29/09/2025
🥁🌾 Hatserandi Diaries – Where the Whole Village Walks With Maa Durga 🌾🥁
Some mornings don’t just begin — they awaken something in you.
Today, we went to Hatserandi village and stepped into a world where tradition still walks, sings, and beats with the drum.
Here, Maa Durga is worshipped as পট দুর্গা (Patadurga) — not a grand idol, but a painted scroll, a centuries-old tradition of rural Bengal. Long before the city’s pandals, villages like Hatserandi prayed to this humble form of the goddess, asking her to protect their crops, bless their homes, and keep their land fertile.
We had already witnessed the preparations the evening before — at the ঘাট (ghat) we saw the sacred ঘট being filled with water, and the tender কলা বউ স্নান (Kola Bou Snan) — the symbolic bathing of the banana plant representing Maa Durga’s power and fertility.
But what gave us goosebumps was the procession.
All 19 households in Hatserandi who host Maa Durga wait for one another and then move together — in a single-file line — to and from the ghat. It’s a sight to behold: elders, children, priests, all walking in rhythm, lamps glowing, conch shells blowing… and then comes the ঢাক (dhak).
The ঢাকি (drummers) transform the air. Their beats rise and fall like a heartbeat, pulling everyone into a shared rhythm. The sound of the dhak isn’t just music — it’s an invocation, a call to the goddess, a sound that seems to shake the dust off the earth itself.
This morning, we stood at the shrine after the procession — marigolds, incense, the freshly filled ঘট glowing in the soft light — and felt like time had stopped.
The Ghosh family welcomed us with tea and stories, proudly sharing their heritage:
“We are Chasa Ghosh, not Goyla Ghosh.”
Their pride was not in status, but in being farmers, people of the soil — the very hands that feed Bengal and keep this culture alive.
We clicked photos, but what we really took home were moments — the children running barefoot, the rhythm of the dhak in our chest, the laughter and warmth of the courtyard, the living memory of a village that moves as one when it is time to bring Maa home.
Leaving Hatserandi, we knew this wasn’t just a puja — it was a living poem, written with sound, soil, and devotion.
📸 These moments aren’t just pictures — they are the sound of the dhak, the smell of wet earth, the heartbeat of Bengal. ❤️
