Unveiling Goddess Durga As The Migrant Mother || A Tribute To All The Migrant Women Workers.

We all remembered , the instantaneous announcement of the nationwide lockdown in March 2020 , which forced millions of migrant workers to return home on foot. Clearly, migrant workers are among the worst strained by the COVID-19 pandemic , and the portrayal of lakhs of people walking on foot in a bid to return home during the lockdown period still spooks us , we hardly can imagine how much tough consequences they had to bear during this lockdown phase.

Although we all endured agony but nothing can be equal to the adjuration of the migrant laborers who neither had a roof over their heads nor food on their plates.
In an effort to reimburse tribute to the women migrant workers and accentuate their pain, organizers of a Durga puja  pandal in a Kolkata neighbourhood have decided to replace the conventional idol of Goddess Durga with that of a migrant worker with a child on her hip.

An Intransigent woman and a mother as well, attired in a saree, will be seen walking with a shirtless toddler (Kartick) in her arms . Other Goddess including Devi Lakshmi and Devi Saraswati have also been replaced with the idols of migrant workers one holding owl in her arms and the other with a duck. A fourth idol with the head of an elephant will replicate Goddess Ganesha.
The main illustration of the idol is that the mother and her four children are moving towards the Goddess for relief. The idol will have no ‘weapons' and their demon will be ‘hunger’.

            source- deccan herald

“The goddess is the woman who braved the scorching sun and hunger and penury along with her children. She is looking for food, water and some relief for her children,” Rintu Das, the artist told Telegraph India.

“During the lockdown, all I remember seeing on TV and reading in newspapers was migrant workers returning home on foot, some of them dying on the road… Durga Puja was still months away, but the indomitable spirit of the women walking home with children overwhelmed me. In my mind, they embodied the goddess,” he added.

According to Telegraph India , the Barisha Club Durga puja committee in Behala, Kolkata has decided to ordain the statue to emphasize the dire straits of migrant workers who were left without jobs and forced to walks hundreds of kilometers home in the Corona Virus Pandemic. 

More than one crore migrant workers returned to their home states on foot during March-June 2020, as per data compiled by the Ministry of Labour and Employment. About 81,385 accidents occurred on the roads during the period with 29,415 fatalities, the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways V K Singh told Lok Sabha in a written reply.

Durga Puja, Bengal's biggest festival, marks the homecoming of the daughter. It is a celebration of both womanhood and motherhood this year. Depicting power, strength and iron – willed women migrant workers who never lose courage and fearlessly decided to walk miles along with their kids and children to reach home in the lockdown period.