Mahalaya is a Sanskrit word, wherein ‘maha’ means great, and ‘alaya’ implies abode. The goddess is invited and ushered in her home through chants, devotional songs.Durga Puja, other than bringing people together and having a great cultural significance, also marks the triumph of good over the evil.The primary goddess revered is Devi Durga but celebrations also include deities of Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth andprosperity), Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge and music), Ganesha (the god of good beginnings), and Kartikeya (the god of war). Primary celebrations begin on the sixth day (Shasthi), on which the goddess is welcome with rituals. The festival ends on the tenth day (Vijaya Dashami) when devotees embark on a procession carrying the worshipped clay sculpture-idols in immerse them, symbolic of her return to the divine cosmos and her marital home with Shiva in Kailash.
Mahishasuramarddini is a widely popular early Bengali special dawn radio programme that has been broadcasting since 1931on All India Radio (AIR) in West Bengal. It is a one-and-a-half-hour audio montage of chanting from the scriptural verses of Śrī Śrī Caṇḍi or Durga Saptashati, Bengali devotional songs, classical music and acoustic drama. This programme is aired every year at day-break on Mahalaya. However, its great popularity remains undiminished even today over 89 years later.To this day, most of Bengal wakes up in the breezily pre dawn hours, 4 am to be precise, on the Mahalaya day to tune into the Mahishasuramarddini broadcast.Birendra Krishna Bhadra, who will always be remembered for making Mahalaya memorable to one and all, is the voice behind the “Mahisasura Mardini.” He recites the holy verses and tells the story of the descent of Durga to earthThe programme was organised by Pankaj Kumar Mallik, Premankur Aatorthi, Birendra Krishna Bhadra, Nripendra Krishna Mukhopadhyay and Raichand Boral.
