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Paritosh Parasher in Sydney
The Indian community in the Australasian region has been immersed in festivities, with Navratri, Durga Puja and Dussehra being celebrated with gusto over the weekend.
The Sydney-based Bengali Association of New South Wales took the lead in hosting this year's Durga Puja, the biggest festival for Bengalis. Hundreds attended prayers to the demon-slaying Hindu goddess Durga at a local high school on Saturday and Sunday.
Idols of Durga and her children -- Laxmi, Saraswati, Ganesh and Kartik -- adorned the school's indoor basketball stadium for two days as hundreds of worshippers paid obeisance.
Like every year, the highly decorated idols were brought from the Pymble house of a respected community leader, Amal Roy.
"We brought these idols from Calcutta three years back and I am very happy to see that the community members really adore them," said Roy.
There is a significant presence of Bengali Hindus in the Australasian region, with Sydney playing host to the largest chunk of the community.
"Because Bengali Hindus come from both India and Bangladesh, we have five or six major Durga Pujas in NSW. As the Bengali Association of NSW has been organising this event for almost three decades now, our Durga Puja is considered the principal in the region," said Rajkumar Datta, the association president.
Besides celebrating Hindu festivals, this charity organisation has been collecting funds for different projects. "We have been sponsoring children in India through World Vision and have also been providing funds to some Indian charity organisations," Datta said.
While the Durga Puja venue was reverberating with spiritual music and Rabindra Sangeet, another part of Sydney was dancing to Hindi pop star Bassi's tunes. The crooner performed on the invitation of Mahak Hindi Radio.
The Australian capital Canberra also had its share of Indian festivities as a Hindu temple and culture centre organised Navratri, the festival of nine nights. The festivities took off on October 17 and concluded on October 26.
New Zealand too has a sizeable population of expatriate Indians and the celebration of Navratri and Durga Puja marked the calendar of the community there as well.
As Gujaratis form a big chunk of Indo-New Zealanders, the celebration of Navratri was much more pronounced there than in Australia. For the Indo-New Zealander residents of the capital Wellington, the celebrations were made even more special by the presence of an Indian cultural troupe led by Dhanraj Gadhvi. The troupe, invited by the Wellington Indian Association and Shalimar Productions, included a number of folk and other dancers, singers and comedians.
Reports of similar celebrations have also come from other Australian and New Zealand cities.
And the festivities have not concluded yet. Indians in this part of the world are now preparing for Diwali, the festival of lights, in mid-November.
Indo-Asian News Service
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