Dinajpur sees hike in number of mandaps
The Hindu community in Dinajpur starts celebrating Durga Puja, the largest religious festival of the Hindus in the country, with Shoshthi rituals at 1,281 mandaps in the district tomorrow.
Artisans are now busy putting the finishing touches to the Goddess Durga and other deities at the mandaps in all 13 upazilas of Dinajpur.
This year the festival is being organised at an additional 35 mandaps in the district where 1,246 mandaps were made last year, according to the Dinajpur chapter leaders of the 'Bangladesh Hindu Bouddha Christian Oikya Parishad'.
Swarup Bakshi Bachchu, president of the Parishad's Dinajpur chapter, said Dinajpur has always been among one of the districts where highest number of mandaps was made in the country each year.
Artisans with multiple jobs at different mandaps have been running against time to finish their work at hand and start on the next ones before the Shoshthi rituals, a number of artisans told this correspondent.
Swapan Paul, an artisan who was making idols at Chanderhat temple in Dinajpur town, said he has been in the trade for the last 40 years.
This year he and his group of artisans are in contract to make idols for 15 mandaps -- at Tk 50,000 for each set of idols -- in Dinajpur and other districts.
"We stay extremely busy ahead of the festival every year," but this year the workload is much higher as the number of mandaps have increased, he said.
Another artisan, Bharat Chandra Paul, who has contracts for making idols at 12 different mandaps in Dinajpur, said the artisans were overloaded with jobs this time around as many of them have been leaving the ancestral profession.
Meanwhile, as a measure to beef up security in and around mandaps and temples in Dinajpur ahead of the Durga Puja, police said they deployed 7,744 ansar personnel and teams of police strike force.
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