stakeholders decided to provide maximum possible security for an actor. The sheer violation of norms that followed at the airport where both supporters and opposers and of course, the media-persons assembled in huge numbers for the arrival of the actor, made him boiling angry. The news channels, discarded by him, made the din worse by announcing the loudest of supports for the lovely lady, and crying for the blood of the authorities of the target state.

Two ladies: one continuously hounded and finally jailed, for her guilt yet to be proved conclusively; and the other lady who said disgustingly unparliamentary things was made a hero. Of course, he is not so naïve and gullible. As for the ‘hounding’ case he sees clearly that the ruling dispensation of the source state has indisputable electoral gains to make from its ‘son of soil’ dead actor and the main stakeholder has a revenge angle on the target state where it had suffered a great betrayal by its traditional partner. As for the ‘hailing’ case he can see that the main stakeholder stands to make a strong headway into exacting a revenge in the target state. In any case, the two lovely ladies continue to haunt him.

However, his basic existential crisis is yet to be solved: to continue or stop watching news television. Well, there is no hurry, at least in his own case. In the meantime, he can continue with his new normal adaptation, except for the occasional sneak-ins in the discarded channels just for curiosity, as he normally indulges in. But he is sure about one thing: the news channels, along with their governments, must put the focus back on the real raging crisis. And his final decision would rest squarely on this. 

Split Between Act of God and Follies of Humans!

Natural calamities, plagues, epidemics and pandemics are considered as destined acts of God while other disastrous happenings like major fires, blasts, pollution, climate change degeneration of all kinds and so on are considered acts of humans. Cases like famine come in-between: depending on the exact cause of its spread, if it was due to God-made natural disasters or man-made follies or inequalities, famine can either be God-willed or acts of humans. However, such interpretation creates a conflict of interest between believers and non-believers or atheists, because the onus on God for those acts would not be acceptable to the atheists who would say everything in the universe is in a continual state of being with only cosmic cause and effect. If we bring in Nature or Mother Nature, then, perhaps, a common ground can be reached, because Nature is indeed a state of being and its forces have always been recognized by all of humankind: that humans are nothing to the immense powers of nature, and if the primitive humans worshiped these forces of nature, slowly adorning them with names or symbols of Gods and Goddesses, the atheists would just take nature as nature, matter of fact.

Now, when we talk of God in the supposed acts there ensues a blinding maze of complications and confusion. ‘God’ is basically the outcome of a religion, of course, at a later stage of human civilization, and religions have since become numerous and varied. Different religions are centered around different faiths, and as per the faiths or the ideologies associated with them the divine entities get created…sorry, get named or identified…because it’d be blasphemy of the worst kind to say humankind has created the creator. Anyway, all religions do not follow the principle or the supreme belief of monotheism or one God, and the faiths or ideologies or requirements of various religions define multiple divinities for worship, preferably in separate places of worship. The moot point being made here is that few religions can follow monotheism and others can have numerous Gods and Goddesses that could even run up to millions. Complications rise further when some ideologies get formed around particular Gods or Goddesses. On the other hand, in the same way as a few significant segments of people of countries with huge population end up getting ‘not accounted for economically’, a large number of divinities slowly merge into oblivion too.

Here we’d like to sound a word of caution that the classes of believers and non-believers should not be further classified into the conservatives and the liberals. It is not necessary that a believer needs to be a conservative always, s/he could be a liberal too, and ditto for the atheists. Besides, the ideologies the classes follow or might follow are mutually inclusive as far as the two major classes, as mentioned, are concerned, it’s being a matter of faith, and faith only.

Considering the momentous fact, or believed as such, that the divinities have granted us, since times immemorial, a beautiful place to exist and live in, no matter if it be the tiniest of dots in the limitless universe, and have also given us full autonomy to cohabit peacefully with nature, we should not go on finding faults in their actions or rather supposed actions. Okay, the Coronavirus pandemic is undoubtedly an act of God or Mother Nature and the pandemic has rendered humankind helpless and pathetic. But we must always understand that in almost all the religions God is looked upon as a benevolent and kind authority, it is also believed that God always acts or does for the ultimate good. Therefore, we must accept the act as a way of life, and try making the best of it by being dexterous, innovative and tireless, instead of sitting tight and putting the blame on the divinities all the time.

We must, to be consistent with our babble, make the concluding point. No doubt, the pandemic has tremendously impacted humankind and the economies it thrives in. But while the supposed act of the divinity has indeed delivered the blow, for whatever reasons, it is in the hands of humankind to try limiting the damage and find a solution for the ultimate recovery, and mind you, do not ever underestimate the power of humanity having witnessed the stupendous progress achieved over the centuries, at times even threatening the exclusive divine territories. Then, we have earlier seen that there are many religions across the globe, there are multiple divine entities associated with diverse faiths and the plethora of ideologies centered around various divinities. Therefore, before putting the blame on the supreme authority, God, we must introspect as to on whom exactly are we putting the blame, concomitant with our ideologies.  Our ideologies define us only, never the divine entity or entities. Monism, if not global monetarism, should bind humankind in one wholesome unit at this hour of crisis.