23
Sep
Sep
The grand festival of Durga Puja, also known as Pujo, is the time of year when Women traditionally purchase new clothes for the entire family. Celebrated over the last four days of Navratri, this festival involves months of elaborate preparations and is marked by worship, feasting, pandal hopping, and dressing up.
For women, choosing the right saree for each day of the Durga Puja celebrations is an important part of the tradition. Here’s a quick guide to the sarees typically worn during each day:
- Saptami (7th day of Navratri): On Saptami morning, women typically wear light tant or cotton jamdani sarees with minimal makeup for their visit to the neighborhood pandal. In the evening, they dress up in lavish silks for visiting pandals all over town with friends and relatives.
- Ashtami (8th day of Navratri): Ashtami is the biggest day of Durga Puja when all nine forms of the goddess are worshipped. Women typically wear the famous red-n-white Bengali saree in the morning to offer pushpanjali to the goddess. This could be a simple white tant saree with a red border, or an off-white garad silk with a broad red border. Married women further adorn themselves with white bangles made of conch shells (called “shakha”) and red coral bangles (called “pola”), along with red sindoor on the forehead, all symbols of her marital status. Older women or women who have lost their husbands drape white or off-white tant/garad sarees with the border in a colour other than red (orange, blue, green, etc.). Garad-korial silks, which are more elaborate forms of the garad sarees may also be worn. Ashtami evenings are reserved for the most gorgeous outfits of the festival season, including kanthas, jamdanis, muslins, balucharis, and stunning silks from other regions, or even contemporary sarees.
- Navami (9th day of Navratri): For Navami mornings, women often choose to wear a light saree such as tussar silk or jamdani. In the evenings, they wear more luxurious drapes for the final pandal hopping, feasting, cultural performances, and other celebrations.
- Vijaya-Dashami (or Dussehra): Vijaya-Dashami marks the end of Durga Puja, when everyone gathers to bid farewell to the goddess. Women don the red-n-white saree on this day to apply sindoor to the goddess and her four children (Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesh, and Karthik), and also on each other’s foreheads in a fun-filled ceremony called ‘sindoor khela.’
Note: At Sanskriti, we offer an exhaustive collection of various handloom sarees worn by women during Durga Puja.
