Viswakarma puja celebrated across Bengal

Marking the beginning of the festive season, Viswakarma Puja was celebrated across West Bengal on Monday as colourful marquees were set up to house the deity in bus depots, auto rickshaw, rickshaw stands and small industrial units.

However, the usual lustre was missing in the industrial belt of Barrackpore near the city as the big budget pujas, backed by corporate fundings had been stopped years back and replaced by pujas by transport workers and SME wage earners.

On this day, people worship tools, equipment and machinery and pray to Lord Viswakarma, the divine architect, for success and prosperity.

''We used to have a gala Viswakarma celebration even 15 years back which would continue for two days, marked by a grand procession. The three-day puja, attended by thousands of workers and their families, has come down to a one-day affair and not more than 500 are around now,'' Krishna Shaw, an employee of an earth mover plant located in Agarpara, in the northern outskirts of the city in Barrackpore belt, said.

At the nearby Narula Institute of Technology campus in Agarpara, mechanical engineering students crafted a beautiful Viswakarma idol from recycled engineering scrap materials.

''Our idol is crafted from steel pipes and TMT bars with steel sheets through a wielding process as the metallic sheet has been painted,'' a student said.

Pappu Yadav, a casual worker in a local jute mill who also takes out his e-rickshaw beyond duty hours, is busy celebrating the puja with his friends at Kamarhati Sagardutta Hospital rickshaw stand. ''We will have 'khichdi' tonight and after immersing the idol tomorrow in Ganga we hope to have a feast with chicken where our families will participate. Gone are the days of festivities at our jute mill. Now it has become a mere ritual,'' he said.

The day is celebrated every year on September 17 or 18 which usually falls on the last day of the 'Bhadra' month of the Bengali calendar, marking the advent of autumn with the beginning of the month of 'Ashwin'.

The day, known as the occasion to fly kites as per traditions, however, witnessed fewer kites in the skies as well.

The day marks the beginning of the festive season blazed by the five-day-long Durga Puja, about a month away, followed by Lakshmi Puja and Kali Puja/Diwali. Poulomi Bhattacharya, a psychologist, said ''first the proliferation of video games on play stations and desktops and then mobile phones took away the simple pleasures of life which includes kite flying, from the children's lives.''