The Adi Durga Puja in Bandar village in Raiganj in North Dinajpur district considered the oldest Puja in the district, is still going strong and manages
to draw a crowd.
Though the Puja and the idol is not grand, and the ordinary pandal there lacks elaborate lighting, it is popular among the people due to the old rituals and sanctity. It is said that the puja started around 400 years ago on the banks of the Kulick river.
“On Astami and Nabami, around 10,000 devotees turn up here from different places of the district, Malda, South Dinajpur, Kolkata, and even Bihar, who offer the ‘dala’ to the goddess,” a puja organizer said. According to one senior citizen of Bandar village, Ramchandra Saha, they do not know exactly when the Durga Puja first started there.
“We came to know from our grandfathers that it started around 400 years ago. The Kulick river was bigger then, and the business in Raiganj town operated through the river. Many big goods-laden boats would run in the river.
Big boats coming from Malda and Bihar districts would unload goods like cement, coconuts, rice, wheat, pulses and utensils here. Since then the village took name as Bandar,” he said.
“My grandfather told me that around 400 years ago, a monk from Sindhu Pradesh in Punjab came here. He stayed in our village for years for meditation, and that it was this monk who first started the Durga Puja in our village,” he added. Kishore Goswami, the former councillor of the area, said Bandar is the oldest place in Raiganj and that there are many old temples there. A member of the Adi Durga Puja organizing committee, Rupesh Saha, a yatra used to be organised for four days on n the temple premises earlier.
“Though there is no yatra or mela in our puja, thousands of devotees from near and far still visit our pandal,” he said. “We are still very strict about maintaining old rituals and sanctity. Around ten thousand devotees here offer Puja to the goddess every year here.