Sharodia Durga Puja

Markandiya Purana commonly known as Shri Shri Chandi is recited from Mahalaya day. Shri shri Chandi is recited the following episode of the revelation of Mother Goddess Shri shri Durga:

‘Manydark, Primordial moons ago when evil went stampeding through the heavens in the form of Mohisashura, the buffalo demon, the gods in their hour of need turned to Shiva and Vishnu. The pitch dark of wrongdoing and heedless ignorance were threatening to swallow up the steady glow of light in thinking and knowledge. The golden moments of heavenly existence were beginning to show the tarnish of demonic misconduct. The might of the gods, the Devas was in danger of being snuffed out by the misrule of the Ashuras, the demons. The light was going out their lives.

“It was an impassioned plea, Shiva and Vishnu listened with rising concern and mounting disapproval. It was not an unfamiliar situation. Evil existed alongside good, knowledge beside ignorance in an eternal tantalisiing tangle. And the universal scales were rarely still in the perfect balance of opposites.

Mahishshura’s way was to strike at the very roots of existence.

The cosmic structure was very near callapse. The radiance the powers, the energies, the Sakti of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva met in a flash of creation. The darkness that had settled on the world burst open in a dazzle—and of the effulgence was born the sound and fury of blazing wrath that is Devi Durga, difficult to attain destroyer of all evil. Fiery red in hue, clad in the blue of the firmament her many arms fanned out to fill the sky as she received the martial equipment that each god separately created out of his own special weapons—a trident from Shiva, a discous from Vishnu, staff of death from Yama, a club from Kubera, a battle axe from Vishwakarma, a thunder bolt from Indra and many more.

The gods watched in wonder and relief as she went riding to battle on a rampant lion, her dreadful laughter mingling with its roar the three worlds echoing with the sound of fury as the made her way to the Vindalyas to seek out Mahisashura. In a final burst of triumph, she pinned Mahishashur down with her foot drove the trident into his heaving chest as he strove to hold back his eseaping life-breath. Thus the demon met his doom, gazing into her frenzied eye ; for the glance reread his doom—and his deliverance’ *

The conception of which Devi Durga is made is the stuff of eternal challenge and fight and panting victory over the ugliness and terror that forms the morass of the world out of which like the lotus of slush the beauty of the good arises.
Today it is not only a religious festival for Hindu community; it becomes a national cultural festival in Bangladesh.