The Puja begins in the dark. At four in the morning on Mahalaya, in homes across Bengal, someone switches on the radio, and a deep, trembling voice begins to recite Sanskrit verses to the goddess. The programme is Mahishasura Mardini, and for most Bengalis it is the true start of the festival, a week before the first pandal opens.
The day itself
Mahalaya is the new moon that ends pitri paksha, the fortnight given to the ancestors. In the morning people go down to the ghats of the Hooghly to offer tarpan, water and prayers for those who have died, standing waist-deep in the river. The same new moon opens devi paksha, the fortnight of the goddess, and the main days of the Puja follow less than a week later.
By custom, many image makers in Kumartuli paint the goddess’s eyes, the chokkhu daan, on Mahalaya, and an idol is said to come alive only once her eyes are done.
A broadcast from the 1930s
Mahishasura Mardini was first broadcast from the Calcutta radio station in the early 1930s, when radio was still new in the city. It weaves verses from the Chandi, the scripture that tells of the goddess’s battle with the buffalo demon Mahishasura, together with Bengali songs and narration. Bani Kumar wrote the script, Pankaj Kumar Mullick composed the music, and Birendra Krishna Bhadra recited.
For years it went out live, with the singers, musicians and narrators gathered in the studio in the small hours. Later the station switched to a recording, and that recording is what most of Bengal has grown up with. Its songs are part of the season: Supriti Ghosh’s Bajlo tomar alor benu is sung, hummed and played on loudspeakers for weeks.
The year they changed it
In 1976 All India Radio replaced it with a new programme, Durga Durgatiharini, narrated by Uttam Kumar, the biggest film star in Bengal. Listeners would not accept it. The response was so strong that the station brought the old programme back that same season, and nobody has tried to replace it since. The episode was later turned into a Bengali film, Mahalaya.
Ya devi sarvabhuteshu shakti-rupena samsthita, namas tasyai, namas tasyai, namas tasyai namo namah.
Listening today
All India Radio still broadcasts it before dawn on Mahalaya. Television channels make their own Mahalaya programmes, usually dance-dramas of the goddess’s battle, and the recording is easy to find online. But the ritual has hardly changed: an alarm set for before four, the radio on low so as not to wake the house, or loud so as to wake everyone, and the voice in the dark telling you that Pujo is coming.