Durga Puja is celebrated for the victory of the goddess Durga over the Demon emperor Mahishasura. Navaratri is celebrated as the nine-night festival for worshiping the divine feminine. Indeed, it is the biggest festival in Bengal. The festival is celebrated on a mass scale and the city is filled with puja pandals nearly every corner of the state. Having a tradition to decorate the goddesses home (pandal), a puja committee in Kolkata has installed a Durga Idol of 50 kg gold at the pandal.
Costliest Idol in Kolkata
Continuing this unique tradition of using luxurious materials for 3 years, Santosh Mitra Square Durga Puja Committee has installed an idol of the goddesses made of 50kg gold at a pandal in Kolkata. According to the sources, it took three months for 250 workers to install the idol and two and a half months to complete the pandal.
Well, this is not the first time the organizers went for precious metals and stones to adore goddesses, in 2017 the organizers of the puja had draped the Durga Idol in a Gold Saree and in 2018 the idol was made to sit on a silver chariot.
To improve Bengal Gold Makers business
It is the costliest Durda Idol this year at the festival. “Only the arms of Maa Durga are made of silver but the whole idol from top to bottom has been made of 50 kg gold. Pandal’s interior is a replica of sheesh mahal where several tonnes of glass have been used and the exterior is a replica of Mayapur’s ISKCON temple,” Sajal Ghosh, General Secretary of the Committee said to ANI.
“MNCs have come up with machines to make jewelry because of which the business of Bengal gold-makers have gone down, they wanted to show the country that only ‘Vishwakarma’ (gold-artists) can make goddess and saree of gold or chariot of silver and not any machine,” Ghosh added.
It is said that the gold used in the idol is provided by jewelers, they will be returned after the idol’s symbolic immersion.
